ELECTIONS / 53RD ASSEMBLY DISTRICT : Showdown by the Bay : Democrat Debra Bowen hopes to sway voters who backed Republicans in better times.

Debra L. Bowen was a business lawyer handling tax and corporate matters when she discovered community activism in the quirky world of Venice.

At that point five years ago, politics was not a central element of her life. Nor was environmental and land-use law her specialty or running for public office her life’s calling.

But Bowen quickly became a force in one of the most liberal citadels of the Westside, negotiating deals with major developers, filing environmental lawsuits, forming a citizens group, creating nonprofit corporations and representing private clients.

Recession’s Impact

It was a far cry from the world of corporate law that she had known since law school.

When legislative districts were redrawn this year, Bowen, a political novice, took another big step. She ran for the state Assembly in a new coastal district that starts in solidly Democratic precincts of Venice and heads south along the sand to embrace the more conservative beach cities of the South Bay.

The lone Democrat in the June primary, she won the right to do battle this fall on turf normally considered friendly to a Republican. It was a long shot.

But a deep recession and cuts in Pentagon spending have dealt a heavy blow to the district’s aerospace and defense-based economy. Republican W. Brad Parton’s conservatism and anti-abortion stance have created a potential opening for Bowen, a moderate Democrat who strongly favors a women’s right to choose whether to have an abortion.

“I don’t believe that government has any business in the decision, period,” Bowen said. “It’s a very libertarian approach. I’d like to have government involved in fewer things.”

It is “an issue of personal freedom,” Bowen said.

As the campaign enters its final two weeks, Bowen is determined to draw sharp differences between herself and her Republican opponent, whom she characterizes as a conservative extremist intent on pressing the agenda of the religious right. “I wouldn’t think of imposing my religious opinions on others,” she said.

Though the abortion question has fired up activists on both sides, both Bowen and Parton say it is the economy and jobs that are uppermost in the minds of voters in the 53rd Assembly District.

Predictably, Bowen’s economic platform differs considerably from Parton’s. She wants to take what she calls “a proactive role” in rebuilding the state’s economy. Bowen favors using a small percentage of California’s vast public pension funds to provide capital for starting new businesses. She supports tax credits for research and development, and wants to encourage development of electric cars and pollution-control industries.

Both candidates favor reform of the state’s workers’ compensation system, but they differ on the details.

For Bowen, the relative calm of her Marina del Rey law office has given way to the full frenzy of a political campaign.

It is a new experience for the 36-year-old lawyer, who says her first involvement in politics was joining the Neighborhood Watch program in the Oxford Triangle neighborhood of Venice in 1987.

Development Issues

That was the year a community activist named Ruth Galanter waged a slow-growth campaign for the Los Angeles City Council and won.

Within months, Bowen began to emerge from obscurity, plunging into the growth and development issues in her neighborhood.

James Bickhart, a Galanter deputy, recalls Bowen’s community involvement escalating as she joined the Venice Town Council, a group of activists who closely follow development plans in the Bohemian coastal community.

“Over the course of 1988, she emerged as a real player,” Bickhart said.

It was a particularly intense time for Venice. Developers were racing to win approval to build massive projects. Bowen became intensely involved in the environmental and neighborhood issues posed by the developments.

On behalf of the Venice Town Council, she sued to stop developers from building a $160-million regional shopping mall at the western tip of Culver City, alleging that traffic drawn to the center would adversely affect nearby Venice neighborhoods.

And she was involved in negotiating with Los Angeles developer Jerome Snyder over mitigations for the $400-million Channel Gateway project, a densely packed high-rise residential and office complex planned for her neighborhood.

Activist’s Attorney

Although Bowen publicly favored Snyder’s project, she also was the attorney for Arnold Springer, a flamboyant Venice activist who was challenging approval of the Channel Gateway development.

When Springer threatened to appeal the City Council’s approval of the project and potentially delay its construction, it was Bowen who drafted a controversial settlement that provided $200,000 for Springer’s Ulan Bator Foundation, named after the capital of Mongolia. The agreement, exacting payment from a developer to a community activist, proved embarrassing to both Galanter and Bowen.

“I remember her being distressed,” Galanter said.

For her legal work, Springer recalled Bowen was paid “somewhere between $12,000 and $15,000” by Snyder.

Bowen refused to discuss details of her law practice or whom she represents, citing attorney-client privilege.

But Bowen said she resigned as Springer’s counsel because she felt it was wrong to use money intended to mitigate the effects of a development project for his community foundation.

Since then, she has sought to distance herself from Springer, who had been an ally in the fight against the Marina Place mall. “I am not the alter ego of my clients,” she said.

In recent years, Bowen was instrumental in forming a community group called Coastal Area Support Team, which describes itself as “a responsible growth organization formed to address development and quality-of-life issues” along heavily traveled Lincoln Boulevard between Santa Monica and Los Angeles International Airport.

And she played a role in creating the Venice Resources Corp., a nonprofit organization originally established with the idea of operating shuttle buses to the beach.

Galanter supports Bowen’s candidacy and gives her high marks for her community involvement and willingness “to listen to different points of view.”

Bickhart said Bowen has been a “good mediating force in the community over the last few years . . . bringing a level head to a number of situations in the Marina-Venice area.”

Springer has a slightly different view. He described his former attorney as “a strong, dynamic, intelligent, articulate, political practitioner and operative. . . . Debra can work the system and the old boys network very well,” he said. “She is eager to wield power. She’s got politics in her blood.”

Bowen is likely to benefit on Nov. 3 from the expected strength of the top of the Democratic ticket in a district where the unemployment rate exceeds 11%. But as a novice with no political record and minimal name recognition, her greatest need in the remaining days is to make herself and her message known to voters. In that regard, she is handicapped by her limited campaign budget.

She raised only small amounts of money during her uncontested primary. As the summer progressed and voter registration statistics showed Democrats starting to close the gap with Republicans, campaign money started to flow more freely.

By the end of September, Bowen had raised $117,894, much of it from Democratic Party organizations and labor unions. The $24,697 she had on hand at the end of the reporting period was far below Parton’s $46,811.

Bowen’s largest contributions came from the Democratic State Central Committee, which provided $17,453; state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, who gave almost $11,000; the California Democratic Party, which provided nearly $9,500, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which contributed $5,000.

The United Auto Workers and Service Employees International Union both sent $5,000 checks, and the California Teachers’ Assn. gave $3,500. The California School Employees Assn. contributed $2,500.

Producer Peg Yorkin and Sharon Jaquith of Century City each donated $2,500, the National Women’s Political Caucus sent $1,500. Developer Nelson Rising sent $1,000 as did a Venice real estate partnership of developers Paul Plotkin and Jeffrey Rosen.