CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / U.S. SENATE : Huffington Makes Pilgrimage to Border

Republican Senate candidate Mike Huffington took his turn Thursday standing on a dusty ridge overlooking the international border and complaining that the steel fences separating Mexico and the United States have become too porous.

Huffington stopped his caravan of press and federal agents at a spot near the one where his rival, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, stood earlier this year to film a commercial about illegal immigration for her reelection campaign.

Gov. Pete Wilson and his Democratic challenger, Kathleen Brown, have also made the trip.

Like each of the others, Rep. Huffington (R-Santa Barbara) came out in favor of duplicating in San Diego an experimental program that has recently proven effective at stopping almost all illegal entries in El Paso, Tex.

“It has been an unbelievable success,” Huffington said of the Texas program. “Even though our borders are a little different here, it is something we ought to try. Let’s see if it works in a year. If it doesn’t, I’ll be surprised.”

Huffington’s border tour came as the Senate race heads into a crucial homestretch with Feinstein holding a slim six-point lead among likely voters in a Times Poll published this week. The poll also found that more than half of the state’s voters still don’t know much about Huffington.

With that in mind, the Republican’s campaign is planning to begin airing another television commercial today that presents a positive image of the candidate as a family man and tax-fighter.

Part of the 60-second commercial also seeks to counter Huffington critics who call him a carpetbagger because he did not move to California until 1991. The ad notes that nearly 1 million people left California after recent tragedies such as the fires and earthquake but, in contrast, Huffington and his family moved back “to the state that educated him” at Stanford.

Immigration has been such a hot issue in California politics this year that the road to elected office seems to pass through San Ysidro.

But while all four major party candidates for Senate and governor have called for the Texas-style border deployment in California, local immigration officials say they don’t think the idea would work.

Gustavo De La Vina, the western regional director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said he believes that deploying a wall of agents along the border every 100 yards, as El Paso has done, would provoke violence because of the greater volume and desperation of migrants here.

San Diego immigration officials also say the rugged terrain in their area is more difficult to guard than the border river in El Paso. As a result, U.S. Border Patrol spokeswoman Ann Summers said officials estimate the plan would require between 6,000 and 15,000 more guards added to the 1,100 already on station in San Diego.

But Huffington dismissed those estimates. “That means they’d be holding hands,” he said.

Huffington said he believes the job can be done in San Diego with about 1,000 additional guards. The El Paso program, he noted, has achieved its success with 400 guards.

On a related issue, Huffington said he has not yet taken a position on Proposition 187, the initiative that would deny public benefits other than emergency health care to illegal immigrants. Feinstein has also not decided whether to support or oppose the measure, which has proven popular in opinion polls.

Huffington, who said he will announce a position before the election, does not believe that youths in the country illegally should be allowed to attend public schools. But he said he still has some concerns, such as whether the measure would preclude illegal immigrants from obtaining immunizations for infectious diseases.