‘92 WESTSIDE ELECTIONS : ELECTIONS / STATE RACES : Bruising Battle Ends in Bowen Landslide : Legislature: Friedman, Margolin and Moore are reelected to the Assembly by large margins. Hayden coasts to a new Senate seat.

Political newcomer Debra L. Bowen swept to a stunning landslide victory over Republican Brad Parton, ending a brutal battle for a new Assembly district that hugs the coast from Venice to the edge of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Democrat Bowen rolled up a 22,731-vote margin by the time all the ballots were counted early Wednesday morning. In the end, the Venice lawyer captured 54.6% of the vote to 40.7% for Parton. The race for the open Assembly seat was easily the most vicious legislative contest on the Westside this fall.

In another costly campaign clash, Democratic Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman of Encino crushed a well-financed challenge by Republican Christine Reed to win a fourth term in the Legislature.

The final, unofficial tally gave Friedman 55.9% of the vote to 38.8% for Reed, a former Santa Monica city councilwoman. The 41st Assembly District in which Friedman won stretches from Santa Monica to Malibu and across the western San Fernando Valley.

And in a foregone conclusion, Democratic Assemblyman Tom Hayden of Santa Monica will advance to the state Senate after coasting to victory over Republican Leonard McRoskey, 56.4% to 32.4%.

Hayden’s victory was assured in June after he narrowly won a three-way Democratic primary slugfest in the new 23rd Senate District, which runs from Hollywood to Malibu on the Westside and from Studio City to Westlake Village in the Valley.

In other Westside Assembly districts, incumbents Burt Margolin and Gwen Moore were returned to Sacramento by enormous margins.

The sweeping victory of Bowen over Parton capped a bitter duel in the mails between two candidates who berated each other over everything from religion and abortion to taxes and support for Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

Even considering the strong Democratic tide throughout the state, Bowen’s achievement was a remarkable one. In her first foray into politics, she managed to steal for the Democrats what had been written off last summer as a safe Republican seat--and it wasn’t even close.

Although cautious through much of the evening, the 36-year-old lawyer jumped for joy as her lead widened as returns rolled in late Tuesday night. “It was a great campaign,” she said.

Throughout the campaign, Bowen repeatedly attacked Parton as a right-wing fundamentalist who would bring a religious agenda to the Legislature.

Parton, who vigorously denied having any such agenda, fired back last week with a mailer that accused Bowen of religious bigotry and behaving like “the brown-shirted fascists of Nazi Germany.” The hit piece, sent by the California Republican Party, immediately cost him important political support.

At her campaign headquarters in a Torrance office park, a buoyant Bowen said the Nazi mailer accelerated Parton’s decline. “It hit at a real personal, visceral level,” she said. “A lot of people were very offended.”

Bowen attributed the magnitude of her victory to the “broad philosophical differences” between herself and Parton on such questions as the role of the government in private lives. “The religious right scares a lot of people,” she said. “It threatens a long tradition of personal freedom.”

In addition, she said, a key issue was how to revive a troubled economy in a once-prosperous district suffering from deep cuts in aerospace and defense jobs. Dealing with the area’s economic woes will be her top priority in Sacramento, Bowen said.

As a band readied to rock the red-white-and-blue bedecked headquarters, Bowen thanked hundreds of volunteers already jubilant over Democratic victories in the presidential and U.S. Senate races in California.

The scene was far more somber in Redondo Beach, where Parton gathered with his backers at a hotel near the waterfront.

Parton said the controversial mailer accusing Bowen of Nazi tactics played a small role in his defeat. “I just think it wasn’t the year to be a Republican,” he said.

The Republican contender attributed his loss to high voter turnout, newly registered voters who shifted the district from Republican to Democratic, anti-Republican sentiment, and local candidates riding President-elect Bill Clinton’s coattails.

Parton also said the press was unfair in describing him as a candidate of the religious right. “I’ve been mislabeled,” he said.

Campaign manager Doug Swardstrom had another explanation for the defeat: “Our campaign was a tremendous grass-roots effort that went up against Willie Brown’s political machine and money.”

But Bowen rejected that contention, saying the Democratic Party had provided her campaign with less money than Parton received from Republican leaders in Sacramento.

