ELECTIONS 41ST ASSEMBLY DISTRICT : Case Where the Coattails Prove a Drag : Politics: As the economy falters, Republican Christine Reed faces an uphill fight against Terry Friedman in the newly created district.

George Bush is proving to be a problem for Republican Christine Reed as she wages an uphill battle for the state Assembly.

California’s economy remains mired in the worst downturn since the Depression, a fact of life that seems destined to cost Bush the nation’s biggest electoral prize and hurt Reed in the process.

When she entered the Republican primary last winter, it looked as if the newly created 41st Assembly District, stretching from Santa Monica over the mountains to Agoura Hills, would be a prime political battleground this fall.

Democrats held a slim lead in voter registration. Redistricting forced Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman to move westward from a safe district and run for reelection on less than solid ground. And Reed, a moderate Republican with a long record on the Santa Monica City Council, was viewed as having a shot at defeating the liberal Democrat.

But with the election little more than a week away, Reed’s prospects now look less promising. A shortage of campaign funds and a successful Democratic voter registration drive have made the task much more difficult.

The latest campaign contribution reports filed Thursday show Reed had just $15,307 in her campaign treasury Oct. 17, the close of the reporting period. That was a fraction of the $266,647 that Friedman had available. The amount of cash in hand is important because it is a measure of a candidate’s ability to communicate with voters in the closing days of a campaign.

But raising enough money is not Reed’s only obstacle.

Since the June primary, Democrats have registered 10,000 more voters in the district than the Republicans, boosting their advantage over the GOP to a more comfortable 13 percentage points. Indeed, more people registered as independent than Republican during the same period.

Faced with that trend, Reed is portraying herself in her campaign mailers as offering “independent leadership.” She does not remind voters that she is the Republican in the race.

“It’s on the ballot, they’ll see it right there,” Reed said when asked why she doesn’t mention her party affiliation. “I’m campaigning for myself, for who I am, and what I stand for.”

In campaign appearances, she is far more likely to mention independent presidential candidate Ross Perot than to utter Bush’s name.

That is not an accident. Friedman said his precinct-walking has shown “people are sick of the Bush approach” and want change.

Friedman finds “tremendous enthusiasm” in the district for Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore. “I think it will be very helpful to every Democrat on the ticket all the way down the line,” he said. “It will substantially boost Democratic turnout.”

So, winning over independent voters is essential if Reed is to have any chance at capturing the Assembly seat. Staffers of both campaigns know it, and they are going after those voters.

Friedman has also picked up on the independence theme, presenting himself as an “independent Democrat.” He is trying to distance himself from Assembly Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco, the state’s most powerful Democrat, despite his past support for him.

As the campaign entered the final stretch, Reed acknowledged she is in a tough fight. “This was never an easy job,” she said.

Making Reed’s challenge that much harder is Friedman’s standing as a member of a Democratic political organization headed by Reps. Howard L. Berman and Henry A. Waxman that is known for its fund-raising prowess and targeted mail campaigns.

The campaign rhetoric has grown much more heated in recent days.

In back-to-back mailers, Reed has branded Friedman as a “carpetbagger from the Hollywood Hills” and a soft-on-crime “ultra-liberal incumbent.”

The attacks drew a sharp response from the usually low-key lawmaker, who has never faced a serious challenger in three previous elections.

“It’s an outrageous distortion,” Friedman said. “It’s gutter politics.”

He was particularly incensed that Reed’s mailer chastised him for abstaining or voting against a series of bills that would have increased penalties for rape and murder.

Friedman opposes the death penalty and votes against capital punishment bills. “I’m not hiding my position on that,” he said.

The assemblyman, who headed a Jewish legal services agency before becoming a legislator, said he cannot support the death penalty as a matter of conscience. Instead, he favors life in prison without the possibility of parole in murder cases.

Reed favors capital punishment and believes it is a deterrent to crime. She defends her mailer, which makes the death penalty a litmus test on whether a lawmaker is tough on crime.

“Terry Friedman does not care to be as tough on certain types of crime as society would want him to be,” she said. “Most citizens view the death penalty as an appropriate penalty for cold, calculated murder.”

Friedman called the mailer “a grotesque distortion of the record of someone who has worked for six years to fight crime.” He said he has voted for literally hundreds of anti-crime bills in the Assembly and authored laws to strengthen penalties against rape, protect victims of domestic violence, crack down on armed gangs, and punish drunk drivers.

Reed said the mailer was based on certain votes, not the totality of Friedman’s stand on anti-crime legislation. “It is a slice,” she said. “It is not a comprehensive record.”

