Roberti Recall Effort Failing in Early Tallies : Politics: The state senator claims the drive is an act of revenge by the gun lobby.

In early election returns Tuesday, State Sen. David Roberti (D-Van Nuys) was leading by a 2 to 1 margin in his effort to survive a recall drive that has been closely watched nationally as a referendum on gun control.

Roberti, the first state politician in 80 years to face a recall, has claimed that the effort to oust him is the work of the gun lobby seeking revenge because of his support for a 1989 law banning military-style semiautomatic rifles, known as assault weapons.

All five of the candidates seeking to replace Roberti if the recall succeeded avidly championed the 2nd Amendment, the section of the U.S. Constitution that guarantees citizens the right to bear arms, and gun-control foes pumped thousands of dollars into the race.

At his election night party at an Italian restaurant in Sun Valley, Roberti, 54, said he was optimistic he would win a victory big enough to persuade elected officials nationwide that they need not be intimidated by the gun lobby.

“I feel very, very good about it,” Roberti said. “They’re going to know you can’t shoot at us without getting fire back.”

Among his opponents were Randy Linkmeyer, a Canoga Park gun store owner; and Al Dib, a retired green grocer who advocated the repeal of statutes that outlaw machine guns and make it illegal to carry concealed weapons.

Led by the Coalition to Restore Government Integrity, proponents of the recall acknowledged that they owed a huge debt of gratitude to gun owners. But they also insisted that their movement was not a captive of gun interests and that their gripe with Roberti stemmed from a critique of the senator’s 27 years in office.

“This recall is about taking government away from the politicians and the political machines who abuse the electoral system,” said Bill Dominguez, a Van Nuys systems analyst and a leader of the recall movement at an election party at the Airtel Plaza Hotel in Van Nuys.

But Dominguez inadvertently handed Roberti a public relations coup during the campaign when he had 15 guns stolen from his home--this as the recall supporters were insisting that the recall election was not about guns but about good government.

The recall measure qualified for the ballot after more than 20,000 registered voters from Roberti’s district signed petitions accusing Roberti of malfeasance in office and demanding that a recall election be held. Roberti initially planned to retire from politics, but declaring that he would not be forced out, decided to run for state treasurer.

Besides demonizing his foes as “assault weapons extremists,” Roberti’s other favorite campaign tactic was to charge that the recall was a waste of taxpayer money. According to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder, the cost of the special election will run at least $800,000. With local government reeling from the impact of the recession and the Jan. 17 earthquake, Roberti charged that the extra cost of the election was exorbitant, especially because term limits were going to force him to leave office anyway in December.

A primary election to pick Roberti’s successor in December will be held June 7. All the candidates who ran in Tuesday’s recall election to unseat Roberti are running in the primary, as well as other candidates. State Sen. Herschel Rosenthal is among those seeking the Democratic nomination. Rosenthal, 75, lost his West Side seat due to reapportionment and has moved into Studio City as part of his bid to shift his political base to the San Fernando Valley.

In its final hours, the recall campaign turned into a battle between the National Rifle Assn. and Handgun Control Inc., the leading adversaries in the nation’s ongoing gun control debate.

The NRA pumped nearly $50,000 into the race to pay for a five-day-long phone-bank operation while HCI poured money of its own into the race to pay for last-minute radio advertising. But perhaps more importantly, HCI loaned Roberti the support of its leader Sarah Brady, the celebrated gun control advocate. Brady, the wife of former White House press secretary James Brady, who was severely injured in the 1981 assassination attempt against President Reagan, was the key draw at a fund-raiser for Roberti.

A Times poll taken in late March found that two-thirds of the voters in Roberti’s district supported stronger gun control laws.

When Roberti showed up to vote at 1 p.m. in Van Nuys, he was confronted by Tanya Metaksa, executive director of the NRA’s Washington, D.C.-based legislative arm.

Metaksa intended to berate Roberti as a soft-on-crime liberal. Instead, she found the senator prepared to deal with her with a public relations gambit of his own. Accompanying the senator was Michelle Scully, who was wounded less than a year ago when Gian Luigi Ferri opened fire on office workers in a San Francisco high-rise with .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol that was a copycat of one of the assault weapons banned by Roberti in 1989. Scully’s husband, John, was killed in the same attack.

After Metaksa squeezed in close enough to identify herself, Roberti pointed to Scully and said, “Here, talk to Michelle! Her husband was killed and somehow she survived. Talk to victims of your kind of weapons!” Roberti then shoved his way through the camera crews to vote.

During the campaign, Roberti was able to defuse charges that he was soft on crime by winning the support of Los Angeles Police Chief Willie Williams, two other former city police chiefs, including Ed Davis, and the endorsements of numerous law enforcement organizations.

The power of Roberti’s incumbency was evident Tuesday as Sacramento lawmakers, led by Roberti’s successor as president pro tempore of the Senate, Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), converged on Van Nuys to help their embattled colleague with his get-out-the-vote drive. Joining this elite crowd of precinct workers were labor union and church activists who have had long relationships with the liberal Democrat.

Recall supporters alleged that Roberti had during his 27 years in the state Legislature at the very least tolerated a culture of political corruption that resulted in criminal charges and prison terms for three Sacramento legislators, including former state senator Alan Robbins of Van Nuys.

“If he didn’t know about the corruption he was incompetent, if he did he was corrupt himself,” said real estate broker Dolores White, one of five candidates who ran to replace Roberti.

Moreover, the recall proponents argued, Roberti was a carpetbagger (in fact, Roberti lives in Los Feliz, well outside the 20th District) who has championed ineffective gun control laws instead of laws to get tough on criminals. Here, they pointed to the fact that Roberti is philosophically opposed to the death penalty and had praised former California Supreme Court chief justice Rose Bird.

The recall movement was able to score the endorsement of the California Republican Party. But even this fizzled when the party’s leading figures, including Pete Wilson, shied away from recall.

The embattled senator also benefited from the political gaffes of his foes.

Within days of the start-up of the election, Roberti’s opponents fell into a credibility gap after the gun theft from Dominguez’s home.

Later, recall proponents tumbled into another public relations fiasco after it was disclosed that one of their constituent groups, Californians Against Corruption, was holding a raffle to raise money for the recall--with guns, including a semiautomatic rifle, among the prizes. Russ Howard, leader of the group, even admitted later that the raffle was poorly timed.

The other candidates in the race included Dolores White, 59, a real estate broker who is making her second bid to knock out Roberti and win his seat. In 1991, when Roberti first ran for the Valley-based 20th District seat, White was one of nine who challenged him.

The other candidate in Tuesday’s race was Larry Martz, 51, chairman of the American Pistol and Rifle Assn.

Times staff writers Abigail Goldman and Tracey Kaplan contributed to this story.

* MORE ELECTION RESULTS: A3, A21