ELECTIONS / 53RD ASSEMBLY DISTRICT : Mailer Sparks Charges of Religious Bias : Campaign: Brad Parton says Debra Bowen used Nazi tactics in criticizing his fundamentalist views. His accusation has cost him some political support.

After boiling just beneath the surface, the emotion-packed issues of religion and intolerance have shot to the forefront of an increasingly bitter and ugly battle in the 53rd Assembly District.

As the campaign entered its final days, the California Republican Party sent a mailer in which Redondo Beach Mayor Brad Parton accused his Democratic rival, Venice lawyer Debra Bowen, of acting like “the brown-shirted fascists of Nazi Germany” for questioning his conservative, Christian fundamentalist views.

The vivid black and red mailer, sent out early this week, contains four accusations that Bowen is employing Nazi tactics.

Almost as soon as the mailer went out, however, there were strong suggestions that it was backfiring. Several prominent South Bay Republican officeholders withdrew their support from Parton’s campaign on Tuesday and Wednesday after sharply criticizing the mailer.

Bowen has charged repeatedly that Parton, a born-again Christian with a record of activism on conservative issues, would bring a religious agenda to the California Legislature if he is elected on Tuesday.

Parton has received more than $116,000 in campaign contributions from Christian businessmen underwriting the political activities of the religious right in California and the backing of conservative Christian groups. But he has insisted during the campaign that he has no religious agenda and is unfamiliar with any agenda the statewide religious right may have.

Throughout the campaign, Parton and Bowen have expressed starkly different views on such issues as abortion, gay rights and vouchers for students to attend private schools, including religious institutions.

In her mailings, Bowen has told voters in the district, which extends from Mar Vista and Venice down the coast to the edge of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, that the choice is between “a fundamental right” to abortion and “right-wing fundamentalism.”

Identifying Parton as a “right-wing fundamentalist,” Bowen says: “He has the right to believe whatever he wants. But he doesn’t have the right to impose his religious beliefs on others.”

Before this week, Parton had dismissed Bowen’s charges as “hogwash,” but the new mailer went considerably further.

Accusing Bowen of “ruthless, shameless exploitation of religious bigotry and intolerance,” the mailer says: “People like Debra Bowen will go to any length and use any deception to gain political power, just like the brown-shirted fascists of Nazi Germany.”

The mailer adds: “Bowen uses the same propaganda techniques that the budding Nazi movement deviously used to remove their opponents and to gain political power.”

Bowen called the mailer “outrageous.”

“It’s the worst kind of sleaze,” she said. “It is sick. California is in serious trouble if someone wins a political campaign by doing things like this.”

But Parton defended the mailer as a long-delayed response to what he called “continual, unrelenting attacks on my religious beliefs.”

“It has been on all of her mailers day after day and if that’s not sleazy, if that’s not attacking below the belt, I don’t know what is,” he said. “We needed to defend ourselves and respond by saying, ‘Hey, this isn’t an issue here. Your bringing religion in is defying the separation of church and state.”’

Parton added: “We did not start it. She did.”

In fact, Parton’s campaign used exactly the same line of attack during the Republican primary last May when GOP candidate Dan Walker sent voters a mailer saying “the issue is not religion . . . it’s intolerance.”

Walker, who finished second in a crowded field of Republican candidates, said that Parton, as mayor of Redondo Beach, “continuously attempts to impose his fundamentalist religious views on others and is openly intolerant and hostile to those who do not share his views.”

Within days of Walker’s mailing, a group of South Bay clergy called a press conference to accuse Walker of religious intolerance and bigotry. On Monday, the same group held another press conference, but this time Bowen was the target. The rhetoric was virtually identical.

“We in the religious community are against people coming out and antagonizing those of us who believe in religious ideas and religious freedom,” said Mark Nazarian, pastor of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Redondo Beach. “We didn’t think we would have to come out here and say it again: We demand an apology for this religious bigotry.”

Bowen’s calling Parton “a right-wing fundamentalist” is tantamount to religious persecution, the group said.

“It’s the name-calling that’s the issue,” said Rabbi Felix Rogin, the Libertarian candidate running against Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) in the Westside’s 29th Congressional District. “If you say he’s rotten because he’s a fundamentalist, that we shouldn’t vote for him because he’s a fundamentalist, that’s when it crosses the line and has no place.”

