GOP Bid for Assembly Control Becomes Long Shot : Politics: Party has money, favorable districts, ripe issues. But Bush’s fortunes and economy may hurt.

Since taking office in 1990, Gov. Pete Wilson has sought at every turn to set the stage for Republicans to seize control of the state Assembly, ending two decades of Democratic rule. But the effort might still fall short.

Thanks largely to Wilson, the Republicans have favorable districts to run in, huge amounts of money to spend on campaigns and some meaty issues to wield against Democratic incumbents.

“We will have no one to blame but ourselves if we don’t take our case to the people and win,” Wilson told a gathering of Republican faithful in the spring.

Now, with the election less than a month away, Wilson still is talking about winning 41 or 42 seats in the 80-member Assembly and deposing Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco, who during this summer’s budget battle became the governor’s chief antagonist. The lineup now has 47 Democrats and 33 Republicans.

The Republican strategy is to hold on to those seats thought to be safely in GOP hands, defend a pair of vulnerable Republican incumbents, win several competitive races for open seats, and dislodge a handful of Democratic lawmakers.

But for a number of reasons, the prospect of a Republican victory seems to have turned into a long shot.

President Bush, at the top of the GOP ticket, is trailing Democrat Bill Clinton in California. Bush is faring so badly that polls show him only breaking even in heavily Republican Orange County, which historically has given GOP candidates huge majorities.

Voters statewide, according to public and private polls, are upset about the stumbling economy and, in a reversal of longtime trends, appear to have more faith in Democrats than Republicans to fix it.

With the ticket weak and the electorate uneasy, voter registration numbers this summer reversed field, with Democrats widening their registration edge on Republicans for the first time in recent years. A review of secretary of state records shows that in almost every one of the most competitive Assembly districts, Democratic registration is stronger today relative to Republican numbers than at the beginning of the year.

The November elections are crucial to the governorship of Wilson, the former U.S. senator who was recruited by Republican activists and contributors to run for governor in 1990 so that he could lead the party’s biggest push in a decade to take control of the Legislature. With district lines set to be redrawn, Republicans wanted to avoid a repeat of 1982, when Democrats controlled that process and sketched new boundaries that all but ensured their control of the Legislature through the 1980s.

Wilson won the election and soon focused on reshaping the Legislature to his liking.

When the time came to draw new political maps, he played hardball in negotiations with the Democrats, then vetoed the plans they passed and sent to him. The impasse threw the issue to the state Supreme Court, which drew districts that Republicans said were fair to both major parties.

But even in those districts, GOP candidates would need money to get their message out, and Wilson has worked tirelessly to raise it. Although his office refuses to release a complete list of fund-raisers that the governor has attended, he frequently holds private money-raising sessions in the evenings wedged around his daytime trips throughout California on state business. He also calls potential contributors and attends public events for legislative candidates in the capital and elsewhere.

His efforts are expected to net as much as $4 million for Republican candidates by the Nov. 3 election, most of it from California businesses that want to influence legislation in Sacramento.

To go with the new districts and the money, Republicans needed issues to use as cudgels against their Democratic foes. Wilson is doing what he can to provide them.

Even though he knew that the Legislature’s majority would almost certainly thwart him, the governor pushed for a state-mandated low-cost auto insurance policy, linked to the concept of no-fault coverage. He also endorsed a bushel of law-and-order bills, most of which died in legislative committees.

Wilson for more than a year has sought to limit the range of benefits available to injured workers in order to save money for the employers whose premiums support the workers’ compensation system. He even vetoed a Democratic-drafted workers’ compensation package and called the Legislature into an unusual special session for this week to deal with the issue again--at the peak of the campaign season.

And then there was the budget. Wilson, faced with a dismal fiscal situation, held out all summer until the Legislature gave him a budget package that kept school funding to the legal minimum and contained other measures to make it easier for him to balance next year’s spending plan. For 63 days, Wilson lambasted the Legislature for failing to act as he used his alliance with Republican lawmakers to block passage of Democratic-backed budget plans.

The governor’s aides have since folded the budget impasse into the Republicans’ broader theme: It is time for a change.

“This is a Legislature that has refused to act responsibly on almost every major issue facing the state of California,” said Dan Schnur, Wilson’s chief spokesman. “The Democratic incumbents are part of that problem. The Republican challengers are part of that answer.”

But two recent Field Polls of California voters turned up evidence that Wilson is hardly more popular than the Legislature and that voters are gentler on their own representatives than on the institution as a whole.

