ELECTION RETURNS : Late Absentee Ballots to Decide Brooks-Harman Race : Congress: GOP trend boosts challenge to first-term congresswoman, who trails by 93 votes. Horn, other local incumbents win handily.

The South Bay’s most competitive and closely watched congressional race lived up to its billing as the contest between Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills) and Republican Susan Brooks remained too close to call as of Wednesday.

Although Harman clung to hopes that she would survive the nationwide GOP trend that marked Tuesday’s election, she trailed Brooks and could be headed for defeat.

With all of the precincts in the 36th Congressional District counted, Harman was 93 votes behind Brooks out of nearly 165,000 ballots cast. An undetermined number of absentee ballots--perhaps hundreds--are left to be counted, and Harman’s campaign remained hopeful that it could put her ahead.

“We’re going to wait for the votes to get counted,” said Harman’s campaign spokesman, Roy Behr. “It’s too early to tell.”

Brooks’ campaign was optimistic, however, pointing out that the Rancho Palos Verdes councilwoman had an eight percentage point margin over Harman in about 14,000 absentee ballots counted on Tuesday.

If Brooks wins, it would be an upset. Harman outspent her opponent by more than 2-to-1 as of Oct. 19 and was the only congressional candidate in Los Angeles County to air commercials on local broadcast stations. The race was expected to be close, but most political observers expected Harman, who had worked hard to consolidate her hold on the district, to prevail.

For her part, Brooks gained a reputation as a pugnacious, outspoken campaigner. And she matched Harman with cable television ads and a few attack mailers in the waning days of the campaign.

Going into Tuesday’s vote, Democrats enjoyed a 30-22 advantage over Republicans in California’s House delegation. If Brooks’ lead holds up, the breakdown will be even--26 Democrats and 26 Republicans.

In other South Bay races, Rep. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach) trounced Cypress College professor Peter Mathews. Rep. Walter R. Tucker III (D-Compton), under indictment on charges he accepted bribes while mayor of Compton, won reelection, as did Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

The Harman-Brooks race attracted national party leaders from both sides to the district. Some pundits called it a quintessential matchup between a freshman incumbent, elected on Clinton’s coattails in 1992, and a challenger who tried to capitalize on an anti-Clinton backlash.

At Brooks’ campaign party at the Doubletree Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport, workers were jubilant as a four-piece band played Dixieland music when Tuesday night’s returns showed a victory within reach.

“If there has ever been a referendum on Clinton, this is one,” Brooks said as it became clear that her party would win both houses of Congress. Of her own tight race, she said: “That’s what happens when you run a colorful race and get in somebody’s face.”

As Harman’s supporters watched the GOP machine sweep to the West Coast on Tuesday night, enthusiasm dampened at their party at the Radisson Hotel in Manhattan Beach.

“People are angry, and I think for the most part we are seeing a protest vote,” Harman said.

If she loses after the absentee ballots are counted, it would end what many South Bay aerospace executives praised as a promising start in Congress. They shunned Brooks in the race and instead backed Harman, who gained seats on the House Armed Services and Science, Space and Technology committees.

But House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), in line to be the next Speaker of the House, pledged to find spots on those committees for Brooks as well.

If she wins, Harman said Tuesday night: “We’re going to have bipartisan government. I’m ready for that. I operate that way. I don’t think that hurts my ability to help the South Bay.”

Harman acknowledged as early as last spring that it would be a tough battle in the district, which stretches from Venice to San Pedro and where voter registration is split almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Almost from the day she was elected, she began amassing a campaign war chest.

That helped her in the closing days of the campaign, when she fired off a series of last-minute mailers, including one that questioned whether Brooks really favored abortion rights. Another suggested that Brooks abused perks on the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council, including a vote to buy seven new council chairs for $6,000. Rancho Palos Verdes officials, however, say the city ended up spending only $2,300 on the seven chairs.

Harman also waited until late last week to announce that she opposed Proposition 187, which will deny benefits to illegal immigrants, and her position was not widely publicized.

Her campaign crowed about its Republican crossover support, including almost all of the South Bay’s aerospace executives. The industry leaders praised Harman--a former aide to President Jimmy Carter--for drawing on her Washington connections to come through for the district. Among them was then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin, whom she lobbied in 1993 to keep the Los Angeles Air Force Base off the closure list.

Harman tried to walk a fine line between characterizing herself as an independent and embracing the Clinton agenda. She broadcast commercials throughout the L.A. basin--the only congressional candidate to do so--in which she declared, “My party leadership isn’t always happy with me.” Yet, as recently as the end of last week, she was at Clinton’s side when he was in Los Alamitos to announce a Chinese order of commercial aircraft to McDonnell Douglas Corp.

Brooks pounded Harman throughout the race for voting for President Clinton’s deficit reduction plan. And Brooks harped on Harman’s Washington past. She characterized her opponent as a carpetbagger who bought the election two years ago after a career spent largely in Washington.

Brooks’ attacks were echoed by GOP stalwarts such as House Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kansas) and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp--who stumped for her. Harman supporters were surprised that Brooks attracted such high-powered support, given that she was unknown in much of the district before she announced her candidacy in September, 1993.

Although the race in the 36th District was tight, other officeholders in the region, including the handful analysts regarded as facing more than nominal opposition, breezed back into office.

Horn rode the Republican wave to an easy victory over Democrat Mathews despite a preponderance of Democratic voters in the 38th Congressional District.

The challenger, a Cypress College associate professor of American government, was running in a district where 52% of the voters are registered as Democrats, but he got caught in the GOP undertow, said campaign manager Noah Mamet.

“With Newt Gingrich as our next speaker, you’re not going to do too well if you’re a Democrat,” Mamet said at a dispirited gathering at a Long Beach restaurant.

From the beginning, Mathews faced an uphill battle against Horn, a prominent public figure in the district since 1970, when he was appointed president of Cal State Long Beach, a post he held for 17 1/2 years.

“The big question I always heard was, ‘Who is Peter Mathews?’ ” said Long Beach City Councilman Jerry Shultz, a Horn supporter. “What’s his track record? What has he done for Long Beach or Southern California? “

Horn supporters say the margin of victory was widened by a series of Mathews “hit pieces,” negative mailers sent out late in the campaign. One, displaying a picture of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, asserted that Horn “sent millions to help Russian workers” but failed to help American workers.

“I think (my victory) is a referendum in the sense that people want positive campaigns,” Horn said Wednesday.

Mathews, who announced late Tuesday that he plans to run again in 1996, defended the mailer. Horn “voted against the President’s economic stimulus package,” Mathews said, “but he voted for foreign aid. We understand why he does things like that. He’s a Republican.”

In the 37th Congressional District, which includes Carson, Compton, Long Beach and Wilmington, Tucker was easily reelected.

Tucker, who was indicted in August on bribery charges, faced no Republican opponent, but he got a spirited challenge from Libertarian Guy Wilson, a merchant seaman from San Pedro. Wilson, who garnered just 45 votes in the June primary, drew almost a quarter of the popular vote on Tuesday.

“I will run again, and I’m going to be a pit bull next time,” said Wilson, who had not planned to campaign aggressively until Tucker was indicted. The congressman did not campaign in the district.

In the 35th Congressional District, which includes Gardena, Hawthorne and Inglewood, Waters sailed to victory over graphics designer Nate Truman, a Republican.

Times staff writer Edmund Newton and correspondents Jeff Kass, John Buzbee and Emily Adams contributed to this report. ELECTION TABLES: J5