LOCAL ELECTIONS / 53rd ASSEMBLY DISTRICT : Race Turns Nasty Over Religion Issue

An ideological line has been drawn in the coastal sands of the 53rd Assembly District.

In an increasingly rancorous political tussle, Redondo Beach Mayor W. Brad Parton is angrily denying any ties with the religious right and is retaliating by comparing his opponent, attorney Debra Bowen, to Nazis and religious bigots.

Nasty brochures have been filling mailboxes in the newly drawn district, which stretches from Venice south into Torrance. “A fundamental right, or right-wing fundamentalism?” asks a Bowen mailer outlining Parton’s contributions from Christian activists.

“People like Debra Bowen will go to any lengths and use any deception to gain political power, just like the brown-shirted fascists of Nazi Germany,” lashes back a Parton mailer sent out by the state Republican Party.

On Tuesday, Parton called in the big GOP guns, staging a press conference with Gov. Pete Wilson to accuse Bowen of selling out to the California Trial Lawyers Assn. and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, whom the Republicans blame for killing a number of Sacramento reform efforts.

Wilson carefully sidestepped the race’s religious overtones, noting that the Christian right’s support of Parton did not matter unless “Mr. Parton felt that he could not render conscientious votes. . . . Nobody should take any money from anyone who they think is going to sway their vote.”

As the campaigns reach the home stretch in this key Assembly race, the charges continue to grow more vicious.

At a political forum Monday night, hecklers on both sides nearly drowned out the candidates at times. Parton supporters interrupted Bowen with cries of “Bigot!” and “Fascist!” shortly after Bowen supporters hissed and booed Parton’s statement of his opposition to abortion.

Even as Parton denies any ties to the Christian right, his campaign finance statements show that more than $115,000--nearly one-third of his campaign funding--has arrived in the form of contributions and loans from political action committees and companies controlled by four wealthy Christian activists.

Parton insists the four activists--who include the operator of a chain of Christian radio stations--are businessmen interested solely in worker’s compensation reform and ousting Assembly Speaker Brown.

“I have no idea whether they’re Christian activists,” he said. “I’m not denying my money is coming from a lot of sources, some of them very, very conservative, but she’s getting a lot of money from a number of very, very liberal organizations,” he said. “Day after day after day she has been attacking my religious beliefs, and now I’m responding to that.”

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, which represents a statewide network of churches, said Parton’s election is considered “very crucial” because he is “up-and-coming” at a time when term limits are going to change the makeup of the Legislature.

In a voter’s guide to be distributed at district churches, Parton is listed as conforming to the Traditional Values Coalition’s position on key issues, including his opposition to abortion, gay rights, pornography and tax increases and his support for a school voucher system.

Bowen, 36, an environmental and land use attorney, contends Parton is not being honest.

“The government has plenty of work to do without anyone imposing a hidden religious agenda through their public office, whether as a mayor or as a newly elected assemblyman,” she said during a campaign debate.

While Republicans early this year represented 46% of the district’s voters, the Democrats now outnumber the GOP by 43% to 41%. Prominent Republicans who have turned from their party affiliation to support Bowen say they are doing so because they fear Parton “would work to create an exclusive society, not an inclusive one,” said Dave Sargent, a Republican and board member for the Torrance Unified School District. “His true agenda is the agenda of the religious right.”

Echoing common Republican themes, Parton favors budget cuts and supports regulatory reductions. Two key goals loom large in his speeches and literature--oust Willie Brown as Assembly Speaker and sharply reduce the cost to businesses of worker’s compensation insurance.

Parton, 32, a pension planner who runs an insurance services company in Santa Monica, first ran for public office in 1988 when he staged a losing bid for a City Council seat in Redondo Beach. A year later, Parton waged a successful campaign for mayor, loaning his campaign nearly $34,000 to net the $589-per-month post.

His municipal campaigns emphasized basic city issues--how to control development and traffic, how to start a recycling program and how to rebuild the city’s fire-ravaged and storm-battered pier.

Once in office, Parton followed that agenda. But he also began to pursue interests never mentioned in his campaign.

He pushed to ban adult tabloids from sidewalk news racks. He sought to ban beer drinking at the city’s annual 10K race. He tried to get a local adult school to drop a New Age healing course because a woman complained her proposed Bible study class had been rejected. He asked a bank branch manager to block Planned Parenthood supporters from meeting in the bank’s community room. He asked his council colleagues to block a gay and lesbian group from using a city park for its annual picnic.

Parton, who acknowledged a few months after his election as mayor that he is a “born-again” Christian, denied those actions hinted at any kind of moral or religious agenda.

His colleagues on the council have their doubts.

“When he got into office, there was a different Brad Parton,” said Councilwoman Barbara Doerr, who lost to Parton in the crowded Republican primary.

Bowen, a Venice resident making her first bid for public office, admits her political views have shifted over the past few years. She was, after all, a registered Republican until roughly eight years ago.

She switched parties, she said, in part because she believed the GOP was becoming more and more hostile toward different cultures and lifestyles.

“This is not the Republican Party I grew up in,” she said. “I was taught compassion and tolerance and respect for others . . . and that we need everyone in this society to be productive. We cannot afford to throw away people.”

More than one-third of Bowen’s $200,000 in funding has come from the state Democratic Party and its subordinate committees, with roughly one-quarter coming from labor groups, including $10,000 from the California Teachers Assn., $5,000 each from the United Auto Workers union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Peace Officers Research Assn. The California Trial Lawyers Assn. has given her $2,500.

Over the last five years, Bowen has become active in a number of Westside community groups and has done pro bono legal work for such groups as Heal the Bay and the Ballona Lagoon Marine Preserve.

Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this story.

The 53rd Assembly District Democrats: 43% Republicans: 41%