CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / U.S. SENATE : Feinstein Tours Riot Area; Seymour Presses for Debate

With California’s U.S. Senate campaigns gearing up, candidate Dianne Feinstein went to riot-scarred Los Angeles on Tuesday to demand an overhaul of federal emergency agencies, while opponent John Seymour erected billboards in three cities to challenge Feinstein to a debate.

Republican Seymour, the appointed incumbent, used a series of press conferences to go on the attack. Standing on a windy and busy street corner in West Los Angeles, he accused Feinstein of avoiding debates because she does not want to answer questions about a civil lawsuit over her 1990 campaign finances. In fact, Democrat Feinstein recently agreed to three debates.

“My opponent refuses to emerge from her cocoon and give the people of California the real story,” Seymour said. “ . . . It’s time she comes clean!”

The lawsuit referred to by Seymour was filed by the Fair Political Practices Commission earlier this year and accuses Feinstein of improperly reporting $8 million in contributions and expenses during her unsuccessful gubernatorial bid. She has admitted there were accounting errors, and most of the details of the case have been reported extensively in the California press.

In the backdrop of Seymour’s press conference, a 12-by-25-foot billboard loomed atop a nearby building, saying: “Dianne, no more double-talk. When are the debates?” and signed, “Senator John Seymour.” The billboard is two blocks from Feinstein’s Los Angeles office, and similar billboards were erected Tuesday on street corners in San Francisco and Sacramento.

When Seymour was reminded that Feinstein has agreed to three debates (the billboards were apparently in the works before Feinstein announced her acceptance), Seymour said the planned encounters were not satisfactory because they were local debates that would not have statewide audiences. However, Feinstein’s staff said at least one of the debates is, in fact, scheduled to be televised statewide.

Seymour said he has challenged Feinstein to debate on more than 20 occasions.

Seymour’s press-conference appearances, which will be continued today in Orange County, were designed to show a tougher, “scrappy, attack-dog John Seymour,” according to an aide.

The former mayor of Anaheim has said he blames his loss to Marian Bergeson in the 1990 race for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor on his reluctance to attack a female opponent.

“The honest-to-God’s truth is, I just have a tough time picking on any woman,” Seymour told The Times after his defeat. “That’s the way my mom raised me. It’s very difficult to come out swinging.”

Seymour and Feinstein are battling for the two-year Senate seat, vacated by Pete Wilson when he was elected governor. Wilson appointed Seymour to occupy the post until this year’s election. The other Senate seat, held by retiring Sen. Alan Cranston, is being contested by Congresswoman Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae) and former television commentator Bruce Herschensohn.

As Seymour attacked, Feinstein took her campaign into Los Angeles’ Crenshaw district and demanded that the Federal Emergency Management Agency be overhauled to get rid of “layers of political appointees.”

Standing before a ransacked and charred strip mall on Crenshaw Boulevard, Feinstein accused FEMA of neglecting parts of Los Angeles destroyed in last spring’s riots and said the agency is woefully unprepared to handle the catastrophes that are plaguing California and the nation. In California alone, six federal emergencies have been declared in recent years.

“FEMA’s tired bureaucracy, which is layered with political appointees, with no disaster-planning experience, has really let the people of this city down,” she said.

Feinstein’s appearance in the Crenshaw district, aides said, was meant to dramatize one of her principal campaign themes, that the status quo--represented here by by what she calls an inept federal agency--must be changed.

The former mayor of San Francisco proposed a six-part plan to reorganize FEMA, starting with the creation of a disaster strike team made up of 4,000 to 5,000 military personnel who would immediately be dispatched in a disaster to save lives or provide shelter and food.

She would also demand that the President appoint a disaster recovery expert to take charge of relief efforts following a major calamity, require that FEMA be staffed with experienced disaster personnel and streamline bureaucracy to make it easier for victims to get aid and loans.

“If you can take four months after a riot and see that just now a private effort is being brought in to clear this site,” she said as a bulldozer worked behind her to clear rubble. “If you look in San Francisco two years after the Loma Prieta earthquake, you’ve got I-280 closed, you have major squabbles over the restoration of important buildings, whether City Hall or the Health Department, they’re all propped up still because FEMA hasn’t responded adequately. . . .

“To me, the straw that broke the camel’s back was Hurricane Andrew. . . . (You see) a response that’s been very slow, delayed at best.”

Feinstein stopped short of blaming FEMA’s purported negligence of Los Angeles on the fact that President Bush’s political prospects in California seem dim. Some Democrats have suggested that Bush, and FEMA, are acting more vigorously in Florida in the wake of Hurricane Andrew because the President needs Florida’s votes--and may have written off California’s.

“That’s hard to tell . . . but I do think this: I think the absence of a major effort (in California) is shocking,” she said. “The fact (is) that so few people have actually been helped and so many people need help.”

Before Feinstein spoke, a woman attracted by the presence of television cameras wandered by. The woman, Earline Cummings, is a hairdresser whose shop was one of the few along the strip mall that survived the riots. Business is one-quarter what it used to be, she said, but because damage to her shop was minimal, Cummings said she was told she did not qualify for small-business loans or other disaster relief.

“So many people did so much talking,” she said. “And we got nothing.”