CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY : Redistricting Spurs New Races, Hard Fights

For the first time in 10 years, Robert Frazee is digging out the old campaign signs. Steve Peace is relying on name recognition. Jan Goldsmith is counting on $451,607 in campaign contributions. And Bill Morrow and Ray Haynes are counting on lopsided Republican registration in their districts to win their first-ever assembly seats.

Redistricting has prompted a flurry of new races, and in some quarters, a renewed call to campaign harder, as several state Assembly races are being contested in San Diego County.

After six elections with either no opponents or token opposition, Frazee is taking this campaign in the 74th Assembly District a bit more seriously.

Republicans ran against him in the June primary for the first time since he first sought office in 1978. In Tuesday’s election, he’s running against a Democrat determined to win.

“I am a little more concerned because of the anti-incumbency feeling,” the Carlsbad Republican said. “The fact that I have an opponent has generated some of that concern.”

Democrat Ken Lanzer, a 44-year-old law school graduate from Escondido and former New York City police officer, is portraying Frazee’s record as one of “resounding mediocrity.”

In defending his career, Frazee points to laws in consumer protection that require telephone solicitors to register with the state Attorney General’s office; has mandated greater background checks of child care workers, and obtained funding for migrant worker housing in San Diego County.

Frazee, 64, believes abortion is morally wrong but that the government should not be involved in its regulation, nor should it provide public money for abortions. Frazee authored a 1987 state law that requires parental consent for abortions, but the law was blocked in court by Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union and has never been put in place.

The law, he insists, had nothing to do with abortion but about medical procedures for minors in general.

“This has to do with whether parents have the right to know if their children are having medical procedures,” he said. “A 14-year-old girl has to notify her parents whether she has her ears pierced but not about an abortion.”

Although Frazee has raised $73,000 and Lanzer only $3,275, Lanzer is relying on a strong anti-incumbent mood among voters and points to his recent endorsement of United We Stand, the Ross Perot support group.

Lanzer said he didn’t intend to be a candidate, preferring instead to work with a congressional candidate. But upon investigating Frazee and his career, mostly through newspaper articles, Lanzer said he found Frazee to be “the epitome of a career politician.”

Most disturbed about San Diego’s paltry share of state revenues, Lanzer said it speaks to a lack of clout on behalf of the county’s 11-member legislative delegation in general and Frazee in particular.

Lanzer also is piqued to hear Frazee talk about cutting government bureaucracy on businesses.

“The man sits on committees for government efficiency and has done nothing,” Lanzer said. “Government should have deadlines. There is no reason it should take five years for someone to move a construction project through the process.”

The district’s boundaries are Vista to the north, Del Mar to the south and Escondido to the east.

Libertarian Mark Hunt and Peace & Freedom candidate Shirley Marcoux also are running in the heavily Republican district, where Republican registration outnumbers Democrats by 20 percentage points.

In the 75th Assembly District, Poway Mayor Jan Goldsmith is the favorite in a race against Ramona high school teacher Dante Cosentino, because the district--with Mexico, Imperial County, Rancho Bernardo and Borrego Springs as borders--has a 21% GOP registration advantage over Democrats. In June, Goldsmith defeated Connie Youngkin, who was supported by the Christian fundamentalist community.

Green Party candidate Daniel Ford Tarr, Libertarian J. C. Anderson and Peace & Freedom candidate Alfredo R. Felix also are running.

The 41-year-old Goldsmith, Poway’s first elected mayor, is in favor of abortion rights but describes himself as fiscally conservative.

“The biggest problems and challenges we have are on the state level,” Goldsmith said. “For everything I do in Poway, there is an agency in Sacramento telling me how to do it. Some of our tax policies are forcing businesses to leave. We need to have a balance of regulation.”

Cosentino, 61, faces two huge hurdles: the lopsided Republican registration, and the huge difference in fund-raising. Goldsmith has raised $451,607 and spent close to $400,000. Cosentino has raised $8,640 and spent $5,865.

“I am hoping that No. 1, people will look at the issues and not at the parties,” Cosentino said. “We both agree that something needs to be done about the economy, and we are both pro-choice. But I have been pushing for universal access to health care and education reform.”

In the 73rd Assembly District, Republican Bill Morrow, Democrat Lee Walker, Libertarian Paul King and Peace & Freedom candidate Paul A. Steele are competing to represent an area where 60% of the population is based in Orange County and the rest is in San Diego County, including areas in Oceanside and Fallbrook.