Clearly stung by the charges, Friedman said he intends to remind voters that most major law enforcement organizations, including the unions representing Los Angeles and Santa Monica police officers, county sheriff’s deputies, and Sheriff Sherman Block support his candidacy. The union representing California prison guards has endorsed Reed.

Friedman, 43, also rejects Reed’s oft-repeated carpetbagger charge. Although he owns a home in the Hollywood Hills, Friedman moved to a rented condominium in Encino this year after legislative district lines were redrawn. Because of the economy, he said, he has been unable to sell his home in his old, predominantly Westside district and buy a house in the new district.

With the stakes high, voters can expect vitriol in the next nine days.

Reed will undoubtedly attack other aspects of Friedman’s three terms in the Assembly. Her record of supporting controversial development projects during 15 years on the Santa Monica City Council is likely to be questioned.

But unlike many legislative contests this year, the Reed-Friedman race is notable for its absence of deep philosophical divisions on certain issues.

Both candidates are strong defenders of abortion rights, saying government has no business interfering with a woman’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy.

Reed also favored Friedman’s landmark bill, signed by Gov. Pete Wilson, that outlaws job discrimination against gays and lesbians. Reed said she “honors the right of individuals to make their own lifestyle decisions.”

Both are environmentalists, although they differ on some development questions. The Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters supports both candidates. The Sierra Club endorsed Friedman.

When it comes to protecting the Santa Monica Mountains, Reed praises Friedman’s legislation that extended the life of a state agency that purchases parkland in the mountains between the Westside and San Fernando Valley.

Both candidates vow that public education will be their highest priority if elected, though they disagree over how to pay for schools when the state is experiencing severe financial problems.

Friedman is sharply critical of Wilson for proposing cuts in school spending per student during this year’s record-shattering budget crisis. Last year, he voted for a package of tax increases and spending cuts to balance the state budget.

Reed, 48, a longtime friend of the governor, said “the state cannot spend money that it has not got.” But she would not rule out voting for a tax increase, if necessary.

“It’s fundamentally silly for people campaigning for public office to make pledges about their future behavior when you have no way of knowing how it is all going to pan out,” Reed said.

Both Reed and Friedman agree that the mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District is too big and needs to be broken up.

On the economy, both candidates agree the state’s workers’ compensation system needs to be reformed, although they differ on specifics. Reed also is outspoken about the need to streamline regulation to make the state friendlier to business.

Friedman wants the state to speed the conversion of defense and aerospace industries to non-defense programs, including development of mass transit and an affordable electric car.

Reed said California became overly reliant on the defense industry during the Cold War “so we now have to face the music of having the rug pulled out from under us.”

She blames the Bush Administration and Congress for “not anticipating the need for job retraining and research and development in new areas.”

The two antagonists differ over Proposition 165, Wilson’s plan to reduce welfare benefits. Reed favors it, but Friedman is opposed, saying it would give too much power to the governor to slash spending.

On rent control, Reed and Friedman part company over a controversial provision in Santa Monica’s tough law that prevents landlords from raising rents to market levels when a tenant voluntarily moves out of an apartment.

Friedman opposes vacancy decontrol. He promised to oppose any attempt to preempt or restrict the ability of a city to determine its own rent control law.

But Reed took a different approach. “I would have to look at the legislation that was put forward,” she said. “I would certainly consider it in the aspect of vacancy decontrol. I don’t know about other areas.”

Reed said property owners in Santa Monica should be allowed to increase rents when an apartment is vacated voluntarily, as is the case in Los Angeles.

In addition to the major party candidates, Libertarian Roy A. Sykes Jr. is on the ballot. A Woodland Hills computer consultant, Sykes wants to “get the government out of the way of the people.”

When it comes to the economy, Sykes, 44, believes the state meddles too much in business. He favors reform of workers’ compensation to eliminate stress claims and wants to simplify California’s income tax laws by making state taxes a flat percentage of federal taxes.

Sykes favors abortion rights, supports the death penalty, and believes education is the last major state program that should be cut. He is voting for Wilson’s welfare reform measure. He objects to rent control because it interferes with a free market.

41st Assembly District Facts

Where: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, southwestern San Fernando Valley.

Registration: 50% Democratic; 37% Republican.

Demographics: 82% Anglo, 10% Latino, 2% black, 6% Asian

Candidates: Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman, Democrat; Republican Christine Reed, a former Santa Monica councilwoman; Libertarian Roy A. Sykes Jr., business owner