CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : New Names, New Outlooks Emerge in Statewide Races

Vacancies in half a dozen statewide offices in this week’s California primary resulted in opening up the political vineyards to a new crop of candidates--among them a Latino political pro, a gay bureaucrat, a businesswoman and political novice--all promising spirited races in November.

The winners in these so-called “down-ballot” races below the rank of governor had faced a number of obstacles in Tuesday’s primary.

Few had name familiarity with voters across the state or abundant money to reach them. Many ran in multicandidate primaries and won without a clear majority. The two opposing candidates in the November runoff for the nonpartisan office of state superintendent of public instruction, for example, together received only about one-third of the votes cast in the primary.

Now the winners shift their attention to the one-on-one battles ahead, and many are already outlining the issues and attack strategies they hope will carry them into office. The Democratic nominee for state insurance commissioner, Sen. Art Torres of Los Angeles, captured 46% of the vote in a three-way primary to become the first Latino to win a major party statewide race in more than 120 years.

To get to the general election, Torres had to survive the attacks of his chief challenger, Assemblyman Burt Margolin, whose radio ads pummeled Torres for two drunk-driving convictions. He said he is braced for more of the same.

“It’s a no-brainer (to raise that issue),” Torres said. “But I’ll keep talking about the things that I think are important. I’m the only candidate that won’t take money from the insurance industry. . . . I’m effective, competent, qualified . . . and I’m also a Latino.”

On the Republican side, Assemblyman Chuck Quackenbush of Cupertino, who won with 38% of the GOP primary vote, promised a fall campaign emphasizing issues and leaving it to the media to raise questions about Torres’ driving record. His nearest Republican rival, insurance agent Wes Bannister, got 21% and former state consumer affairs director Jim Conran, 19%.

For the coming campaign, Quackenbush said he will discuss ways of luring more companies into the state.

“Our insurance market is the worst in the world right now,” Quackenbush said. “I want to talk about letting competition and the free enterprise system work on bringing prices down.”

In another three-candidate contest, acting Secretary of State Tony Miller surprised the pundits by winning the Democratic nomination to assume the post in his own right. His victory came at the expense of two seasoned politicians--former Los Angeles City Councilman Michael Woo and Assemblywoman Gwen Moore of Los Angeles, who divided the rest of the Democratic vote almost evenly between them.

The result made Miller the first openly gay candidate to win a major party nomination for a statewide post in California and perhaps the nation. Although his win was hailed by the Washington, D.C.-based Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, Miller downplays the significance of his sexual orientation.

“I’m not defining my campaign or my stewardship of this office in terms of my orientation,” said Miller, who has served in top-level appointed posts in the office since 1976. His platform, he said, includes winning support for major campaign finance reform and removing the office from party politics by making it nonpartisan.

In November, Miller will be opposed by Assemblyman Bill Jones of Fresno, who was unopposed in the GOP primary. Jones, the author of the state’s “three strikes and you’re out” statute that increases prison time for serious criminal offenders, wants to take aim at what he contends is rampant voter fraud.

He contends that the suspected assassin of Mexican presidential candidate Donaldo Luis Colosio was registered to vote in California, although a citizen of Mexico.

Perhaps the biggest upset of the primary came in the Democratic controller’s race, where Kathleen Connell, a businesswoman and former Los Angeles housing official, won easily in her first bid for elected office. Connell collected almost half of the vote against Alameda County Supervisor Don Perata and Assemblyman Rusty Areias of San Jose.

Connell said she plans to stick to her primary campaign message that “the state of California needs to be managed more like a business.”

Tom McClintock, who handily won the Republican nomination over real estate developer John Morris, is a former assemblyman from Thousand Oaks who described himself on the primary ballot as a taxpayers’ advocate. McClintock, a strong fiscal conservative, said his goal in running was to reduce the size and cost of government, “simply a culmination of everything I have worked for.”

Another surprise winner in Tuesday’s election was Sacramento businessman and former state Democratic Party chairman Phil Angelides, who defeated veteran state Sen. David A. Roberti of Van Nuys in a particularly nasty primary campaign. Angelides, in his first statewide election contest, won by more than 10%. He said the campaign would be about “creating jobs and using the state’s investment portfolio wisely. I want to take the skills I’ve shown in he private sector to lead the state of California.”

State Board of Equalization member Matthew K. Fong, unopposed in the Republican primary, has already begun airing television ads that promise increased efficiency in the management of the state’s investments.

In the 12-way race for superintendent of public instruction, voters picked two education establishment insiders to vie in November to head the state’s embattled schools. The top-place finish of Democratic Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin of Fremont, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, followed by Maureen DiMarco, the governor’s education adviser, also ensures the state’s highest schools post will be filled by a woman for the first time in its nearly 150-year history.

The close third-place finish of Pasadena businessman Wilbert Smith, a leader in last year’s heated ballot battle to provide tax vouchers for private school tuitions, served as a reminder that voters expect changes in the schooling of California’s 5.2 million students, several observers said Wednesday.

The fall campaigns of both DiMarco and Eastin are likely to resonate strongly with school reform themes--and who is the better equipped to carry them out.

DiMarco, a Democrat in a Republican administration, said that voters can choose whether they want “a professional politician or somebody who has spent her whole life working with kids,” she said Wednesday.

Eastin, a community college instructor before her 1986 election to the Assembly, will emphasize her strong backing by teachers and other education and business leaders as well as her accomplishments as a legislator. She also will continue to link DiMarco with the policies of Gov. Pete Wilson, who she said puts a higher spending priority on prisons than on schools. In the attorney general primary, both Republican incumbent Dan Lungren and Democrat challenger Tom Umberg had no opposition. But the race between them for one of the most powerful jobs in state government--historically a springboard for the governorship--promises considerable heat before November.

Umberg, a two-term assemblyman from Orange County, has already begun to assail Lungren’s performance. “Most people in California don’t feel safer than they did four years ago,” he said. “Most people don’t think we’re on the right track in fighting crime. Lungren has been AWOL on issues of crime control.” Lungren has promised to run on his record. Among the top achievements he cites are efforts to overcome the numerous appeals that threatened to block the execution of Robert Alton Harris, whose 1992 death in the gas chamber marked the first time in a quarter century that California carried out capital punishment.

“I’ve got a record of achievement I’m proud of and I’ll put it up against my opponent any time,” Lungren said. “This campaign will demonstrate the difference between the real thing and a pale imitation.”

The race for lieutenant governor will provide voters with a crisply defined choice between Sen. Cathie Wright, a conservative Republican from Simi Valley, and Controller Gray Davis, a liberal Democrat who once served as chief of staff for Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. Davis captured 90% of the vote against token opposition, and Wright defeated Assemblyman Stan Statham of Oak Run by almost two to one.

Wright made it clear she intends to carry out an aggressive, contentious campaign targeting Davis’ role in Jerry Brown’s controversial administration.

Davis said his campaign “intends to stay on the high road” by avoiding personal attacks and will center on the need to bring new jobs to California and to keep current employers from leaving.

Davis is proposing to bolster the job, using it as a platform to create public-private partnerships, developing ideas garnered from the public university system and helping employers to meet the state’s environmental standards.

Times staff writers Eric Bailey, George Ramos, Cynthia H. Craft and Dan Morain contributed to this story.