Schenk-Jarvis Race Goes Down to Wire in 49th : History: Whoever wins will be San Diego’s first Congresswoman. Schenk leads, but it won’t be until the absentee ballots are tabulated that the final results are known.

Longtime Democratic activist Lynn Schenk appeared poised Tuesday night to become the first female San Diego County has ever sent to Congress.

However, in a city that had not elected a woman to Congress since California gained statehood 142 years ago, Schenk will have to wait a few more days to learn whether she or Judy Jarvis fills that major page in the city’s political history.

Although Schenk held a comfortable lead that gradually widened throughout Tuesday night in the 49th Congressional District, her margin over Jarvis in their four-candidate race was not large enough to be absolutely certain of surviving Thursday’s tabulation of nearly 75,000 uncounted absentee ballots countywide.

If the absentee ballots are fairly evenly divided among the county’s five congressional districts, about 15,000 votes remain to be counted in the 49th District, enough to alter the election’s result--if Jarvis receives an especially high percentage of them.

The delay in conclusively learning whether Jarvis or Schenk captured the nationally watched race seemed a fitting, if frustrating, ending to a campaign that had been unconventional from the start.

Although the candidates’ June primary victories made it obvious that the 49th District contest would be a historic campaign, sending San Diego County’s first congresswoman to Washington, gender was ironically removed as an issue from the fall contest.

Indeed, while the Schenk-Jarvis showdown appeared on the surface to be emblematic of a political season dubbed the “Year of the Woman,” both major candidates eschewed gender-based debates to direct voters’ attention in the largely northwestern San Diego district to their considerable differences in philosophy, style and background.

Hoping to tap into the anti-politician sentiment coursing through the electorate, Jarvis wore her political outsider status like a badge of honor throughout the campaign, describing herself as a would-be citizen-legislator who “breaks the mold of both parties.”

“I’m the voice of the frustrations that people are feeling,” said Jarvis, a 42-year-old nurse who was an upset winner in a 10-candidate GOP primary. “I’m an average, middle-class citizen. My opponent is a lawyer and 20-year career bureaucrat. . . . This race gives people a chance to really change the way things are done in government by sending a different kind of representative to Washington.”

In contrast, Schenk, a 47-year-old lawyer who served in the cabinet of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., is a longtime Democratic activist now serving as an appointee on the San Diego Unified Port Commission. Trying to soften her insider’s image, Schenk often described herself to campaign audiences as “an agent of change who’s led the fight for those on the outside . . . to come inside.”

Bolstering that claim, Schenk stressed that she was in the forefront of the fight for women’s rights “long before it was politically correct or chic to get involved.”

In the 1970s, for example, Schenk helped establish the Lawyer’s Club in San Diego to provide free legal services to women and helped open the first women-owned bank in California. On the Port Commission, Schenk pushed for a multimillion-dollar San Diego Bay protection plan, helped restore 100 janitorial jobs at Lindbergh Field initially lost in a labor dispute and sought to limit the expenditure of Port District funds on America’s Cup Activities.

“I’m concerned we don’t say it’s a virtue to never have been involved in anything,” Schenk said. “Do you take a gamble, a risk on rhetoric, or do you look to someone who’s got a 20-year record of getting things done?”

One of only three two-woman congressional campaigns in the nation, the 49th District race was the only one of the three in which both women also advocated abortion rights--a matchup that eliminated two of the most volatile issues in Campaign ’92.

However, Schenk and Jarvis differed widely on myriad other high-profile issues such as waiting periods for handgun purchases and gay rights legislation--proposals that Schenk favors and Jarvis opposes.

“When you get beyond gender, there are clear differences,” Schenk concluded.

While the two minor-party candidates in the race--Libertarian John Wallner and Peace and Freedom Party member Milton Zaslow--were little more than political footnotes, both hung their long, long-shot hopes on being able to capitalize on voters’ yearning for change.