While nearly half of all voters rated the performance of Wilson and the Legislature as poor or very poor, only about 20% of those people were as negative about their own legislator. About half, or 49%, said they were inclined to return incumbents to office, while 40% said they were not inclined to do so.

Still, Republican strategists, all but conceding that the state Senate will remain in Democratic hands, believe that control of the Assembly is within reach. At a minimum, they say, the GOP should improve its position by adding four or five seats to bolster its 33-seat minority into one that can pass legislation with the help of just a handful of Democrats.

Here is the Republican formula for victory in November:

* Defend a base of 31 seats that the GOP considers safely Republican--19 held by incumbents and 12 open seats expected to go to GOP candidates.

* Protect the two most vulnerable Republican incumbents: Tricia Hunter of Bonita and Dean Andal of Stockton. Hunter is moving east from San Diego County to run in the newly drawn 80th District, which includes parts of Imperial and Riverside counties. Andal, a freshman, is running for reelection in a northern San Joaquin Valley district--the 17th--where the voter registration leans heavily in favor of Democrats.

* Win four races for open seats in districts that usually would be leaning Republican but are considered competitive this year. They are the 3rd, centered in the Chico area in Northern California; the 10th, centered in the foothills around Sacramento; the 25th, in the San Joaquin Valley, and the 64th, in Riverside County.

* Capture at least four seats from among nine that appear to favor Democrats, including two open seats and seven in which incumbent Democrats are seeking reelection.

The two open seats in this category are the 6th and 7th districts, north of the San Francisco Bay.

The seven Assembly Democrats considered most vulnerable to a Republican challenge are Bob Epple of Cerritos, Terry B. Friedman of Encino, Tom Umberg of Garden Grove, Dede Alpert of Coronado, Mike Gotch of San Diego, Dan Hauser of Arcata and John Vasconcellos of Santa Clara.

The challenge to Vasconcellos may be a microcosm of the Republican effort. As the longtime chairman of the Assembly’s budget-writing Ways and Means Committee, the liberal lawmaker is vulnerable to charges that he helped guide the state into its fiscal morass. He has long and close ties to Speaker Brown. And the state’s prison guards union, accusing Vasconcellos of being soft on crime, is preparing to spend thousands of dollars on the campaign to unseat him. The incumbent is expected to mount a spirited defense with funds and troops from the California Teachers Assn. and community college instructors, among others.

Democratic strategists generally believe that Republicans have little chance to take control of the Assembly this year. They say that the condition of the economy and Bush’s weakness in California are driving independent voters and some Republicans into the Democratic fold.

The Republican Party increasingly is being perceived by voters as the party of affluent, older Americans, said Democratic Assemblyman Steve Peace of Chula Vista. He said he is seeing younger voters--particularly those with children--abandoning an allegiance to the GOP that began with the ascension of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

“People haven’t decided they’re Democrats,” Peace said. “But people of my generation have decided they are not Republicans.”

That sentiment appears to be reflected in unofficial voter registration numbers as of Sept. 4. Since the new district maps were released by the Supreme Court in January, Republican registration as a percentage of all voters has declined in 17 of the 18 most competitive Assembly districts.

In the 41st District, where Friedman is seeking a fourth term, Republicans had 40.2% of the voters in January; now their share is 37.8%. In the 69th District in Orange County, where Umberg is seeking a second term, the GOP share of registration has fallen from 40.6% in January to 36.9%.

“We’re seeing massive defections of people under 40 who now are willing to dialogue and consider a Democrat. You didn’t see that before,” said Richie Ross, a Democratic political consultant who is advising several legislative candidates. “It puts pools of voters on the table, voters available to me that they (Republicans) now have to spend money and energy hanging onto.”

Ross said voters in the races he is managing are concerned about the economy and little else. And he said they hold responsible the Republicans, who have controlled the presidency since 1980 and California’s governorship since 1982.

Republicans agree that the issue is the economy. But they hope to make it work for them in legislative races, even if Bush loses California. In Assembly campaigns, they will argue that two decades of Democratic majorities have ruined the state’s business climate. GOP candidates will portray themselves as champions of lower taxes, less regulation and more incentives for companies to do business here.

“People care about the economy and about jobs,” said Rob Lapsley, director of the Republicans’ unified legislative campaign effort. “It may work against the top of the ticket. But it may work for us at the legislative level.”

RACES AT A GLANCE: A graphic snapshot of the state’s Assembly contests. A16