Assemblyman Scouting for Atty. Gen. Post : Politics: Orange County Democrat Tom Umberg would face an uphill battle. But he has begun the ritual of courting the backers he will need from around the state.

It’s straight out of Boy’s Life magazine, the sort of tale that prompts political cynics around here to arch an eyebrow. But Tom Umberg recites it unabashedly. Some kids want to be cowboys or astronauts; Umberg always yearned to become a big-time prosecutor--to put bad guys behind bars, to mete out truth and justice.

Now the two-term Democrat assemblyman from Orange County is seriously considering a bid to become California’s top law enforcer, challenging Republican incumbent Dan Lungren next year in the race for state attorney general. Although he remains undecided, Umberg has quietly begun the ritual of courting the backers he will need from around the state to mount a legitimate candidacy.

“I’m not going to do a kamikaze on this,” said Umberg, who does not expect to declare his intent until fall. “The decision I’ve made is to see what kind of attitudes people have out there with respect to the race.”

With little name recognition outside Orange County, where he is the only Democrat to hold an elected state or federal office, Umberg would seem to have only a slim chance of unseating Lungren. But the assemblyman, a major in the Army Reserve who served four years as an assistant U.S. attorney before vaulting to the Legislature in 1990, is being encouraged to run by several state party chieftains.

During April’s Democratic Convention in Sacramento, outgoing party Chairman Phil Angelides ballyhooed the Garden Grove lawmaker as a perfect candidate to run for Congress or go “statewide as the new attorney general of California.”

The last Democrat to occupy the office, John K. Van de Kamp, also suggests Umberg, 37, might have the political mettle and telegenic appeal needed to overcome long-shot odds in a statewide race.

“My sense of Tom is he’s the sort of prototypical type of young man with a good heart and very good intentions who still hasn’t lost that Mr. Smith-Goes-to-Washington quality,” Van de Kamp said. “I think someone like Tom who brings a fresh face to a race always has a chance. It depends on whether he can raise enough money.”

Therein lies one of Umberg’s biggest obstacles. Although he amassed a healthy campaign fund during his two Assembly races, raising more than $1.5 million over the past three years, Umberg could enter the attorney general contest needing more than $3 million to $4 million to boost his name recognition and make a statewide pitch.

He also would probably have to face off in the June primary with San Francisco Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith, who lost to Lungren in a tight race in 1990, or Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn. Smith or Hahn would go into any race with a high profile, forcing a lesser-known challenger such as Umberg to mount an expensive campaign.

Despite such formidable barriers facing Umberg, the Lungren camp is not discounting him.

“Umberg’s a wild card,” said Ken Khachigian, a former Ronald Reagan Administration politico serving as Lungren’s chief strategist. “But he has some extreme hurdles to overcome. In a primary against Arlo Smith he’ll need a couple million right out of the box.”

If Umberg survived a primary fight, he would have to battle charges that he is inextricably tied to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and other liberal Democrat leaders, Khachigian said. Moreover, Lungren would be carrying the incumbent tag for a post where experience is a must to gain the public trust, he said.

“The attorney general’s office is one of those where voters aren’t exactly crazy about someone doing on-the-job training,” Khachigian said.

Tom Fuentes, Orange County Republican chairman, does not hide his loathing for Umberg, whose victories in 1990 and 1992 galled the local GOP. He contends that Lungren, a former congressman who represented part of Orange County, “would clean his clock.”

Fuentes also suggested that Umberg would be hard-pressed to shuck off an image as “a puppet” of Brown. Umberg has used “smoke and mirrors” to cloud his stands on the issues, switching his floor vote once Brown and other Assembly leaders have captured a safe Democratic margin on key issues, Fuentes said.

Such assessments anger Umberg’s fans. A self-styled moderate who favors the death penalty, Umberg leavens that image with an environmental bent and firm support of a woman’s right to seek an abortion. The California Major Donor Report, an independent Capitol newsletter, declared Umberg the least partisan legislator in the Assembly, voting with his Democratic colleagues only 53% of the time in 1992.

“Tom is an independent force,” said Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood). “He hardly marches in lock step with the Speaker or anyone else.”

Several groups representing law enforcement’s rank and file, which can provide a potent dose of money and manpower to a statewide campaign, are also bullish on Umberg.

“I think he’d make a great attorney general,” said Cecil Riley of the 5,700-member California Union of Safety Employees. “If he runs he’ll get a lot of law enforcement support.”

With his well-clipped blond hair, amiable demeanor and spotless military record, Umberg has forged a reputation in Sacramento as a legislative straight shooter. There is nary a hint of disingenuousness as he talks about his childhood desire to become a crime-fighting attorney.

“I think it was in the seventh grade, we had to write a paper on what we wanted to do. . . . I remember saying I wanted to be a prosecutor.”

A native of Illinois, he attended UCLA before getting his law degree in 1980 at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. Instead of pursing a private legal career, Umberg spent the next five years as an Army prosecutor in Italy and South Korea. After a two-year stint in private practice in Newport Beach, he joined the U.S. attorney’s office in Orange County, earning plaudits while prosecuting cases involving white-collar crime, drugs and a well-publicized cross-burning incident.

Orange County has historically provided an avalanche of Republican votes to push successful GOP candidates over the top in statewide races. Lungren beat Smith by nearly 190,000 votes in Orange County, an outpouring of support that made the difference as he eked out a 29,000-vote victory margin.

But some Democratic strategists contend that Umberg could fare well against Lungren by cutting deeply into that traditional Republican cushion while holding onto liberal strongholds in Los Angeles County and the Bay Area.

“If there’s a new kind of Democrat, he is it,” said state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, widely regarded as a front-runner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.