CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : L.A. Leaders Back Feinstein; Huffington Assails Desert Act

Focusing on a region crucial to her reelection hopes, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein campaigned in Los Angeles on Tuesday and was embraced by its political leadership, while Republican challenger Mike Huffington, appearing at a political rally in Victorville, denounced her environmental record and the Desert Protection Act.

Feinstein’s endorsements from an array of Republican and Democratic leaders, including law enforcement officials, were aimed at countering Huffington’s charge that she is a tax-and-spend liberal who is soft on crime.

Huffington, who released two new television commercials, returned to Los Angeles late Tuesday after two days of stumping for votes in rural counties such as Fresno, Tulare and Kern--areas he must win by landslide margins to defeat Feinstein.

During those stops, as well as in a radio interview Tuesday morning, Huffington criticized news coverage of the campaign and suggested that he is running against the media as well as Feinstein.

Huffington also sought to put behind him the disclosure that he and his wife had hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny. The admission last Thursday rocked his campaign because the Republican congressman has endorsed Proposition 187, the ballot measure that seeks to bar illegal immigrants from receiving non-emergency services, including public education.

Other developments in the race Tuesday:

* With another $2.5 million in spending, Huffington brought his campaign’s total expense to $27.3 million compared to Feinstein’s $11 million. Weeks ago, the race became the most costly congressional contest in U.S. history.

* Huffington’s statement that Marisela Garcia, the illegal immigrant nanny he employed for more than four years, stopped working for the family in August, 1993, was disputed Tuesday by a former associate of the congressman. John Diamond, a Santa Barbara attorney who worked on Huffington’s congressional campaign, said he saw Garcia caring for the children in Los Angeles last May when Arianna Huffington was visiting a book sellers convention. Another source, who asked not to be identified, also told The Times that Garcia worked briefly for the couple this year. Arianna Huffington denied the report. “It’s a lie,” she said.

* While Huffington said his campaign’s polling showed a “dead heat,” a new poll released Tuesday by KCAL-TV found Feinstein’s lead at 7 points. She was supported by 45% of the likely voters compared to 38% for Huffington. A Field Poll on Monday showed Feinstein with a 6% lead over Huffington.

* As he has done since admitting he and his wife hired the illegal immigrant as a nanny, Huffington attacked the media for its coverage of the incident and maintained that reporters were acting as agents of the Feinstein campaign. At a GOP dinner Tuesday night, Huffington repeated a charge that a Santa Barbara journalist, acting on behalf of his opponent’s campaign, attempted to bribe the nanny and her husband into talking about the Huffingtons. “It’s an outrage, and the press buried it,” Huffington said, specifically mentioning The Times. “And Mrs. Feinstein does not deserve to be a senator if she is willing to bribe two illegal aliens to come out against her opponent.”

Both the Santa Barbara newspaper and the Feinstein campaign called the assertion absurd. “When faced with the truth that he broke the law, he resorts to more and more lies,” said Kam Kuwata, Feinstein’s campaign manager.

Since running for governor in 1990, Feinstein has worked hardest in Southern California, where she is less known than in her northern base, where she served 18 years as an official in San Francisco.

Feinstein appeared on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday morning with a group of city officials including City Council members John Ferraro, Zev Yaroslavsky, Nate Holden and Republican Joel Wachs. Also speaking on her behalf were Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, City Atty. James Hahn and Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block.

The city support came two days after Republican Mayor Richard Riordan grabbed national headlines by backing Feinstein.

The officials praised Feinstein on Tuesday for helping Los Angeles get its fair share of attention and resources from Washington--especially during the fires and earthquake. They also said, unlike many politicians, she has proved herself capable of working with Republicans and Democrats.

“Whenever our city has a problem, hers is the first number we call in Washington,” Wachs said.

Huffington wound up two days of stumping in the Central Valley and High Desert with a campaign stop in Los Angeles, the first visit to the city since his hiring of the illegal immigrant was disclosed.

He also released two new commercials amid word that his campaign would not--as previously expected--produce a commercial responding to the controversy over the nanny’s hiring.

In contrast to some of the harsh images found in other commercials this campaign, Huffington’s new ads--filmed in Pacific Palisades--show the congressman walking through the tree-lined outdoors accompanied by soft music.

The text of Huffington’s message remains biting.

“I’m Mike Huffington. Before you make your final decision in this Senate race, consider the clear choice you have,” he says in one ad. “Mrs. Feinstein is a career politician who has never had a real job, has run for office 13 times, does favors for special interests and believes in higher taxes, bigger government and weak judges. Those are simple truths.

“I’m an independent maverick who will shake up the cozy Establishment. No wonder they’re scared. With your vote, we’ll put California back on the right track,” Huffington says.

Feinstein’s campaign responded to Huffington’s attack in kind: “I think there are clear choices and there are basic differences. . . . You have a choice between someone who has been fighting for California to get more policemen, to secure the borders versus somebody who has admitted to breaking the law and will not step up to the plate and take responsibility for his action,” said Kuwata, Feinstein’s campaign manager.

In Victorville, Huffington criticized Feinstein for the desert bill and for her environmental views. “Mrs Feinstein puts the rights of rats and flies and fairy shrimp over people,” he said, accepting petitions with 18,000 signatures denouncing Feinstein for her support of the bill and calling for her impeachment.

Later, in Universal City, about 200 members of a San Fernando Valley coalition of Christian and Jewish congregations opposed to Proposition 187 held a candlelight prayer service outside a hotel where Huffington spoke at a Republican dinner.

Father Thomas H. Rush, a leader of the coalition called Valley Organized in Community Efforts, said he wanted to call attention to the “hypocrisy” of Huffington’s support of Proposition 187.

The message was a simple one, Rush said: “ ‘You took Marisela in as one of your own. But what about the rest?’ ” said Rush, a priest at Mary Immaculate Church in Pacoima.

During Huffington’s recent campaign stops, he has increasingly attacked the media. Before a breakfast meeting in Delano on Tuesday, Huffington told radio station KFRC in San Francisco that the media coverage was not only slanted but irrelevant.

On Saturday, Arianna Huffington accused the Santa Barbara News-Press of offering money for stories that are critical of the Huffingtons. Her proof, she said, would be in the form of a sworn affidavit by an employee. But the affidavit was never offered and the News-Press emphatically denied ever offering money for that story--or any other.

On Monday, the campaign did produce an affidavit, signed by the nanny’s husband, accusing Nick Welsh of the Santa Barbara Independent of offering money and a green card in exchange for a story about the Huffingtons. That affidavit, the campaign claimed, also showed Welsh was an operative of the Feinstein campaign.

That claim has been emphatically denied by the campaign and Welsh, news editor of the weekly. “I have never represented myself as an agent of the Feinstein campaign. I have never offered anyone a green card. It’s a big fat lie . . . and it is just an attempt to divert the media from the real story, which is his hiring of an illegal alien,” Welsh said.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Glenn Bunting and Jon Markman.