ELECTIONS 36TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT : Face-Off Features Battle of Political Pedigrees : Republican: Joan Milke Flores took over John Gibson’s Democratic district. Now she wants to use her 37 years of City Hall experience in Congress.

When Joan Milke Flores started working for the City of Los Angeles as a teen-ager in 1955, Norris Poulson was mayor; the Harbor and Long Beach freeways were still under construction, and Kenneth Hahn was a first-term county supervisor.

As the city matured, so did Flores’ career: She rose steadily from part-time stenographer to full-time secretary for the late Councilman John Gibson, later becoming Gibson’s field deputy.

After Gibson promoted her to chief deputy, Flores managed his final election campaign and gradually took control of the office as her mentor’s health failed. Gibson, a powerful Democrat, began grooming her as his successor, helping Flores win election to his nonpartisan 15th District seat in 1981. This made her the first woman--and the first Republican--to represent the overwhelmingly Democratic district, which runs from San Pedro to Watts.

Now, after 37 years of service to the city, Flores, 56, hopes to move her career from the familiar corridors of City Hall to the loftier halls of Congress.

It hasn’t been the smooth transition she had bargained for. Republican registration in the newly drawn 36th Congressional District--a stretch of coastal turf from San Pedro to Venice--has slipped three percentage points since early this year to a shade under 43%, while Democratic registration has risen to nearly the same level.

And Flores finds herself under attack by a well-financed Democratic opponent who is painting her as an entrenched career politician.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you could give yourself a big fat pay raise . . . (and) if you could have someone buy you a fancy new car?” asks a recent mailer put out by the Democrat, Jane Harman. The mailer criticizes Flores for voting eight times to increase City Council pay and using $50,000 in city funds over the years to buy three new cars.

Flores answers the criticism by noting that the biggest of the pay increases, a $26,229 hike in 1990, was part of a ballot measure that included what she considered crucial ethics reforms. And having a car, she said, is necessary to perform a key part of her job--keeping an eye on her sprawling district.

Flores has launched attacks of her own, portraying Harman, a former Carter White House official, as a carpetbagging Washington insider with no real local ties. The councilwoman offers her city record as evidence of longstanding dedication to Los Angeles-area residents.

“My life is really wrapped up in my job and in this area,” Flores said. “Representatives need to touch the people they represent, really know them, to understand their feelings and their priorities and their needs.”

Her efforts have won her friends and foes.

JoAnn Wysocki, president of the Wilmington Homeowners Assn., says Flores has failed to respond to that harbor-side community’s concerns about crime, pollution-prone businesses in the area and other issues.

“There have been too many times that we haven’t been able to count on this councilwoman taking a stand on important issues in Wilmington,” Wysocki said.

Flores’ council colleagues, even those with whom she has disagreed, offer more favorable reviews.

“She’s aggressive and she’s persistent, and she doesn’t let up,” said Councilman Nate Holden, who chairs the transportation committee, on which Flores serves. “I find her a worthy opponent . . . and someone who can find the common ground that can make things happen.”

Flores began building her reputation as a consensus-maker during her first term in office, by helping to settle one of Los Angeles’ most protracted battles--a decade-long series of lawsuits over the city’s water-pumping rights in Inyo County.

She later sponsored a city ballot initiative that allowed the council to review, and sometimes reverse, decisions made by independent city departments--including the massive harbor department, which is based in her district.

Councilwoman Joy Picus, a frequent foe philosophically, also credits Flores with building the consensus needed to resolve the city’s protracted debate over the selection of a cable television franchise.

“I’m a policy person. I always hated those fine details. So I’ve always welcomed Joan’s help because she really has a much better feel for the nitty-gritty,” Picus said. “She always understands the issues.”

Flores’ congressional bid is not her first try for higher office. Two years ago, she tried unsuccessfully to topple longtime Secretary of State March Fong Eu, whom she accused of being an “invisible” official mishandling a crucial office. As in the current campaign, Flores said she wanted the job out of a sense of duty to the public.

“My district is perhaps the most diverse in the city of Los Angeles, and I have worked with people from all walks of life,” she said. “There are very sophisticated voters in this new 36th District, and . . . they want someone to represent them who understands them, who has lived here and worked with them.”

Flores--who by Oct. 14 had collected slightly more than the $300,000 she said she needed for the general election--has financed her campaign largely through contributions from developers and businesses scattered throughout Los Angeles and from some of City Hall’s most powerful lobbyists.

Her abundant harbor area contributors include two controversial scrap yards--Hugo Neu-Proler and Hiuka America Corp. She also lists donations from groups opposed to abortion rights.

Counting her fund raising before the bruising 11-candidate Republican primary in June, Flores has so far raised more than $600,000 for her campaign.

In her primary-campaign literature, she proudly described herself as “The Conservative Republican,” a label she now tries to sidestep as she woos moderate voters. In the past, she has said she favors banning abortion except in cases of rape, incest or health risk to the mother. Now, she says she would oppose a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion.

She says she “probably would not” propose curbs on the procedure but would support such restrictions as a 24-hour waiting period, parental consent for minors and a ban on all abortions after the first trimester.

“I would certainly like to work with people who are pro-choice to find ways where we could reach some kind of a coming together of the views,” Flores said.

On most issues, Flores has shown herself to be a cautious politician, hesitant to take an outspoken stand on anything until she has heard what all sides have to say. Over the years, she has formed dozens of community advisory councils to guide her on matters of concern in her council district.

“It allows for citizen government, . . . and she doesn’t get blindsided on issues that way,” said Jerry Gaines, president of the San Pedro and Peninsula Homeowners Coalition and a frequent participant in Flores’ councils. “She doesn’t come in with a top-down attitude, but rather from the bottom up.”

Not everyone in her current council district, which makes up roughly 12% of the new congressional district, believes her approach has been successful.

“We always have task forces, but they never accomplish anything,” said Bill Schwab, a Wilmington community activist. “These task forces are just an easy way to get away from everything. . . . We haven’t seen her in our community in such a long time.”

Flores’ concern with consensus has made compromise a dirty word in Wilmington, Wysocki said.

“She’s always willing to work a compromise, and that compromise always leaves this community with a negative,” Wysocki said. “She says she was running Gibson’s office in the waning days of his term. . . . Well, that’s fine, but you can’t accept the credit unless you’re willing to accept the blame. In all these years, what has been accomplished in Wilmington that we haven’t had to do all by ourselves?”

Wilmington has long been a political thorn for Flores, but she asserts that she has tried hard to clean up the community, closing landfills, removing old coke piles and starting a slow phaseout of junkyards.

Through it all, she said, she has forged compromises and heeded the advice of her advisory councils.

“We’ve expended a lot of effort in Wilmington . . . with a regular office and a permanent employee who lives there and by my keeping regular office hours there,” she said. “I believe that I have been responsive.”

Flores said she wants to use that street-level experience to go to Congress to help turn back what she describes as a tide of Washington regulations and mandates choking the nation’s communities.

“I believe that control of many of the matters decided in Washington now should be returned to the local level,” she said. “Perhaps I can work at that level to make sure that happens.”

36th Congressional District FactsWhere: Marina del Rey, Westchester and south along the coast to San Pedro.

Registration: 42.4% Democratic; 42.7% Republican.

Major-Party Candidates: Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, Republican; Jane Harman, Democrat.