Valencia Injects Ethnic Issue in Campaign : Forum: Candidate for Congress stresses that his opponent in the acrimonious 50th District race, Bob Filner, is Jewish.

Injecting an ethnic note in an increasingly acrimonious race, Republican congressional candidate Tony Valencia called Democrat Bob Filner a “white liberal” during a campaign forum and pointed out that Filner, like imprisoned junk bond king Michael Milken, is Jewish.

Although Valencia insisted that he intended no ethnic slight, he expanded on his remarks in an interview minutes after the forum, saying that Jewish people tend to “turn on each other,” a point that he underlined by noting that Milken had been “turned in by a fellow of the same religion in New York,” former financier Ivan Boesky.

“The process is cyclical . . . like Judas and Jesus Christ,” Valencia said, as campaign aides tried to abbreviate the interview by hustling him into a waiting car.

Filner, who tempered his response to Valencia’s remarks during the Thursday night debate, on Friday reacted more strongly, terming his opponent’s comments “an ugly display of hatred, racism and bigotry.”

Many in the audience of about 100 at a forum organized by a coalition of Latino groups concurred with Filner, sharply criticizing Valencia for injecting race and religion into the 50th Congressional District campaign. Two minor-party candidates, Libertarian Barbara Hutchinson and Peace and Freedom Party member Roger Batchelder, also are on the Nov. 3 ballot.

“It was disgusting and totally inappropriate, and if people aren’t offended, they should be,” said David Valladolid, a board member of the Chicano Federation, one of the dozen Latino organizations that sponsored the forum in East San Diego. “Inflaming the mood, making the race into a Latino versus Jewish thing by attacking someone’s religion, is uncalled-for.”

Valencia’s supporters, however, argued that he had done nothing worse than use ill-chosen words that Filner and his partisans are attempting to blow out of proportion into a major campaign issue.

“This is always touchy ground, but I don’t think Tony attacked Filner’s ethnicity,” said former San Diego City Councilman Jess Haro, a key Valencia backer who attended the debate. “Bob Filner’s Jewishness isn’t the issue. Bob Filner gives you enough reasons to dislike him without getting into religion.”

Few in Thursday night’s audience, however, were as generous toward Valencia in their estimate of his controversial remarks.

“I was appalled and embarrassed,” said Joseph Martinez, a Latino political activist who questioned the candidates during the debate. “Mr. Valencia’s remarks were out of line and not relevant in any form or fashion to what’s important to our community.”

Valencia began flirting with political danger from the outset of the 40-minute debate, consistently lacing his caustic comments with words that explicitly or implicitly raised the volatile issues of race, religion and ethnicity.

In his opening statement, for example, Valencia launched into the first of many acerbic attacks on Filner, faulting the two-term San Diego City Councilman for failing to keep a 1987 campaign pledge to learn Spanish in order to foster closer relations with his heavily minority district.

“You patronized an entire community,” Valencia said, glaring at Filner. “You thought that Spanish was so simplistic that you could learn it in three to five years. I wouldn’t (think) that about Hebrew.”

Later, when the two differed over the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement, which Valencia supports and Filner opposes, the GOP nominee again looked directly at Filner while saying he believes that “Mexico deserves the same trading privileges with the United States as . . . Israel.”

In fact, Israel has only favored trading status with the United States, not free trade.

“Don’t tell me we have to wait until manana , Bob,” Valencia said. “We’re tired of white liberals leading us down the primrose path.”

Valencia’s most pointed reference to Filner’s religion during the debate was prompted by a detailed and critically phrased question from the audience--apparently a Filner camp “plant”--that made reference to a link between Valencia and former Drexel Burnham Lambert executive Milken.

In recent years, Milken’s family has provided extensive funding--$15,000 this year alone--to the U.S.-Mexico Foundation, founded by Valencia in 1971 to promote trans-border commerce, help minority youths develop careers and assist small and minority businesses.

Two years ago, the group, then named the Mexican and American Foundation, named Milken its “Man of the Decade,” even though he then faced 98 felony counts of securities fraud and related charges related to his junk-bond trading. Milken was later sentenced to a 10-year prison sentence, which since has been reduced to a two-year term.

“That question came from Bob Filner,” Valencia said. “Let me state that Michael Milken is of Jewish religion, as is Bob Filner.”

When Filner, who throughout his political career has rarely pulled his rhetorical punches, responded to Valencia, he was uncharacteristically mild, simply describing Valencia as someone who “insults another person’s religion and ethnic background.”

“I think this debate speaks for itself,” Filner said.

Even many of those who gave Valencia the benefit of the doubt by describing his verbal gaffe as simply a poor choice of words, not an ethnic attack, acknowledged that they could not exonerate him.

“That sounds like a Ross Perot comment,” said political consultant David Lewis, referring to criticism that Perot received when he referred to blacks as “you people” in a speech before the NAACP. “Those are the words of an inexperienced, inept candidate.”

“If I were advising Tony, I certainly would have advised him to take a different tack,” Valencia backer Haro added. “The words were chosen poorly. But he’s only had a couple political debates.”

Others, however, noting that Valencia is hardly a newcomer to public speaking thanks to his longtime leadership position with the U.S.-Mexico Foundation, said they had little doubt that his remarks were a deliberate, not inadvertent, ethnic attack on Filner.

“Even a blind person would know his intentions,” said Martinez, a member of the board of directors of Bahia del Sur, a Latino political committee. “It was a smear tactic--that’s the only way you can cut it. . . Going in the forum, I hadn’t made up my mind. Coming out, I’m definitely going for Filner.”

After the debate, Valencia said he had not meant to “attack (Filner’s) religion,” but his subsequent comments simply exacerbated the controversy.

Asked why he had mentioned Filner’s religion, Valencia replied: “I was just stating a fact. He and Michael Milken are Jewish. That’s not a slur. That’s just a fact.”

Valencia proceeded to make the remark about Boesky assisting prosecutors in their investigation of Milken, before concluding: “The process is cyclical . . . like Judas and Jesus Christ.”

Describing Valencia’s remarks as “racism and extremism of the worst kind,” Filner predicted that voters would “strongly reject these tactics of bigotry.”

“San Diego hasn’t seen this kind of ugly racism since Tom Metzger ran for Congress,” Filner said, referring to the well-known white supremacist from Fallbrook. “I think everyone, regardless of party or ethnic group, will find it utterly unacceptable.”