Throughout the race, Parton tried to tie Bowen to Brown, warning that the powerful Democratic leader would pull her strings if she was elected. Bowen has made no commitment on whom she will support for Speaker next month.

Abortion was a key issue in the race, with Bowen drawing the support of abortion-rights groups while Parton, who opposes abortion under most circumstances, received backing from anti-abortion groups, conservative Christian organizations and financiers of the religious right in California politics.

In the final days of the campaign, the two rivals traded charges over taxes. After a Bowen mailer arrived in the district, Parton acknowledged that he and his real estate partners owe at least $38,838 in overdue property taxes and penalties. Late last week, he sought to counter the impact by criticizing Bowen for having two homeowner exemptions on different properties.

By contrast, the race between Friedman and challenger Reed was relatively civil most of the way, although it turned sharply negative in the closing days with both candidates accusing the other of engaging in last-minute lies.

With a heavy infusion of financial support from Gov. Pete Wilson, the California Republican Party and GOP legislative leaders, Reed launched a direct mail and telephone blitz that branded Friedman as a liberal carpetbagger who is soft on crime and missed numerous legislative votes. In an bid to tap anti-incumbent sentiment that did not exist, she accused Friedman of backing Speaker Brown and being “part of the problem in Sacramento.”

The approach clearly did not work, as the results showed Friedman easily turning back the first serious challenge of his political career. “This was a tremendous victory,” he told a group of loyalists at his Encino headquarters shortly after midnight. “It was targeted as a challenging, difficult race.”

Friedman said the election “sent a real message to Pete Wilson, who targeted this race. They put in over a quarter-million dollars (in the final days) and they lost.”

Noting that the governor’s welfare reform measure, Proposition 165, was defeated, Friedman said: “The big loser tonight is Pete Wilson. This election was a referendum on Pete Wilson.”

Reed, however, said her candidacy was “swamped by the Clinton tidal wave” and a formidable Democratic field operation that turned out voters in large numbers.

Nevertheless, she said: “I am proud of the campaign we waged. I wish Assemblyman Friedman well as he returns to Sacramento to grapple with the significant problems that face our state.”

With huge contributions from trial lawyers and labor unions, Friedman was able to put together a campaign that included traditional direct-mail appeals for votes and an unusual grass-roots effort to reach voters at their doorsteps.

Pointing to the energy he and his volunteers put into registering voters and walking precincts, he said, “We did it the old-fashioned way.”

Friedman spent election day walking precincts in the San Fernando Valley, hanging flyers on doorknobs almost until the polls closed.

Anita Bloom, a 70-year-old volunteer working in her first political campaign, said she helped Friedman send out 60,000 potholders and folded and stuffed so many letters in envelopes that she had cuts on her knuckles.

In a last-ditch effort to convert Democrats to her side, Reed’s campaign began calling Democratic voters last weekend and Monday. Although campaign consultant Steve Presson acknowledged that the operation involved paid workers from Sacramento, the callers identified themselves as Democrats who were supporting Reed because of concerns about Friedman’s record.

Friedman called the telephone tactics “an example of the sleaziest form of politics.”

But the eleventh-hour telephone drive followed a controversial mailing by Friedman’s campaign on Friday. Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) and Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky sent targeted mailers to Jewish voters suggesting that Reed is an opponent of Israel. While a member of the Santa Monica council, Reed opposed a 1982 resolution supporting the Jewish state on grounds that the city should not be taking foreign policy positions.

Reed sought to blunt the impact by dropping off leaflets at synagogues last weekend and using the phone bank to reassure Jewish voters of her support for Israel.

Still smarting from the Jewish mailer, Reed on Wednesday accused Friedman of “a lack of personal ethics” in sending the hit piece to Jewish voters.

Meanwhile, in the 42nd Assembly District, Margolin rolled to a sixth term with 67.8% of the vote, while Republican challenger Robert Davis got 26.1%. The district includes most of the Westside east of Santa Monica and generally north of Wilshire Boulevard.

The margin of victory was even larger for Moore, who was returned to Sacramento for an eighth term. Moore captured 81.1% of the vote to 13.7% for Republican challenger Jonathan Leonard in the 47th Assembly District, which includes Rancho Park, Culver City, Palms, Mid-City, Baldwin Hills and Crenshaw.

Times staff writers Otto Strong and Jeanette Avent contributed to this story.