Morrow, 38, who lives in Oceanside, is a private attorney in Vista. A former Marine Corps officer, Morrow has raised about $280,000. Walker’s contributions were not available at the San Diego County registrar of voters office.

The district has a 57% GOP registration and a 30% Democratic registration.

“The first thing I will do when I get into office is cast a vote to get Willie Brown out of the speakership,” Morrow said. “He has run that state Assembly with an iron fist with everyone under his thumb. He has been the biggest blockade to any reform.”

The Allied Business Political Action Committee, composed of fundamentalist Christian businessmen, has contributed heavily to Morrow’s campaign. Morrow called them “good men and women who are very strong on family values and business.”

Morrow opposes abortion, except in cases of rape, incest and endangerment to a mother’s life. He is also against gun control.

Walker, a 57-year-old Orange County community college professor and resident of Laguna Niguel, has called Morrow an “ultra-conservative, right-wing Christian” who is “out of the mainstream of Republicanism.”

In the 79th Assembly District, Assemblyman Steve Peace would seem to have little to worry about Tuesday, with nearly six times the amount of campaign contributions as his opponent in a heavily Democratic district.

But Raul Silva-Martinez, the Republican candidate for the district--half of whose population is Latino--is making an all-out appeal for someone to win the seat who is more in tune with its residents.

Whether Silva-Martinez, a partner in a Chula Vista law firm, can overcome Peace’s name recognition and decade in the Assembly, remains to be seen. Peace has a long record of accomplishment to draw upon--including efforts to clean up toxic sewage that flows from Mexico to the United States.

“People knew me in my district,” the 39-year-old Peace said. “I grew up here. People know me, my family, friends and business associates. It is a question of whether or not they like what I am doing. People will make up their own mind whether I represent their interests.”

After 10 years in office, Peace is most proud of a bill to become law in January that will protect the privacy of individuals against credit-gathering agencies.

He also helped negotiate an agreement last January under which Native American tribes must maintain the same environmental protection on its reservations as the state requires. He also has carried legislation that resulted in an agreement between states that makes it harder to dump low-level nuclear waste in California.

Win or lose, Peace is set on running for state Sen. Waddie Deddeh’s seat in 1994, which includes roughly the same constituency of the 79th District. Deddeh has not yet decided whether he will run again.

To the 42-year-old Silva-Martinez, the fact that Peace is considering another office and his seeming preoccupation with statewide issues reflects little concern about his own district.

“Outside of Los Angeles, we have the poorest district in Southern California: the highest drop-out rate, the highest crime rate and the highest unemployment,” Silva-Martinez said. “Our social and economic problems haven’t gotten any better since Steve Peace has been in office. We wouldn’t be in the mess we are in if he had been taking care of the district.”

Convinced that Willie Brown is the No. 1 problem in Sacramento, Silva-Martinez said his top priority would be to remove him from the speakership. He also wants to keep Rohr Industries Inc. and other businesses in the district, offering whatever tax incentives he could.

Silva-Martinez also wants to create a binational border authority, made up of members from Baja California and San Diego County, that would deal with problems such as immigration, crime and toxic waste that plague both countries.

Peace has raised $287,067 and has spent $249,036. Of the contribution amount, the Democratic State Central Committee has contributed $80,350. Silva-Martinez has raised $52,395 and spent $34,600. Most of his contributions have come from dozens of individual donors.

Libertarian James R. Train and Peace & Freedom candidate Edward Prud-Home also are running.

In the 66th Assembly District, whose population base is centered in Riverside County but which includes areas in San Diego County from Julian to Fallbrook, the race features Democrat Patsy Hockersmith, Republican Ray Haynes, Libertarian Bill E. Reed and Peace & Freedom candidate Anne Patrice Wood.

Hockersmith, a 51-year-old Orange County building inspector who lives in Corona, said she is running to create more jobs in California by making a pledge to offer tax incentives. She also supports a national health care program.

“A lot of my friends are out of work,” she said. “They are losing homes and vehicles. And the boys in Sacramento are not doing a good enough job to keep us above board in jobs.”

With a Republican registration advantage of 52% to 35%, Hockersmith said she is working on the remaining 17% who are members of other parties or have declined to say to which party they belong. The district also is 54% female, and Hockersmith said she will be trying to win the votes of women with her abortion rights stance.

Haynes, an attorney who has done pro bono work for Operation Rescue, is an abortion opponent. A Murrieta resident, Haynes has outspent Hockersmith $152,000 to $24,000. After winning the Republican primary over six others, Haynes said his conservative credentials helped him to victory.