Style Eclipses Gender in 49th District Race : Politics: In an increasingly bitter campaign for Congress, Democrat Lynn Schenk and Republican Judy Jarvis step up attacks on each other’s personal and professional lives.

In a political year that has been dubbed the “Year of the Woman,” it is ironic that gender has been largely removed as an issue from an historic campaign that will result in San Diego County sending its first woman ever to Congress.

That is not to suggest that the “Year of the Woman” has been inconsequential in the 49th Congressional District.

Quite to the contrary, that phenomenon made itself felt with a vengeance in the June primary, which saw Democrat Lynn Schenk and Republican Judy Jarvis win their respective nominations to set up a November showdown between two female congressional major-party nominees for the first time in San Diego political history.

One of only three two-woman congressional campaigns in the nation, the Jarvis-Schenk contest is the only one of the three in which both women also advocate abortion rights--a matchup that instantly eliminates two of the most volatile issues in this year’s elections.

“By taking away the women’s issue and abortion, the race moves to a whole different level,” said Jarvis, a 42-year-old Tierrasanta nurse who was an upset winner in a 10-candidate GOP primary. “Voters have to look beyond the surface.”

Indeed, while the 49th District race has gained national attention as being emblematic of women candidates’ prominence in Campaign ‘92, both candidates acknowledge that the focus has shifted this fall to their considerable differences in philosophy, style and background.

Two minor-party candidates--Libertarian John Wallner and Peace and Freedom Party member Milton Zaslow--are also on the ballot in the newly drawn district, where Republicans hold a narrow 43%-39% registration edge. Stretching along the coast from La Jolla to the Mexican border, the district extends east to the La Mesa city boundary, and covers most of the city of San Diego from downtown to Clairemont.

“When you get beyond gender, there are clear differences,” said Schenk, the victor in a five-candidate Democratic primary. “With two women running, it has changed the quality of the question about the ‘Year of the Woman.’ In a man-versus-woman race, particularly between a pro-choice woman and an anti-abortion man, the analysis stops at a fairly superficial level. But the issue in this race is not just gender--it is competence, as it should be.”

In what has become an increasingly bitter race in recent weeks, both Schenk and Jarvis have spent less time delineating their policy differences than they have in contrasting their widely divergent personal and professional lives.

Hoping to tap into the anti-politician sentiment coursing through the electorate, Jarvis has worn her political-outsider status like a badge of honor, describing herself as a would-be citizen-legislator who “breaks the mold of both parties.”

“I am the voice of the frustrations that people are feeling--the frustration that the Congress is no longer representative of the American people,” Jarvis said. “I am an average, middle-class citizen who struggles day to day to make ends meet. My opponent is a lawyer and 20-year career bureaucrat, a very strongly connected political insider and fund-raiser.

“I see Congress as a job. She sees it as a position, something else for her resume. This race gives people a chance to really change the way things are done in government by sending a different kind of representative to Washington.”

In contrast, Schenk’s public resume is a lengthy one that includes service in the Cabinet of former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., years of Democratic activism on the local, state and national levels and her current position as an appointee on the San Diego Board of Port Commissioners. Even so, the 47-year-old La Jollan argues that Jarvis has “seriously distorted” their respective backgrounds to create an exaggerated insider-outsider schism.

“She is running against some fantasy candidate that she wishes was her opponent,” Schenk said. “I have never held elective office, but I have a 20-year record of involvement in the community and getting things done. If she faults me for that, what does that say about her?

“She has never shown that she can get anything done in the public arena. She has lived her entire adult life in San Diego, yet her resume on doing anything for the community is a blank. She is trying to turn standing on the sidelines into a virtue.”

Trying to soften her insider’s image, Schenk often bills herself as “an agent of change who has led the fight for those on the outside . . . to come inside.”

Bolstering that claim, Schenk stresses that she was in the forefront of the fight for women’s rights “long before it was politically correct or chic to get involved.”

