CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / 28TH SENATE DISTRICT : Even at 84, Dills Isn’t the Retiring Kind

Well past an age when most politicians are content to retire and spoil their great-grandchildren, 84-year-old state Sen. Ralph C. Dills is battling for his political survival in the June 7 primary.

First elected to the Assembly in 1938, Dills is the kind of entrenched career politician voters undoubtedly had in mind in 1990 when they imposed term limits to breathe new life into the Capitol.

The South Bay Democrat seeks to buck the anti-incumbent tide and win one final, four-year term in the Legislature, where he boasts he has served longer than any lawmaker in California history.

With more than 37 years of combined service in the Senate and Assembly, the onetime professional musician and former judge is facing the longevity and age questions head-on. Dills has sprinkled the newly created 28th Senate District with billboards featuring a photograph of him playing the saxophone and emblazoned with the message, “Too Old to Quit.”

But Dills’ critics, including several Democratic primary challengers, say that he is out of tune with the everyday worries of voters: rising gun violence, unemployment and an endangered environment. Among them is George Nakano, a Torrance city councilman who seeks to become the first Japanese American to serve in the state Senate.

To win reelection, Dills must appeal for the first time to voters in a district stretching from coastal Venice to blue-collar precincts in Long Beach. Many of them don’t know him or care about his accomplishments, such as helping establish Cal State Long Beach.

As part of the legislative old guard and its mutual loyalties, Dills easily enlisted the backing of all but one of his Senate Democratic colleagues, including new Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer.

“Ralph is effective. He works hard,” Lockyer said in an interview, adding that Dills remains vital despite his lengthy service. At 84, Dills is 1 1/2 years younger--but has been a legislator longer--than the Senate’s oldest member, Democrat Alfred Alquist of San Jose.

In betting on Dills, Lockyer is backing one of the most flamboyant figures in the Capitol. Still something of a night owl, Dills once earned his living playing sax in honky-tonks. His ties are loud.

Dills’ hair commands particular attention around the Capitol. Carefully groomed to conceal a receding hairline, it regularly alternates between shades of blue and black. “It varies from week to week,” Dills admits. “It depends on what day we’re talking about.”

With his raspy voice, tinged with the drawl of his Southwestern roots, Dills paints a vivid portrait of sweltering Sacramento in the days before air conditioning, television and political reform. He recalls lobbyists offering to wine and dine lawmakers “day and night” and organizing special gambling trains to Reno.

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There is a wistfulness in his voice as Dills describes those “days of camaraderie,” but he does not dwell on the past. Dills is an active chairman of the Governmental Organization Committee, which handles gambling and liquor legislation. He frequently presides over Senate debates and says he has no intention of easing up.

“I’m not the retiring type,” he said.

At a recent roast in his honor, Dills poked fun at his own attempt at timelessness, saying, “I may not be here forever, although I’m trying.”

Even rock-solid Republicans acknowledge that Dills remains fit to serve and is considered a living legend. “He outlasts most of us on the floor,” Senate Republican Caucus Chairman William Leonard said.

Leonard maintained that Dills is vulnerable because his New Deal, pro-labor liberalism is out of touch with voters in the district. Nonetheless, Leonard said, the GOP won’t be ready until Labor Day to decide whether to pump money into the fall campaign of Dills’ Republican rival, expected to be David B. Cohen, 34, a Redondo Beach lawyer.

Democrats contend that the district is as liberal as Dills’ traditionally blue-collar turf around Gardena, which is excluded from the new district. In his old seat, Dills was so unbeatable that former Sen. H. L. Richardson (R-Glendora) once quipped: “They could put a lily on his chest and give him the last rites, and he’d win four years later.”

Reapportionment scrambled the political landscape so much two years ago that Dills considered running for Congress. But he stayed put and decided to launch another state Senate bid. In the process, he was forced to move his voting residence from his Gardena-area condominium, which is outside the new district, to a rented apartment in El Segundo--a switch assailed by his opponents as showing he has no real ties to the new district.

Along with the move, Dills, known as a friend of oil companies, appears to be making other switches. He has uncharacteristically embraced several environmental proposals, including a controversial ban on offshore oil drilling in state tidelands.

“That’s my (new) district and I’m voting my district,” said Dills, conceding that in the past he wasn’t always a perfect environmental vote. In fact, environmentalists have assailed the Governmental Organization Committee he chairs as a graveyard for air quality legislation.

Dills likes to remind voters he has consistently fought for the underdog, from poor people in the 1930s to gay men and lesbians in the 1980s. His challengers say that Dills’ portrayal as a liberal friend of the downtrodden masks cozy ties to such vested economic interests as oil refiners, card room operators and alcoholic beverage distillers.

Indeed, the California League of Conservation Voters has put Dills at the top of its hit list of incumbents to defeat.

Sam Schuchat, the political action group’s executive director, characterized Dills’ campaign contributions as reflecting “a veritable who’s who of polluters.”

Rival Nakano calls Dills a Johnny-come-lately on the environment.

“One who runs for public office ought to have conviction,” said Nakano, who is endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters. “You don’t change because it’s politically popular.”

Besides Nakano, 58, Dills’ Democratic rivals are Mike Sidley, 32, a Venice lawyer, and Joanne Rodda, 53, a Manhattan Beach real estate broker.

They seek to end one of the longest-running political sagas in California history.

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As a young man 60 years ago, Dills cut his political teeth as a leader in writer Upton Sinclair’s left-leaning End Poverty in California movement. Four years later, Dills, then a Latin teacher, captured a seat in the state Assembly.

In 1949, he resigned to become a Justice Court judge. Dills served on the bench for 17 years, qualifying him for judicial retirement pay of $71,400 a year. Along with his $52,500 annual salary as a lawmaker, Dills gets another $4,500 a year in Social Security and $1,800 annually in teachers retirement.

By the mid-1960s, Dills was ready to return to Sacramento. His chance came after the U.S. Supreme Court’s “one-man, one-vote” decision prompted the establishment of 14 1/2 state Senate seats in Los Angeles County, which until then only had a single district. In 1966, Dills captured one of the seats and has been easily reelected ever since.