CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / 36th CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT : Flores, Harman Provide Classic Clash With Twist

In many ways, the race for the 36th Congressional District is a classic, big-bucks confrontation between a conservative and a liberal, both of them strong-minded candidates, with voters making their decisions on flash-point issues.

But because two women are waging battle, the race for the newly drawn coastal district is as different from past politics as the district itself.

Traditional Republican voting patterns in the district would previously have assured Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores an easy victory over her Democratic rival, attorney Jane Harman.

But the South Bay’s beleaguered, defense-based economy and reapportionment’s addition of more liberal communities to the northern part of the district may create a tougher battle than Flores expected.

With party registration in the district--stretching from San Pedro to Venice--at 44% Republican and 42% Democrat in early September, the district could swing either way if the Democrats can rally their partisans to the polls, observers say.

“The Republicans in that district tend to be a lot more open-minded and independent,” said H. Eric Schockman, a political science professor at USC.

In other words, GOP voters with enough incentive may be willing to shed their traditional party loyalty to line up on the Democratic side.

Not long ago, the South Bay was a stable, white-collar bedroom community, with tens of thousands of aerospace jobs helping to keep two cars in the garage and plenty of food on the table.

A Cold War and a strong defense created a bright future for the coastal areas of Southwest Los Angeles, where many of the nation’s key aerospace manufacturers were founded and grew to massive proportions.

Although carved into several different political districts over the years, the South Bay’s voters tended to send conservative men--including Robert K. Dornan, Dana Rohrabacher and Dan Lungren--to Congress to keep the federal contracts coming.

Then the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union dissolved and federal defense contracts began to dry up.

Now Flores and Harman are spending plenty of money to convince voters that they are best suited to help rescue the district’s faltering economy.

Flores, who hopes to raise $300,000 for her general election race, has received strong backing from Los Angeles business and harbor interests, as well as support from anti-abortion groups. Harman, who devoted nearly $250,000 of her own money to her primary campaign while receiving hefty contributions from abortion rights groups and a number of Washington attorneys, plans to spend up to $500,000 on the general election.

Flores paints Harman as a carpetbagging outsider from the Washington Beltway who moved to Los Angeles solely to win a ticket back to the East Coast. Harman casts Flores as an entrenched career politician who has done little to improve her City Council district and whose anti-abortion stance is out of step with the district.

Polls taken by the two campaigns show Flores in the lead. Flores’ polls say she leads Harman by more than 17 points, with 30% of registered voters undecided. Harman’s pollsters show Flores less than 9 points ahead, with the gap closing as voters discover that Harman supports abortion rights and Flores does not.

Harman, noting that this is one of three congressional races in the nation pitting a woman who supports abortion rights against one who does not, says that her polls indicate nearly three-quarters of the district’s voters want abortion to remain legal.

“In this ‘Year of the Political Woman,’ it’s not just any woman,” Harman said. “I think this district more than any other in the country offers a very stark choice between women, and marks . . . the next level of women in politics.”

Flores opposes abortion except in cases of incest, rape or a threat to the mother’s life, but she bristles at the notion that abortion is the only thing women voters care about.

“I have gone through all the rigors of a single mother trying to make a living,” Flores said, describing her struggle to support her 4-year-old daughter after her divorce 28 years ago.

“I’ve been through it, finding child care and adequate housing and figuring out how to use quality time with my child. . . . And abortion is not the only issue that women are interested in. They’re interested in jobs and the economy and taxes, because they know that all these things filter down and either help or harm a woman.”

Flores, 56, began her 37-year city career as a teen-age stenographer, hired to work part time for the late Councilman John Gibson.

Over the years, Gibson moved her career along, promoting her to secretary, then executive secretary, then a field deputy and then chief deputy of his staff. Ultimately, he groomed her to be his successor. In 1981, she became the first woman and the first Republican to win the predominantly Democratic seat, which stretches from Watts to the harbor.

Flores was born in Wisconsin, moving with her family to Highland Park at the age of 8. Hers was a traditional upbringing, she said, one that led her to believe that soon after her high school graduation she would want to quit her job and devote her life to raising children.

Instead, she developed a taste for public service and never left it.

After succeeding Gibson in 1981, she quickly earned a reputation as a consensus-maker who could bring stubbornly immobile factions to common ground.

She said she expects to do much the same if elected to Congress. When asked about her legislative plans, Flores’ responses are short on specifics--other than a primary campaign pledge of “no new taxes”--but peppered with terms such as task force, advisory committee and consensus.

“Representatives need to be in touch with the people they represent,” she said. “I’d like to involve the industries and the business people and the residents who are affected . . . rather than being mandative.”

Harman is running for political office for the first time, but she is far from a political neophyte. She served as deputy secretary to the Cabinet in the Carter White House but her Democratic pedigree--”Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were my idols”--goes well beyond that.

She attended her first Democratic Convention in 1960 at the age of 15. A few years later, she worked as a member of former California Sen. John Tunney’s senior staff, eventually becoming chief counsel and staff director to the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on constitutional rights.

In 1984 she served as counsel to the Democratic Convention’s platform committee, in 1987 she co-chaired a $2.2-million Democratic Party fund-raiser, and from 1986 to 1990 she chaired the National Lawyers’ Council, which acts as a legal network for the Democratic Party.

Despite her national service to the party and her extensive inside-the-Beltway experience, Harman, 47, insists she is a Los Angeles woman “at heart and in fact.”

Born in New York, Harman was 4 years old when her physician father moved his medical practice to Culver City and his family to West Los Angeles. After she graduated from University High School in 1962, Harman earned a degree at Smith College in Massachusetts and a law degree at Harvard Law School before joining Tunney’s staff.

A 1978 divorce and her sense of responsibility to her two older children prevented her from returning permanently to Los Angeles until last year, she said.

“I had a joint custody agreement with my first husband . . . and I felt very strongly that to have bicoastal parents would not be in their best interests,” she said. “I think most mothers can understand that.”

In 1980, she married Sidney Harman, founder of audio equipment manufacturer Harman International. She has had two children by that marriage. In the ensuing years, she worked as a corporate attorney for several law firms that required her to commute to Los Angeles.

But it wasn’t until 1991, when her eldest son graduated from high school and his sister decided to study abroad for her final year of high school, that Harman felt free to make the move to the West Coast permanent. Last year the family bought a home in Marina del Rey.

Harman acknowledges that she had congressional aspirations at the time.

“I saw this as a community of people terrified about losing jobs who have enormously sophisticated training and skills,” she said. “I want to make sure Los Angeles does not lose their tremendous talents.”

Experience inside the Washington bureaucracy, she said, will make it easier for her to assure that the district’s businesses get the defense contracts, job retraining and research funding they need.

Three minor-party candidates also are competing for votes in the 36th Congressional District: Green Party candidate Richard H. Greene, Libertarian candidate Marc F. Denney and Peace and Freedom candidate Owen Staley.

36th Congressional District Voter registration: 42% Democrat, 45% Republican