Parton’s latest mailer used two purported headlines to attack Bowen. One reads: “Religious and Community Leaders Respond to Attack on Candidate’s Religion.”

The headline appeared in no newspaper. Instead it came from a fax sent to reporters last May announcing the clergy’s press conference against Walker.

Parton’s attack on Bowen also contains the headline: “Clergy demand an apology for anti-Parton mailer.” The headline was taken from an article in the Torrance Daily Breeze last May that actually said: “Clergy demand an apology for Walker’s anti-Parton mailer.”

And the mailer includes a prominent quotation from Kenneth Mitzner, identified as “L.A. County Director of the Jewish Life Issues Committee,” attacking Bowen for promoting religious bigotry. In May, Mitzner used virtually identical words to denounce Walker.

Mitzner said in an interview that the Jewish Life Issues Committee consists of “a handful of people in Los Angeles County” who are opposed to abortion and provide advice to the anti-abortion movement.

Parton is an outspoken opponent of abortion while Bowen supports a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy.

Mitzner said Bowen “used fundamentalist the way an anti-Semite uses Jew. . . . She’s crossed the barrier. She’s into religious mudslinging.”

Bowen, however, was not the only political figure offended by the mailer. Walker, a former Torrance councilman who endorsed Parton after the primary, withdrew his support Wednesday. Torrance’s popular Republican mayor, Katy Geissert, endorsed Bowen, and two other GOP council members in Torrance were sharply critical of the mailer. A Republican stronghold, Torrance contains about one-third of the Assembly district’s registered voters.

Explaining his endorsement withdrawal, Walker said, “I did it because I received one of the most garbage-filled pieces of trash literature that I have ever seen in 20 years of political life. . . . There is no defense for what Brad Parton has allowed to be put in this mailer.”

Geissert, who had hesitated to endorse Parton despite months of courting by his campaign, said Wednesday that she has endorsed Bowen instead.

“I was going to stay out of it,” she said. “But I think that this crosses the line of decency. It is so terribly distorted and I just think that it’s dangerous in its extremism. I don’t care to be represented by someone who would permit this sort of publication.”

Councilman Don Lee, who had endorsed Parton early in the race, asked that Parton not use his name anymore. Lee, whose name has been used prominently on earlier Parton mailers, said he endorsed Parton because he shares the candidate’s economic views. The attack mailer, however, made Lee “question (Parton’s) judgment.”

At a Torrance council meeting Tuesday night, Lee said he does not subscribe to Parton’s campaign tactic.

Councilwoman Maureen O’Donnell, who had endorsed Walker in the primary, said she decided to endorse Bowen last week after a series of late-night, anonymous telephone callers to her home called her “anti-Christian” for failing to support Parton.

O’Donnell said she first worked with Parton during the 1986 political season at Republican headquarters in Redondo Beach.

“I became aware through my contact with him and hearing his comments on the side that he was very much against any Christian denomination but his own,” she said. “He’s an embarrassment. He’s dangerous to both religious causes and to the Republican party.”

Parton’s campaign manager, Doug Swardstrom, dismissed O’Donnell’s remarks as a “premeditated attack on Brad” by a political opponent who had also criticized Parton’s religious views in the primary campaign. He said the Parton campaign had nothing to do with any harassing phone calls O’Donnell might have received.

The mailer also drew criticism from the Mark Spiegel, chairman of the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles. “I don’t remember anything quite this vicious in recent memory,” he said. “Our view is a person’s religion per se is completely irrelevant.”

Spiegel said the reference to Nazis and brownshirts was very unfortunate. “I don’t see this as being equivalent to Nazi tactics.”

He urged the candidates to address issues and not engage in attacks “meant to inflame and get an emotional response.” But Spiegel added: “Unfortunately, that’s what politics has become.”

Carlos Rodriguez, the Sacramento-based political consultant who helped prepare the mailer, insisted the brochure does not equate Bowen to Nazis.

“We’re not talking about personalities here. We’re talking about tactics,” he said. “I’m sure she’s not a Nazi . . . but the issue is not whether she’s a Nazi. The issue is that the tactics she has used have a tragically long history of damage.”

The references to religious bigotry, fascism and Nazi Germany were “not intended to shock,” he said.