CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS / 52nd DISTRICT : Hunter Finds He’s No Longer Shoo-In : Politics: Campaign against Gastil has similarities to his successful initial bid for Congress.

With a veteran congressman, a district crafted to his liking and a little-known, underfunded opponent, the campaign had seemed from the start to be a race in name only.

The challenger, though, was unusually aggressive and dogged in pursuit of what most regarded as an unwinnable prize. When he claimed that private polls showed the election to be a toss-up, most scoffed, because after all, don’t challengers always say that? The congressman dismissively responded by saying his polls showed him with a comfortable double-digit lead.

In the end, everyone but the challenger was surprised, as Election Day proved unkind to many incumbents. As an unpopular President was overwhelmingly voted out of office, he pulled down many of his own party with him, the congressman among them.

The year was 1980, the congressman was San Diego Democrat Lionel Van Deerlin and the challenger, a young lawyer named Duncan Hunter, was swept into Congress in Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory over Jimmy Carter.

Twelve years later, Hunter must have moments when he wonders whether the story has come full circle. In a piece of political role reversal, Hunter now is the incumbent congressman, Democrat Janet Gastil is the pesky challenger who refuses to accept defeat as certain and, though the outcome in next week’s 52nd Congressional District race could be far different than 1980, the pre-election script has been strikingly similar.

Gastil, for example, does have a poll showing the race to be close, while Hunter claims his poll puts his lead at 22 percentage points. And if the presidential race does have an impact on the 52nd District contest, even the most optimistic Republican would not expect it to be a positive one for Hunter or other GOP incumbents.

Hunter, however, professes to be unconcerned by the parallels.

“The circumstances aren’t the same as 1980,” Hunter (R-Coronado) said. “For one thing, Bill Clinton certainly isn’t Ronald Reagan. I think things are very different.”

Perhaps one of the clearest differences is the competitive nature of this year’s reelection campaign for Hunter, who until 1992 had not been severely tested since defeating Van Deerlin.

Over the past decade, Hunter has been consistently reelected in his heavily Republican district by landslide margins of up to 3-to-1. In 1990, when the Democrats did not even bother to field a candidate, his only opposition was Libertarian Joe Shea, whose 73%-27% drubbing was typical. Shea is again on this year’s ballot in the newly drawn 52nd District, as is Peace and Freedom Party member Dennis Gretsinger.

Although Hunter’s new district has a smaller GOP registration edge than his former one, the Republicans still maintain a comfortable 46%-39% advantage in the 52nd District, which extends from the U.S.-Mexico border north to Ramona, stretching east through Imperial County.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which in the past regarded Hunter as unbeatable and declined to spend its limited resources to oppose him, this year has given Gastil $33,000 in cash and other services.

“This is the best shot we’ve ever had at Hunter,” said Marty Stone, the DCCC’s California coordinator. “We wouldn’t have gotten involved to this extent otherwise. We can’t afford to throw our money into weak races.”

With an embattled incumbent and an aggressive female challenger, the 52nd District race embodies two of the most distinctive features of Campaign ’92.

What should have been a routine reelection to a seventh two-year term for Hunter was changed dramatically early this year by the revelation that he wrote 407 overdrafts totaling $129,225 on his U.S. House bank account--placing him hip deep in a controversy that already has swept other congressmen out of office.

While the 44-year-old Hunter argues that his convincing victory in a three-candidate GOP primary demonstrates that voters are more concerned with the economy and other issues, Gastil has relentlessly hammered him over the check-writing scandal. His June Republican rivals, in contrast, made only passing reference to the scandal in their public appearances.

“When you see how congressmen like Duncan Hunter have handled their own bank accounts, it’s no surprise that the federal debt gets bigger and bigger,” Gastil tells audiences.

Sometimes Gastil uses humor to make the same point. At one rally, she tried to fly a kite with a tail of “bad” checks attached, and she told one forum: “Our system of government is one of checks and balances. But lately, we’ve had too many checks and not enough balances.”

Hunter was not amused, however, at a Gastil radio ad dealing with the so-called Rubbergate scandal which states that “most of us would have been arrested” for doing what the congressman did with his checks. Calling the ad inaccurate, Hunter sued Gastil earlier this week--a lawsuit that Gastil charges was filed more for political than legal reasons.

Contrary to the mea culpas offered by many other congressmen embroiled in the scandal, Hunter has taken an unapologetic tack since the controversy surfaced, constantly repeating the line: “None of my checks ever bounced, and everyone got paid.”

The now-defunct House bank, Hunter explains, provided overdraft protection to members, allowing them to write checks without sufficient funds in their accounts to cover them, with the gap to be filled by future payments. No taxpayer money, he emphasizes, was used to cover the overdrafts.

Gastil also hopes to capitalize on controversy over Hunter’s central role in President Bush’s attack earlier this month on Democratic rival Bill Clinton’s patriotism. By helping to orchestrate an attack that Clinton likened to McCarthyism, Hunter may have damaged his own and his district’s clout, should Clinton become president, Gastil charges.

