Losing Candidate in 36th Dist. Congress Race Drops Challenge : Politics: Republican Susan Brooks had claimed ‘phantom’ votes were cast in contest with Democratic Rep. Jane Harman.

Rancho Palos Verdes council member Susan Brooks on Thursday withdrew her challenge to the election last November of U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, despite vigorous attempts to show that widespread voting irregularities threw the contest to the two-term Democrat.

During six months of legal fisticuffs, Republican Brooks cited examples of “phantom” votes from vacant and commercial buildings, youth hostels, bed-and-breakfasts, mail drops and at least one restaurant.

Brooks said she backed off from her challenge after being told by staff members for a three-member, GOP-dominated House task force looking into the contested race that it could take up to a year to resolve the issue, leaving only four months before the 1996 election.

“We had to decide where our time and energy would be best spent,” Brooks told a group of 60 supporters at her office in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Brooks had vowed to run again for Harman’s 36th District seat regardless of the outcome of her now-abandoned challenge, and has already printed up bumper stickers for her next campaign: “Reelect Susan Brooks.”

The district stretches along the coast from Venice to San Pedro.

Harman attorneys claimed that technical problems with the challenge--late filing and failure to ask for a recount--should have invalidated it at the outset.

Democrats also viewed the task force’s pursuit of the charges as a partisan maneuver that flouted decades of precedent under the 1969 Federal Contested Election Act. They said that the law was supposed to help weed out frivolous challenges and that Brooks’ case was a weak one.

“I welcome this decision,” Harman said in a prepared statement. “It is clearly the right one. It is good that there will be no further distractions for the important work for the 36th District.”

The task force chairman, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said late Thursday that “Brooks’ withdrawal effectively ends the task force’s review of this election contest.”

Earlier in the day, a GOP staff member familiar with the task force investigation said the challenge was going nowhere. “This is a preemptive action in anticipation of a negative finding,” said the staff member. “This was a pretty messy thing all the way around.”

On Election Night, Harman trailed Brooks by 93 votes but pulled out an 812-vote victory after all the absentee ballots were counted.

In January, Brooks filed her challenge, citing nearly 1,000 “illegal and/or suspicious” votes. Five months later the task force kept the issue alive by asking Brooks to supply more detailed information on her charges.

Last week, the task force traveled to Los Angeles for a field hearing on the challenge. At the hearing Brooks updated the total of allegedly improper votes to more than 2,000 and asked the panel to give her subpoena power to conduct a further investigation.

Harman’s attorney claimed that about half the alleged illegal votes were based on national change-of-address forms that do not prove that improper votes were cast.

He also criticized Brooks’ methodology, saying her illegal-vote list included some people who did not vote or who actually live at the disputed addresses.

California’s honor system of voting and registering to vote came under scrutiny as the Brooks case unfolded. Under California law, voters are not required to present identification when casting their ballots. “It shouldn’t be up to one candidate to fix the voting problems of the state of California,” Brooks said Thursday.

Harman has also acknowledged that the system is flawed.

“There are some legitimate issues here about improper voting,” Harman said last week, “but they are not peculiar to my district.”

Bornemeier reported from Washington and Times correspondent Jennings reported from Los Angeles.