NEWS ANALYSIS : Feinstein-Huffington Senate Battle Flares With Attack Ads

Finally this week came the multimillion-dollar video collision that the two leading U.S. Senate campaigns had predicted, marking the effective starting point in what is expected to be a race that could set new highs in political spending and lows in negative advertising.

Throughout the year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her campaign have sometimes seemed like Chicken Little when they warned that they were in a serious race.

At the same time, Rep. Michael Huffington (R-Santa Barbara) sounded pretty cocky when he told Republicans that he was going to zoom from obscurity to defeat one of the state’s most formidable politicians.

But this week, when the two campaigns exchanged a statewide barrage of attack television commercials, the reality of a major Senate battle sunk in. The clash became imminent after a series of recent polls found Huffington’s springtime television campaign had cut Feinstein’s lead by half in a hypothetical November matchup.

“The Feinstein campaign has decided to begin the fight,” said Darry Sragow, who managed Feinstein’s 1990 campaign for governor and now heads John Garamendi’s gubernatorial effort. “. . . Fundamentally, if you are an incumbent who all of a sudden finds yourself in a fairly close race, you have to respond.”

At GOP headquarters in Washington, Republicans were gleeful. Finally, they could talk about a new front in the national battle for control of the Senate. And they could prod the White House that its 1996 hopes for success in California were on the line.

“This race has certainly caught the eye for a lot of people who didn’t view it as an opportunity a year ago,” said Gary Koops, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “This is going to be one of the most closely watched races in the country.”

Campaign observers describe the recent clash as the starting gun of a race that still has a long way to go.

Huffington has to win the GOP primary on Tuesday, where he is favored. And Feinstein still comes into her reelection campaign with all of the assets and resources that make her a formidable candidate for reelection.

But this week was a benchmark.

* The conventional wisdom about money and campaigns was right this time.

When Huffington entered the GOP contest last fall with his vast personal fortune, he cleared the field of top-shelf Republicans and was expected to sweep through the primary. He still has to win his first statewide ballot test Tuesday. But his nearest GOP rival is former Orange County Rep. William E. Dannemeyer, whose standing in the polls has not exceeded the level he had when he lost the 1992 GOP Senate primary.

* Recent developments resolved the question of whether a wealthy but unknown Republican can pose a serious threat to Feinstein.

The Democratic senator seemed well prepared for a traditional campaign, with a veteran strategy team, polls showing her to be the state’s most popular legislator and praises coming in about her accomplishments since her 1992 election. But with his personal fortune from the sale of his family’s oil and gas company in Texas, Huffington has spent more than $6 million so far largely for attack television commercials that drove Feinstein’s support in polls down.

* The television exchange was a good snapshot of what experts think voters will see a lot of in this race--an enormously expensive slugfest waged largely through commercials.

Instead of barnstorming the state in the few days left before the Tuesday primary, both leading candidates have planned a low-profile schedule similar to their activities thus far in the campaign. At the same time, they are spending thousands of dollars a day beating each other up on television.

Feinstein’s commercial, her first of the campaign which started airing Tuesday, suggested that Huffington dodged his state taxes, prompting the Republican campaign to respond a day later with a commercial raising questions about whether Feinstein paid enough federal taxes. Neither campaign has any evidence of wrongdoing.

* Perhaps the most disturbing aspect for Democrats, however, is that Huffington’s major criticism of Feinstein, on television and in speeches, was her decisive vote to support Clinton’s 1993 economic package. That caught the attention of the White House because Republicans around the country might pick up the same issue if it proves effective against one of the Democrats’ strongest incumbents.

“It’s a bit unsettling to see how many (polling) points she can be hurt with just a few weeks of ads and particularly, for us in the White House, it was unsettling to see that tax message have an effect,” an Administration source said.

Democrats have portrayed the 1993 economic package as a deficit reduction and job stimulus plan that has helped turn around a sagging national economy. They also argue that more people saw a tax cut than an increase.

But Huffington’s gains have come while he describes the vote as a simple tax increase and a typical liberal Democratic solution to economic problems.

“If the budget vote becomes a big issue and we can convince people that the Clinton economic plan was good for the country, then we’re in good shape for 1996,” the Administration source said. “This race, as much as any in the country, is going to be about that. If she loses based on the economic plan, we could be in real trouble. Feinstein is not considered one of the most vulnerable members of the Senate.”

The six months remaining until the November election can be an eternity in politics.

“It’s too early to read anything of great significance in this because Feinstein hasn’t needed to establish aggressive advertising against Huffington,” said Bruce Cain, political science professor at UC Berkeley. “The context of the campaign will shift when we start getting more of a comparison between the two of them.”

In Washington this year, both legislators will have to make decisions on several watershed issues on which they are likely to disagree, such as health care, welfare reform and crime.

Also, although recent polls have shown the margin between the two candidates has tightened, they also indicate most voters still don’t know much about Huffington.

As more detailed comparisons are made between the two, Democrats are confident that Feinstein’s record of accomplishment will prove attractive. Republicans believe her record as a longtime politician will put off voters unhappy with government’s performance.

“I expect it will be a close race,” said Republican political consultant Ron Smith. “And clearly it’s going to be a very ugly year. Every time Huffington does something positive he’s going to find his numbers don’t move and when he does negative they move. And she is going to find the same.”