CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / U.S. SENATE : Trailing GOP Hopefuls Ready to Attack

With less than a month to the election, Republicans Bruce Herschensohn and John Seymour are preparing to attack Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein with tough television ad campaigns in hopes of staving off a Democratic sweep of both California seats in the U.S. Senate.

While Boxer and Feinstein have been running cautious front-runner campaigns, the Democrats say they are prepared to deal with attacks and to counterstrike in kind.

“I think there’s enough evidence to believe the die is cast,” said Mervin Field, founder of the Field Poll and a student of California politics for half a century. “Not to say that the die can’t be uncast,” though that would take some surprising and dramatic developments, he said.

Political science professor Bruce Cain of UC Berkeley was perhaps even more bearish on the Republicans’ chances of winning the seats.

Cain said the odds favor a twin Democratic victory by the two women from the San Francisco Bay Area, “barring a major revelation” or some series of events that would come together into a “far-fetched scenario.”

Both Senate seats are up in the same election for the first time since California became a state in 1850. Senate elections usually are staggered, but a special election was required this year because of the resignation of Republican Pete Wilson from the Senate to take office as governor in 1991.

Wilson appointed Seymour, an Orange County state senator and the former mayor of Anaheim, to serve through this year. The winner--Seymour or Feinstein--will serve the last two years of the Wilson term, and the seat will be contested again in 1994, back on its regular six-year cycle.

The other seat, for a full six-year term, is being relinquished by 24-year incumbent Democrat Alan Cranston.

On the Nov. 3 ballot, the Boxer-Herschensohn race is listed first and labeled “full term.” Then comes the Feinstein-Seymour contest, listed as “short term.” In addition to the major party candidates, the ballot also lists Peace and Freedom, Libertarian and American Independent party candidates for each seat.

California never has had a female senator, let alone two. There are just two women in the 100-member Senate: Republican Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas and Democrat Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland. The last time both U.S. senators were from Northern California was 1950.

Spokesmen for the Herschensohn and Seymour campaigns acknowledged in interviews that they face uphill struggles. Each indicated they will not hesitate to use television commercials that attack the two women on perceived weaknesses involving character and integrity.

Boxer and Feinstein campaign officials said they are expecting “negative” campaign attacks and are prepared to respond in kind. Both have been running active but cautious races designed to prevent the sort of mistakes that can suddenly plunge a front-running campaign into internal chaos and raise doubts in the voters’ minds.

Herschensohn will criticize Boxer, now serving her fifth term in the House from Marin and San Francisco counties, for the 143 overdrawn checks she wrote against the now-defunct U.S. House bank, her vote for the congressional pay raise and other issues “for the voters to see what her record is,” campaign manager Ken Khachigian said.

Seymour will continue to pound Feinstein on her 1990 gubernatorial campaign’s misreporting of contributions and expenditures and on her record as mayor of San Francisco, campaign spokesman H. D. Palmer said. A “very hard” message on the economy will follow, he added.

For a preview, Palmer said: “We think people will see that Dianne Feinstein’s positions are toxic to the health of this state’s economy, in terms of higher taxes, greater government mandates and policies that stifle economic opportunity and shut off jobs.”

Both Khachigian and Palmer said the real campaign is just beginning, and they remain optimistic about their prospects because, as Khachigian put it, “the campaign really hasn’t gotten started in the public’s mind until you start TV commercials.”

That is conventional wisdom from past elections, but not necessarily this year, said Field and Cain.

Field said Seymour’s voter support in his poll has remained “incredibly flat” for more than a year. In June, 1991, Seymour had 37% in a matchup with Feinstein. This September, more than a year later, Seymour still had 37% and the number of undecided voters had fallen to 6%. Feinstein stood at 55%.

About the only way Seymour can make up such ground is “for the front-runner to tumble,” Field said. Feinstein and Boxer are experienced campaigners who are concentrating on avoiding mistakes that would cause such a tumble, he added.

“They don’t have to come out with new programs or controversial issues. They have honed themes that they know are going to work. They don’t have to be venturesome,” Field added.

Asked when most voters will make up their minds, Field said: “I think they have.”

In fact, he said, the 6% undecided in the Feinstein-Seymour race and 12% in the Boxer-Herschensohn contest may be high, because many people who tell pollsters they are undecided never vote. In the Field Poll in September, Boxer led Herschensohn, 55% to 33%.

In the most recent Los Angeles Times Poll, released Sept. 16, Feinstein led Seymour, 53% to 37%, and Boxer led Herschensohn, 52% to 33%.

Cain said Herschensohn, 60, the longtime Los Angeles radio and television commentator, is an attractive candidate in many respects, but that Herschensohn “is just off the mark” in the conservatism of his views.

“This is a moderate state, and he’s not a moderate individual,” Cain said.

Herschensohn has opened his television campaign with an ad attacking Congress in general, but not Boxer by name, for bad checks and raising their own pay. But Cain said: “I just don’t think those things are going to matter in this race. The ideological choice is so great that people are not going to alter their position over these secondary issues.”

Cain said Seymour is hurt by his “blandness as a candidate,” by damaging ideological schisms within his California Republican Party and by the bad economy.

For much of the summer and early fall, the two campaigns were fought at long distance. Boxer and Seymour have commuted to Washington for House and Senate business, and all the candidates were consumed by the fund-raising needed to pay for the critical and costly television ad campaigns.

Of the two Democrats, Boxer is potentially the more vulnerable to attack because she is not as well known statewide, Field said.

“If the layer of recognition is thin, you can pierce it much more easily with something negative,” he said.

Boxer acknowledges the potential for the race narrowing. “I have to act as if I was 20 points behind,” she said. “Politics is tough. It can change.”

Boxer will put her campaign on a more high-profile plane soon with an increasing number of rallies and speeches, campaign manager Rose Kapolczynski said.

“I don’t think we’re coasting,” she added. “Barbara’s out there every day, trying to talk to voters. She does have to vote and we have to raise money to get our ads on the air.”

Boxer will marshal her television campaign funds until she knows she has enough money to begin her advertising drive and sustain it until Election Day. Kapolczynski said she hopes to avoid the mistakes made in the New York primary by Senate candidate Geraldine A. Ferraro, who used up her television money while the campaign was under way and was helpless to respond on TV to her opponents’ attacks.

“We aren’t going to let that happen to us,” Kapolczynski said.

Feinstein campaign adviser Bill Carrick said Feinstein probably will follow campaign strategy she used in the primary and not spend money on TV ads until Seymour cranks up his attack campaign.

“We will store our nuts up until he starts going after us and we’ll be able to respond in kind, and then some,” Carrick said. “I think they will borrow a page from (President) Bush and try to scare people with what Dianne’s economic plan would do.”

One expected charge from the Seymour camp is that her proposed defense cuts would cost California jobs, Carrick said, “even though 500,000 jobs have been lost since he (Seymour) was appointed senator.”

“We will probably go back after him on the economy--John Seymour the Velcro senator,” meaning that the Feinstein ads would try to link Seymour to all the economic woes that have occurred during the Bush Administration.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Dean E. Murphy, Douglas P. Shuit and Tracy Wilkinson.