Feinstein Launches Reelection Bid : Politics: The senator enters the race in a strong position, according to polls. She is trying to court swing voters in the Republicans’ Central Valley stronghold.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein officially kicked off her reelection campaign Friday, telling voters that if they liked her first 17 months in office, they should elect her for another six years.

Speaking to about 300 supporters at the new Delancey Street housing project in San Francisco, Feinstein said she knew when she went to Washington that she would have to work fast to prove herself worthy of reelection.

On Friday she said she was confident that she has met the test, pointing to her work on a proposed assault weapons ban, funding for new Border Patrol guards and a deficit reduction package, and has added a woman’s voice to the Senate.

“What you sent me to accomplish, I have accomplished,” she said, flanked by her husband, daughter and granddaughter. “And so today, I say to the 5.8 million California voters who sent me to the Senate 17 months ago, I announce my candidacy for a full six-year term and I ask you to cast that vote one more time.”

Feinstein enters the race with a tail wind of strong poll ratings and the expertise of a candidate who has run two statewide races in the last four years: her failed bid for governor in 1990, followed by the election that ousted appointed U.S. Sen. John Seymour in 1992.

A recent Times poll found that she is well-regarded by nearly two-thirds of the state’s voters and she leads all her opponents by at least 2 to 1.

“I’d say she is in pretty good shape,” independent pollster Mervin Field said. “She seems to be resonating with the large middle majority of Californians and there has been an absence of any missteps.”

But Feinstein is running hard against an unpredictable challenge from a Santa Barbara millionaire who has promised to lavishly finance much of his own campaign.

Republican Rep. Michael Huffington must first defeat former Orange County Rep. William E. Dannemeyer in the June 7 GOP primary. But Huffington is already focusing his effort on Feinstein.

This week, Huffington put Feinstein on the defensive with a series of statewide television commercials attacking her as a big-spending liberal and criticizing her vote for President Clinton’s 1993 budget.

Feinstein did not identify Huffington by name Friday, but in her speech she rejected the charge that tax increases in the Clinton budget have hurt the economy.

“California is now creating jobs, not losing them,” she said. “The budget for which I voted is sowing the seeds of a new prosperity and, for the first time in memory, the federal budget is going down, not up.”

The 60-year-old senator, a former mayor of San Francisco, also highlighted her family’s lengthy history in California in a thinly veiled poke at Huffington, a former Houston oilman who moved to Santa Barbara in 1991.

“California is an incredibly special place,” she said. “It is my home; it is the place of my birth . . . it is where my mother developed her values, where I developed my values and where my granddaughter, Eileen, will develop her values. It is not a place to come for political opportunity.”

Feinstein has no substantial challenger in the Democratic primary this year and is therefore in the politically enviable position of being able to spend the election year spring courting swing voters. Her itinerary during the recent two-week congressional break has been a tour of traditionally Republican bastions.

She started with a visit to a portion of the Central Valley that she lost in the 1992 election, appealing to Republican audiences of ranchers and farmers. Later, she christened a B2 bomber before several thousand aerospace workers in Palmdale,

Her speech there caused some political watchers to do a double take. Conservative Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who had considered challenging Feinstein, said that after the speech he turned to former Rep. Mel Levine and said: “That speech is one good reason I didn’t get in.”

“It was a conservative, gung-ho hawk speech,” Dornan said. “I thought she got into my notes and gave the best Bob Dornan speech I’ve ever heard.”

The Central Valley also is shaping up to be a key battleground between Feinstein and Huffington. It was the first stop on Feinstein’s recent campaign swing and Huffington spent three days this week touring the farm country.

Feinstein angered agriculture officials in 1990 when she supported the Big Green environmental initiative and she lost the area to Seymour in 1992. In her recent tour, however, she found some thawing.

She was the guest at one event hosted by prominent Fresno County rancher John Harris, a Republican who has recently opened many doors for Feinstein and contributed $1,000 to her campaign.

Feinstein said she expects to be outspent by Huffington in the upcoming race. She hopes to raise about $10 million, just a bit more than she had in the 1992 race. But Huffington has vowed to spend $15 million and possibly more.

Still, as she runs her third statewide campaign, Feinstein is certain to finish as one of the biggest political fund-raisers in U.S. history, raising as much as $50 million since 1990. Her recent schedule has been packed with fund-raisers at homes and hotel ballrooms, including at least eight events in the last five days.