Rep. Harman Planning to Move Out of Marina : Politics: Congressan’s bid to buy an estate in Rolling Hills draws criticism from contender who wants to unseat her.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Marina del Rey) said last week she is negotiating to buy an ocean-view estate in Rolling Hills, an exclusive, gated community with one of the highest per capita incomes in Southern California.

Harman, whose residency has been an issue since before her election in 1992, came under fire last year when she moved her two youngest children to the nation’s capital to be closer to them. Her prospective purchase of a home in a community where only residents and their guests are allowed drew further criticism last week.

“I’m not trying to say Rolling Hills is a bad place,” said Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor Susan Brooks, who has launched a campaign for Harman’s job. “But it’s not the real world. It’s insulated, it’s got the security . . . and will allow her to go home and not deal with the public.”

*

Harman said she is not trying to insulate herself from her constituents. She and her husband became interested in Rolling Hills, she said, because they want a larger lot.

The four-bedroom house, which sits on seven acres, once had an asking price of more than $3 million. It would replace the home in Marina del Rey that the congresswoman shares with her husband, Sidney Harman, an audio equipment manufacturer, and their children, 9 and 11.

The Harmans have made an offer on the Rolling Hills property, which has a tennis court, but are still negotiating with the owners over such issues as repairs.

If an agreement on the house is reached, Harman and her husband will keep their $1.8-million home in Washington but plan to sell their $2-million Marina del Rey house, which, she said, has “no land whatsoever.”

*

“What Palos Verdes has to offer is a reasonable amount of land,” Harman said. “It’s quiet, and it’s the kind of place where I think our family could hang out.”

Rolling Hills is an incorporated city of about 600 homes and a City Hall in the heart of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. It has no businesses or industry and a per capita income of more than $150,000. The only other city in Southern California with as high a per capita income is Hidden Hills in the western San Fernando Valley, according to the 1990 U.S. Census, which does not record incomes that exceed $150,000.

Although Rolling Hills lies within Harman’s 36th Congressional District, which stretches from Marina del Rey to San Pedro, the prospective purchase is not likely to quiet opponents who contend that Harman is tied more closely to Washington than to the district she represents.

The Harmans, who have lived on both coasts since 1980, made Marina del Rey their primary residence two years ago. Before that, they owned a home in Brentwood.

During the 1992 election, opponent Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores frequently portrayed Harman as a carpetbagging outsider who moved to the area solely to run for office.

Brooks has continued to sound the theme despite Harman’s protestations that she made 31 trips to the district last year.

Brooks, in a campaign newsletter published by Carpetbagger Press, wrongly reports that Harman has already purchased a mansion in Rolling Hills and suggests as a housewarming gift “Maps of the South Bay.”

“She’s not moving in,” Brooks added. “The only one who’s going to live there is the butler.”

Brooks, who lives in a three-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot tract house in Rancho Palos Verdes, says Harman’s interest in Rolling Hills shows “she’s not down with the people.”

Harman said that is nonsense. “The residents of Rolling Hills are friendly, down-to-earth people. It’s not the part of Palos Verdes with the fanciest homes--not by a long shot.”