Hunter, however, contends that Bush called him and three other conservative GOP congressmen to the Oval Office to thank them for a series of late-night anti-Clinton speeches on the House floor. While Clinton’s anti-Vietnam War protests and 1969 visit to Moscow when he was a 23-year-old Rhodes scholar at Oxford were discussed at the meeting, Hunter stressed that he “never told the President to attack anyone’s patriotism.”

“The feeling was just that Bill Clinton owed the American people some answers about these things,” Hunter said.

That explanation, Gastil responds, is a “pretty thin” defense intended simply to distance Hunter from the controversy over Bush’s subsequent criticism of Clinton.

Hunter’s stumbles, real or perceived, are not the only strategic tools available to Gastil. While eschewing attempts to label her as “a single-issue woman candidate,” Gastil nevertheless regards her gender as another asset in a political year dubbed “Year of the Woman.”

“Duncan Hunter embodies many of the things (that are) wrong with Congress,” said Gastil, a 55-year-old former school board member from La Mesa who also owns an apple-growing business. “In trying to present a contrast, being a woman certainly doesn’t hurt.”

Hunter insists that running against a woman has not significantly altered his strategy. Even so, he has sought to preempt some of the central themes that Gastil, like other women, has emphasized--trying, for example, to transform the debate over political change from a question of gender to one of philosophy. Hunter’s wife also has been unusually visible in his campaign this fall.

“Voters do want change, but just changing their representatives’ sex isn’t going to give them what they want,” Hunter said. “The change that has to occur in ending the liberal Democrats’ control of Congress.”

Gastil, Hunter charges, is “just another liberal tax-and-spend Democrat out of step” with his conservative district.

“Some may call it the year of the woman or the year of the outsider, but in this district, it’s not the year of what my opponent stands for in this or any other year,” Hunter said.

Calling himself a “front-line defender” of tens of thousands of local defense and aerospace jobs, Hunter characterizes Gastil as a “self-described anti-defense liberal who would gradually surrender San Diego’s naval bases” that are likely to come with cutbacks in military spending. While Hunter acknowledges the inevitability of such cutbacks, he pledges to “fight to keep as many jobs and facilities” here as possible by positioning San Diego as a logical locale for consolidation of Western military installations.

Gastil supports Clinton’s proposal for gradual reductions in defense spending, but argues that Hunter has distorted her position to make it sound as if she favors immediate, draconian cuts.

The two also differ on a wide range of other high-profile issues that highlight their philosophical chasm.

Gastil, for example, advocates abortion rights, favors a waiting period for handgun purchases, opposes the so-called school voucher proposal that would allow public funds to be spent on private schools, and supports the proposed family-leave legislation recently vetoed by Bush that would have permitted workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for childbirth or other emergencies. Hunter, in contrast, holds the opposite position on each issue.

One distinction that Gastil particularly emphasizes involves her willingness--and Hunter’s refusal--to sign a so-called “Lead or Leave” pledge, under which signees agree not to seek reelection in 1996 unless the annual budget deficit is cut in half by then. Gastil describes the pledge as a means of “avoiding excuses” for failure to reduce the deficit, while Hunter calls it simply a political gimmick.

“I always vote for a balanced budget--I’m not the problem,” Hunter said. “If you’re fiscally conservative, you shouldn’t get penalized for what the liberals do.”

In a year in which incumbency poses as many risks as advantages, Hunter argues that his 12-year career brings clout to the district that Gastil would be unable to match as a freshman. One of the most senior Republicans on the powerful House Armed Services Committee, Hunter also has quickly risen in party leadership ranks to become chairman of the Republican Research Committee, the fifth-highest position in the GOP hierarchy.

As highlights of his record, Hunter points to legislation that he authored permitting the military to be used to combat drug smuggling, to his ranking by the National Taxpayers Assn. as one of the House’s most fiscally conservative members, and to his successful push for a metal fence along a 13-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexican border here that he contends has increased cocaine seizures more than 10 fold.

“I’m not fancy, but I’ll do it,” Hunter told one forum, succinctly summarizing his style.

The two minor-party candidates on the ballot are little more than political extras in the 52nd District’s cast, but could influence the outcome by splitting any anti-incumbent vote next week.

Shea, who has run unsuccessfully for public office three times, most recently against Hunter two years ago, believes that the Libertarians’ strong anti-tax stance could resonate with an electorate reeling through a lingering recession. His unorthodox platform also includes a proposal to legalize drugs, which he contends should be “taxed and regulated like tobacco and alcohol.”

“If the people know anything about Libertarians, it’s that we want to cut taxes,” said Shea, a 33-year-old mathematics student-teacher from Ramona. “That’s a pretty good thing to be identified with, especially this year.”

Peace and Freedom Party candidate Gretsinger, a 37-year-old tool and diemaker, could not be reached for comment.