Herschensohn Is GOP’s Best Hope in State

A protracted, contentious and pivotal California election campaign dragged toward the finish line Sunday with Republicans seemingly resigned to losing the state’s prized 54 electoral votes and one of the U.S. Senate seats, but battling doggedly for the second Senate seat at stake in Tuesday’s voting.

The contest for the six-year Senate seat held by Democrat Alan Cranston, fought mostly on political ideology through the fall, was ending in a bitter name-calling spat between the campaigns of Republican conservative Bruce Herschensohn and Democratic liberal Barbara Boxer.

The flash point was the allegation Friday by a state Democratic Party official that Herschensohn, a staunch proponent of family values, had patronized an adult newsstand and a Hollywood club that features nude dancers.

On Sunday, Boxer, the five-term congresswoman from Marin County, labeled as “outrageous” and “desperate” the claims by Herschensohn campaign manager Ken Khachigian that she orchestrated the disclosure.

Khachigian acknowledged that he hopes the spat “will backfire” onto Boxer, though the campaign could offer no evidence of a Boxer role. On the other hand, he said “it could hurt” Herschensohn.

Both sides agreed that the contest was so close that the outcome could hinge on which side does the best job of getting its voters to the polls.

Vigorous last-minute battles also were being fought around California for party control of the expanded 52-member delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives and for the 80-seat state Assembly, where at least a third of the members will be new when the Legislature convenes early next month.

Democrats now dominate the congressional delegation and both houses of the Legislature. With only half of the state Senate’s 40 seats at stake, Democrats seemed assured of continued control.

Independent candidate Ross Perot was the only presidential candidate to visit California on the final weekend of the campaign, addressing rallies in Santa Clara and Long Beach.

With its huge bloc of electoral votes--now up to 54--California usually is a mandatory stop for the presidential candidates on the last weekend before the election. But sentiment for Bill Clinton has so dominated the state throughout the campaign that President Bush hasn’t bothered to come to California since mid-September.

The marathon campaign has been marked by demands for change and a mood of anti-incumbency. The backdrop has been severe economic recession and a level of pessimism that has been the highest ever recorded among California voters.

Secretary of State March Fong Eu has forecast a turnout of nearly 75% of California’s 15.1 million registered voters compared to a 1988 presidential election year turnout of 73%. If her prediction is accurate, this would be the first time in 28 years that the number of voters, as a percentage of the total number registered, has increased with the previous election.

Californians also will decide on a slate of controversial statewide ballot measures including Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s welfare reform and budget control plan, the right of terminally ill patients to have their lives ended by their doctors, and a tax-the-rich scheme originally dubbed the “Robin Hood initiative.” Other sharply contested issues are congressional term limits and a health reform plan put on the ballot by the California Medical Assn.

Both parties set in motion over the weekend get-out-the-vote drives costing an estimated $8 million collectively. The efforts were designed to lock in, to the greatest degree possible, the ballots of their core constituencies and, in the case of Democrats, to pull back into the fold those party members who strayed to the GOP during the 1980s.

The hopscotch campaigns of the major candidates--primarily for the two U.S. Senate seats--were designed to energize the field troops to fan out around California and get their voters to the polls.

The contest between commentator Herschensohn, 60, and Boxer, 51, was dominated in the past three days by the bizarre accusation of a state Democratic official that Herschensohn had patronized a dance parlor and adult newsstand.

Herschensohn toured Los Angeles and Orange counties in a 28-foot-long “Bruce Bus” recreational vehicle, covering territory from Northridge to San Juan Capistrano.

At a stop in Long Beach organized by Bush-Quayle forces, and featuring a live elephant bearing an American flag, Herschensohn told supporters, “It is about as even as any polls have ever been. It is just neck and neck, the kind of election where one vote can make a difference.”

Herschensohn never brought up the dispute over his one acknowledged visit to the nude club or his purchase of Playboy and Penthouse at the magazine store, but said in response to reporters’ questions: “There isn’t one thing that I have said that would show or illustrate or exhibit any hypocrisy.”

Absent from the road Sunday was Republican Sen. John Seymour, appointed by Wilson in 1991 to temporarily fill the vacancy created by Wilson’s resignation from the Senate to become governor. Trailing Democrat Dianne Feinstein in the opinion polls for the two-year seat, Seymour remained at his San Clemente home Sunday to celebrate his son Barrett’s 10th birthday.

Some sources said Seymour, 54, canceled his one event planned for Sunday, an anti-drug award ceremony sponsored by the National Hot Rod Assn. at Pomona. The Seymour campaign said the association called it off.

Feinstein, 59, the former San Francisco mayor who ran for governor in 1990, teamed up with Boxer for the second consecutive day to attend a Democratic rally in Santa Monica that was to have been addressed by Clinton by satellite. Hillary Clinton filled in for the hoarse presidential nominee.

Boxer told a crowd of hundreds at the Museum of Flying, “Next Tuesday, we are going to change America, aren’t we?”

Feinstein told the cheering, sign-waving crowd, “Forty hours from now, we will begin to make history in California with the election of two women senators.”

The two Democratic Senate candidates will campaign in tandem again today with a traditional fly-around to major California media markets.

Herschensohn and Seymour will campaign separately. Herschensohn will be in El Centro, San Diego and Huntington Beach, and Seymour goes to Rancho Cucamonga, San Diego, San Jose and Costa Mesa.

GOP hopes were boosted during the past week by surges nationally for Bush and in California for Herschensohn, the former KABC television commentator who was engaged in the slugfest with Boxer, who has represented portions of Marin and San Francisco counties for 10 years.

But Democrats were buoyed by the fact that they had signed up more than 1 million new voters during the campaign compared to roughly 500,000 for the Republicans. In recent years, the GOP did far better than Democrats in enlisting new voters and in getting the vote out.

A statewide poll conducted for the San Francisco Examiner and published in weekend editions had Clinton holding a 17-point lead over Bush, 47% to 30%, with independent Ross Perot trailing at 15%.

Bush’s prospects for winning California’s record 54 electoral votes have been so bleak that the President made just the one visit to California--to Riverside and Anaheim. Clinton came to California after the Democratic National Convention in late July and addressed a rally in Costa Mesa last week.

Democrats have not won California’s electoral votes since the Lyndon B. Johnson landslide of 1964.

Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Dean E. Murphy, Douglas P. Shuit and Tracy Wilkinson.