In the 1970s, for example, Schenk helped establish the Lawyer’s Club in San Diego to provide free legal services to poor women and helped open the first women-owned bank in California--a facility that, Jarvis has been quick to note, turned her down when she sought a business loan. “Being a woman didn’t guarantee you a loan,” Schenk responded.

Schenk also sued and pushed for a law change allowing women to register to vote as “Ms.” and, along with Judith McConnell--a lawyer friend who now is a Superior Court judge--broke a “men only” lunchtime rule at a popular downtown restaurant.

On the port commission, Schenk takes credit for environmental successes that include preventing a Seaport Village parking lot from blocking bay-front views and pushing for a multimillion-dollar San Diego Bay protection plan. She also helped restore 100 janitorial jobs at Lindbergh Field initially eliminated in a labor dispute and sought to limit the expenditure of Port District funds on America’s Cup activities.

Unable to match Schenk’s list of accomplishments, Jarvis and her strategists have instead attempted to put a negative spin on the Democrat’s record.

“The more (Schenk) talks about these things, the more she proves our point about being a longtime insider and bureaucrat,” Jarvis consultant Marty Wilson said. “That is not what people are looking for this year in a congressional candidate.”

What voters are looking for, Jarvis hopes, is a candidate with the image she has tried to craft for herself: one whose previous political activity was largely limited to voting, but with the “personal and professional life experiences” to offset that public inexperience.

As a nurse, Jarvis argues, she is a “builder of consensus” who must weigh the concerns of doctors, nurses, hospital administrators and even patients--a talent she says could enable her to bridge partisan differences in Congress.

Moreover, her medical background has given her insights into how to streamline and reform health care by, among other things, reducing billing paperwork and curtailing unnecessary testing and procedures through arbitration, Jarvis tells campaign audiences.

As the former owner of a nurses registry firm, Jarvis adds, she gained invaluable firsthand experience with the impact that government regulations have on businesses. And juggling a two-career family with a 3 1/2-year-old son has left her acutely aware, Jarvis says, of “the day-to-day needs, concerns and problems of average Americans.”

“I live the problems,” Jarvis said emphatically. “My opponent just reads about them.”

Sometimes, however, Jarvis has lived the problems to a politically embarrassing extent, most notably in the case of her former company.

From the outset of her campaign, Jarvis has proudly trumpeted the story of how she parlayed an idea for a nurses registry and a $5,000 loan into a $1-million-a-year business she sold in 1987 to a Fortune 500 company. The message Jarvis hopes voters will derive from the story is that, if elected, she will apply in Washington the principles she learned along the way.

The story’s political value was tarnished, however, by the disclosure last month that Jarvis paid more than $41,000 in penalties and late taxes as a result of her firm’s delinquent income tax payments in the 1980s, a problem she attributed to a former accountant’s errors. Although the IRS later conceded that records showing another outstanding $41,000 lien against Jarvis were erroneous, the episode has taken some of the gloss from a story Jarvis has used as the cornerstone of her political biography.

Given those facts, it is somewhat surprising that Jarvis continues to differentiate herself from Schenk by saying, “I am a taxpayer, and she is a tax spender.” While Jarvis uses that comparison to remind voters of Schenk’s $14,000-plus bill for Port District-related travel over the past 2 1/2 years, her words also conjure up memories of her own tax woes.

“Yeah, she is a taxpayer--a late taxpayer,” a Schenk aide said.

Jarvis has also occasionally found herself on the defensive over policy flip-flops, inconsistencies and her vagueness on issues.

In a recent televised debate, for example, Jarvis backed President Bush’s veto of legislation permitting workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for newborn children or for other family emergencies. Jarvis now says, however, that, like Schenk, she would have voted to override Bush’s veto. Additional study, she said, convinced her that Bush’s alternative was inadequate.

