CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : 19TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT : Untested Republican in Tight Race With 10-Year Incumbent

Pat Akin is a citrus farmer and the son of migrant workers known as “fruit tramps” who settled in Ivanhoe, a rural town snuggled up to the base of the Sierra foothills in the San Joaquin Valley.

Akin is a registered Democrat who says he “votes for more Republicans than Democrats . . . but I believe in people, not big business, which is why I’m registered the way I am.”

Like many in this boom town valley with its deep agricultural roots, Akin prides himself on his voting independence. Yet that voter unpredictability combined with reapportionment have spawned a competitive race for the 19th Congressional District and revealed a surprise contender.

Court-ordered reapportionment created a district that was 50% new territory for Democratic incumbent Rep. Richard H. Lehman, 44, a 10-year veteran of Congress and career politician who ran unopposed in 1990. It also dropped the Democratic registration from a comfortable 58% to 47.5%, causing the national Republican Party to keep a close watch on the primary.

Out of that primary emerged Tal Cloud, 28, a USC graduate and small-businessman whose only past campaign experience was a successful run for fraternity president. Cloud said local and national Republican organizers scorned him at first, but last Tuesday the National Republican Congressional Committee infused his campaign with a $50,000 donation.

As a neophyte, Cloud resembles many other congressional challengers in this topsy-turvy year in California. His political involvement is largely limited to stewardship of the Fresno County Young Republicans. He consistently reminds voters that he does not belong to the old boys’ network, that he owes nothing to anyone, that he has held a real job and has real-life experience.

In mid-September, Cloud’s own poll found him dead even with Lehman, at 37% each. “I’m Rick Lehman’s term limit,” he says confidently.

Lehman’s campaign manager, Kelley Moran, declined to release results of his own polling beyond saying “I believe we have a very comfortable lead.”

Reflecting the middle-of-the-road community they seek to represent, the two candidates are just degrees apart in political ideology: Both are pro-death penalty, both support abortion rights and both oppose six-year congressional term limits.

And they both are trying to appeal to swing voters. The cover of Lehman’s key brochure quotes him saying: “We don’t need Democrats blaming Republicans or Republicans blaming Democrats.” On Cloud’s handouts, his identification as a Republican has been crossed out and replaced with “American.”

But the two men come from strikingly different backgrounds. While Lehman was raised on a Sanger raisin farm, Cloud is an Orange County native who moved to Fresno six years ago to help his mother revive a bankrupt firm that distributes recycled paper.

Lehman’s campaign dwells on Cloud’s political inexperience, his lack of agricultural knowledge and his Los Angeles ties, the latter a psychological link to the very things valley residents fear most: smog, traffic jams, gang violence and overpopulation.

“The only thing he knows about farms is what he sees driving past them,” Lehman says.

By far the hottest topic in the race is one closely linked to farming: water, which is more feverishly debated in this bone-dry valley than abortion, education, the budget deficit or welfare.

From a candidate forum in the valley’s oak-filled oasis--Visalia--to a hardware store in the dusty farm town of Exeter, the most common question concerns the fate of Central Valley Project reforms--contained in a bill sent to President Bush on Oct. 8--which favor the water rights of urban areas over those of farmers.

Lehman maintains that he should not be blamed for the legislation, which farmers believe could fatally wound valley agriculture. The bill was championed by his longtime political ally and hiking buddy, Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), who chairs the House Interior Committee.

“I fought him all the way,” Lehman said.

Cloud consistently points to Lehman’s complaints of being cut out of the water negotiations as evidence that he did not have the leverage or the will to fight for his constituents when they needed him most.

“I will not go dancing with George Miller 364 days of the year and then expect him to go with me the other day,” Cloud said at a news conference called two days after the bill passed the U.S. Senate.

Yet farmers gave Lehman a significant endorsement on the eve of Vice President Dan Quayle’s Oct. 7 visit to Fresno. They objected to the money from a Republican fund-raiser being used against Lehman and another Valley Democrat and farm boy, Rep. Calvin Dooley.

“They (Lehman and Dooley) have been friends of agriculture for a long time,” Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual, told the Fresno Bee newspaper.

Meanwhile, Cloud has been hitting Lehman hard on the increasingly familiar anti-incumbency issues as he travels to Rotary Club luncheons and as he makes hand-shaking detours through the struggling retail districts of small valley towns, where he often is the only man wearing a long-sleeved shirt. Among his key themes: Lehman became entangled in the House bank scandal, having posted 10 check overdrafts, worth about $6,000 combined.

As in the presidential election, the outcome of the 19th District race may depend on which candidate voters find to be the most believable.

At the Fresno County Fair last weekend, Rose Barcus stopped to shake Lehman’s hand and then confessed that she remained uncommitted. Barcus is a Democrat and a salesperson at a Fresno department store. Her husband is a retired trucker and a Republican.

“It’ll be the last minute till I decide who I’m voting for, and I know a lot of people who feel the same way,” she said. “I know Bush and Clinton are both promising to make changes, but I also know we have to change Congress or nothing will really change.”

19th Congressional District 47% Democratic 42% Republican