CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / 4TH SENATE DISTRICT : Prop. 187 Serving as Backdrop in Yet Another Race

In the dusty farmlands of the Sacramento Valley, a Republican state legislator is campaigning as hard against illegal immigrants as he is against his Democratic opponent.

But in an ironic twist to an ugly race, freshman Sen. K. Maurice Johannessen of Redding finds his own legal status under fire from Democratic challenger Mike McGowan of West Sacramento.

“I’m not the one who entered this country illegally, you are,” McGowan, 47, charges in a television spot directed at Johannessen.

“I am not an illegal alien,” insists Johannessen, 60, who nevertheless has said he “jumped ship” at San Pedro in 1952 as a 17-year-old merchant seaman from Norway. He says he was detained, deported briefly to Mexico, returned to California and became a naturalized citizen while in the Army.

“At no time was I illegal,” Johannessen said in an interview last week. “There was nothing illegal. Now (the McGowan campaign) is saying I want to stop everybody else from coming in. Horse manure.”

One Johannessen commercial depicts the purported takeover of a meeting of an unnamed California city council by a mob of “illegal alien activists” whose shouts drown out the pledge to the flag. “So, Mr. McGowan, whose side are you on?” the announcer asks.

The outcome in the 4th Senate District, stretching from the northeastern edge of San Francisco Bay to the Oregon line, is one of a handful of races that could determine whether Democrats keep their narrow control of the Senate.

Although Democrats in the mostly blue-collar agricultural district outnumber Republicans, 47.7% to 38.5%, the region historically has been conservative.

Johannessen, a bedrock conservative and wealthy real estate developer, is seeking a full four-year term in a reapportioned district that is mostly new territory for him. He first took office seven months ago after a special election.

Traditionally, protecting water against export to the south is the most visceral political issue in the rural north. But immigration has overwhelmed water in this campaign.

In speeches, mailers and broadcast advertising, Johannessen deplores what he says are waves of Latinos who illegally “come across the border for a free lunch” of welfare and other benefits.

“These are people that violate the laws of the land,” he tells audiences in the accent of his native Norway. He asserts that McGowan is backed by “liberals” in the Legislature who favor benefits for undocumented immigrants.

Johannessen is a strong supporter of the Proposition 187 illegal immigration initiative. McGowan also backs the measure, which he says is necessary to pressure the federal government into paying the costs of illegal immigration in California.

But McGowan, a Yolo County supervisor whose guilty plea on a 1984 drunken driving charge has become another campaign issue in recent weeks, claims that Johannessen is more than a fervent supporter of Proposition 187. By targeting illegal immigration of Latinos, McGowan says, his opponent practices hypocrisy and “is plugging into the fears and frustrations of Californians.”

The seeds of controversy over Johannessen’s own legal status were planted several years ago in a television interview in which he said he “jumped ship” at San Pedro to join his immigrant parents in Glendale.

In the interview, Johannessen said he was jailed, released and deported briefly to Mexico. Although unable to speak English, Johannessen said he returned to California and joined the Army when he couldn’t find a civilian job.

“When I got into the service, they did not know I was an alien,” he said. He said he was asked about his lack of English skills and told officials he came from a little village in Minnesota where only Norwegian was spoken. “They bought it,” he said.

Later, he said, the Army helped him obtain citizenship papers, Johannessen said.

In an interview with The Times, however, Johannessen amplified on his arrival in California and maintained he was never illegally in the country.

He said the term “jump ship” was a “common statement” of immigrants of the early 1950s and was not meant to imply that his departure was “done illegally.”

Johannessen said he went directly from the freighter to the immigration office at the San Pedro dock, where he showed officials his passport. He said he was detained overnight as a minor--but not arrested--until authorities “called my father to pick me up the next morning.”

Three months later, he said, he went to Tijuana where he “picked up the permanent (U.S. residence) papers. I stepped across the border of Mexico and was given the papers.” He said he went to Tijuana because U.S. residency documents were required to be issued in a foreign land and Mexico was convenient for him.

As for misleading Army authorities by saying he was from a Norwegian town in Minnesota, Johannessen said he did so because he was repeatedly asked by others, “How come you don’t speak English well?”

“It was driving me bonkers. That was just my way of getting away from (the questions). I was 18 years old, a kid basically being harassed. It worked,” he said.