Similarly, Jarvis originally opposed a so-called voucher proposal that could allow tax dollars to be spent on private school tuitions--a plan that Schenk and other opponents argue could decimate the public school system. Later, Jarvis shifted to support the plan, arguing that it would give parents a greater voice in their children’s education and that increased competition could benefit public schools by “forcing them to become more efficient and innovative.”

Jarvis’ positions on gun control and gay rights are riddled with inconsistencies. Endorsed by the National Rifle Assn., Jarvis nevertheless favors a ban on assault weapons and has “no real objection” to California’s 15-day waiting period for gun purchases--positions contradictory to the NRA’s. Yet she also opposes a congressional proposal that would create a five-day waiting period and background checks for gun buyers, saying that such regulations should be at the discretion of individual states.

Similarly, while both Jarvis and Schenk say they support gay rights, only Schenk favors legislation prohibiting discrimination in housing and employment.

“I don’t support creating special legislation that singles out groups for special protection,” Jarvis said. But she also said she “could go along with” a bill recently signed by Gov. Pete Wilson that provides such protections for homosexuals.

“I am not someone who sees every issue as black and white or who starts out with a lot of preconceived partisan notions,” Jarvis said. “I listen and I study and then I make up my mind. I don’t pretend to know everything about every issue, like some politicians.”

Schenk, not surprisingly, offers a markedly different interpretation.

“What we are seeing is a person who obviously hasn’t thought these things through thoroughly and who just isn’t very familiar with many issues,” she said. “I didn’t just wake up and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, we have got challenges here.’ I have been working on finding the solutions for more than 20 years. Voters should ask, if Judy Jarvis is so concerned about these issues, where has she been?”

The increasing shrillness in the campaign is reminiscent of the acrimony that marked Schenk’s previous bid for public office, a contentious 1984 county supervisorial race she lost to Susan Golding. That race resulted in Schenk filing a libel suit, settled in her favor but in a way that allowed both women to claim victory.

Beyond voters’ choice between Jarvis’ outsider campaign and Schenk’s impressive resume, the outcome Nov. 3 also hinges heavily on a political equation measuring Schenk’s superior name recognition and fund-raising abilities against the district’s slight demographic advantages enjoyed by Jarvis. Since the primary, Schenk has raised nearly $300,000, contrasted with Jarvis’ $170,000 total.

Although the two minor-party candidates in the race appear destined to be little more than political footnotes, Libertarian Wallner insists that he is “running to win--not just get protest votes.”

A more realistic goal, Wallner concedes, is to use his campaign to advance the Libertarians’ long-term goal of becoming a viable third party that “wins elections as a matter of course, not as one of shock.” An unsuccessful congressional candidate who drew 4% of the vote in 1990, Wallner said he hopes to double or triple that percentage this year.

A 30-year-old computer engineer and law student who lives on a sailboat on Harbor Island, Wallner often enlivens campaign forums with a blend of colorful one-liners and unorthodox proposals. Typical of the latter is his suggestion that legislators remain in their districts and “phone in their votes” via a “nationwide electronic town hall meeting.”

“Politicians are like diapers,” Wallner tells audiences. “Both should be changed often--and for the same reason.” Wallner also drew loud laughter at one recent debate when he offered this definition of politics: “ Poly is a Latin word meaning many, and ticks are blood-sucking parasites.”

Peace and Freedom candidate Zaslow, meanwhile, is a 74-year-old retired businessman from Solana Beach who in his youth ran on the Socialist Workers Party ticket for governor of New York, mayor of New York City and president of the New York City Council.

“There is a tremendous amount of social injustice in the world, and I want to do my part to try to find solutions,” Zaslow said. “I don’t think the answers are to be found in the Establishment parties.”

Zaslow’s platform includes calls to reduce defense spending by 85% “to reclaim the peace dividend” for various domestic programs, increase the minimum wage to $8 an hour, raise taxes on the wealthy and create government-sponsored programs in which unemployed people would work on environmental and infrastructure projects.

“By running, I am providing an alternative for people who want fundamental change,” Zaslow said.