McClintock Considering Assembly Contest : Politics: Ex-GOP lawmaker may enter primary in quest for seat being vacated by Granada Hills Republican Paula Boland.

At the urging of one of the state’s richest political money machines, former Republican Assemblyman Tom McClintock is considering throwing his hat into the already crowded GOP primary race for the seat that Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) is leaving in 1996.

McClintock’s entry into the 38th Assembly District primary would sharply change the landscape of a race that now has no high-profile political names.

The 39-year-old McClintock, who served in the state Assembly for 10 years representing an eastern Ventura County-based seat and last year ran for state controller, confirmed this week that Independent Business PAC, a group closely affiliated with state Senate GOP leader Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove), is pressing him to enter the primary.

Independent Business PAC is the successor to Allied Business PAC, a group identified by California Common Cause as the state’s third-largest campaign contributor to state legislative campaigns in 1993-94. Founded by Hurtt, the group shares the state senator’s staunchly conservative views on taxes, abortion, gun control and school prayer.

A Hurtt aide confirmed that the committee was urging McClintock to enter the 38th Assembly District race. One political observer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, speculated that the PAC is not anxious to broadcast its role in McClintock’s exploratory candidacy. “They look like barbarians coming in here, pushing people around when there’s already good local Republicans in the race,” he said.

Meanwhile, candidates Scott Wilk, Boland’s chief deputy, and Ross Hopkins, a business consultant, said they were in the race to stay whether McClintock jumped in or not.

“I just hope Tom McClintock doesn’t split the conservative vote and let a liberal Republican slip into the job,” said Wilk, who is running as a conservative, as is Steve Frank, a Simi Valley-based political consultant.

Wilk said Republicans must beware of electing people such as former Assemblyman Paul Horcher or Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress). During this year’s tortuous speakership battles, Horcher and Allen sided with Democrats and are now widely seen as traitors to their party.

“McClintock’s an outsider, shopping for a seat that he can fill and use as a springboard for another run for some statewide office,” complained Hopkins, who is considered a moderate.

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Another candidate, Bob Larkin, a Simi Valley insurance agent and the former head of the Ventura County Republican Party, is also viewed as a GOP moderate.

McClintock confirmed in an interview Thursday that he was “seriously considering” running for the seat Boland must vacate due to term limits. The race to succeed the assemblywoman in the heavily Republican seat has focused on the GOP primary, set for March 26. The presumption is that the GOP primary victor there will easily win in the November, 1996, General Election. McClintock, who since January has been director of a Claremont Institute research program on state government issues, said the major obstacle to his entry into the race is finding a team at Claremont that can carry on his projects for redesigning and downsizing state government. The institute is a conservative, free market think tank.

“That’s my top priority--to assure that these projects won’t be hurt if I leave,” McClintock said.

McClintock, who said he maintains a home in Thousand Oaks, has been living during recent months primarily in the Sacramento area, where the Claremont research program is situated.

In 1992, McClintock, an anti-tax conservative who as an assemblyman faulted Gov. Pete Wilson as fiscally irresponsible, was defeated when he ran for Congress against U. S. Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills). In 1994, he ran for state controller but was defeated by Kathleen Connell, the Democrat.

McClintock said a poll by Independent Business PAC of voters in the 38th Assembly District was “very encouraging to me.”

The deadline for candidates to file for this seat is Dec. 4.

Addressing the charge that he is a political outsider, McClintock said that while an assemblyman in the 1980s he represented portions of what later became, through reapportionment, part of the Boland district, and that his house in Thousand Oaks is only about a mile outside the 38th District.

McClintock also denied he was looking at other races. Last week, some Republicans began talking up McClintock as a congressional candidate after Beilenson announced he would not seek reelection. But McClintock quickly knocked down those reports, saying his interest was in state, not national, affairs.

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In a report released in October, California Common Cause, a nonprofit watchdog group, said Allied Business PAC--Independent Business PAC’s predecessor--had contributed $1,085,388 to various state races during the 1993-94 political season, making it the state’s third-biggest contributor.

The second-biggest contributor was Container Supply Co./Rob Hurtt, which gave $1,215,559 during the same period to legislative campaigns. Hurtt is the president of Container Supply.

“The 1993/94 Top Ten list [of contributors] is distinguished by the extraordinary rise in political influence of Sen. Rob Hurtt and Allied Business PAC,” the Common Cause report stated.

“Hurtt, who was first elected in 1993, together with Allied were the deep pockets for many conservative Republican legislative candidates in the 1994 election,” the report added. “Allied Business PAC, an ideological PAC founded in 1991 by Hurtt, contributes almost exclusively to socially and fiscally conservative candidates. Unlike the other Top Ten PACs whose activities are financed by the dues of hundreds of thousands of members, Allied is financed almost exclusively by five wealthy Southern Californians: [Hurtt], Roland Hinz, Edward Atsinger, Howard Ahmanson and Richard Riddle.”

Hurtt, who last summer was elected Republican Senate minority leader, also is trying to find a successor to retiring state Sen. Newt Russell (R-Glendale), another term-limits victim. Hurtt reportedly has tried to discourage Boland from running for Russell’s seat against Assemblyman Bill Hoge (R-Pasadena), Hurtt’s preferred candidate.