ELECTIONS / 38TH ASSEMBLY SEAT : McClintock Sets Sights on a Return

Backed by one of the state’s richest special-interest groups, former Assemblyman Tom McClintock has rented an apartment in Simi Valley and filed his intention to run in a crowded Republican race for the legislative seat being vacated by Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills).

McClintock, who has been living in the Sacramento area since leaving office in 1992, represented Thousand Oaks and Camarillo for a decade in the Assembly. He has been urged to run again by California Independent Business PAC, a group closely affiliated with state Senate GOP leader Rob Hurtt of Garden Grove.

“The PAC’s concern is that we have quality candidates that can contribute to a solid Republican majority in Sacramento this year,” McClintock said. “I am confident that my experienced background can play a decisive role in shaping a new Republican era in the Legislature.”

Yet, McClintock’s late entry into the 38th Assembly District’s GOP primary raised a chorus of criticism from other Republican candidates who have spent months preparing their campaigns. Sixty percent of the district is in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys and 40% in Ventura County.

“He moved to Sacramento three years ago,” said Bob Larkin, former Ventura County Republican chairman and a candidate in the race. “I thought we had six good candidates inside the district. I don’t think we needed someone to come in from out of town and run.”

Since he left office in 1992, McClintock has kept his home in Thousand Oaks, but moved to Rocklin, a Sacramento suburb, to work for various anti-tax groups. He is now director of the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank focused on proposals to shrink government.

McClintock defended himself against the carpetbagger allegation, saying he is moving into an apartment only four miles from his Thousand Oaks home and into a part of the 38th District that he represented in the Assembly before the 1992 reapportionment.

His new apartment is in the Wood Ranch development, a planned community on the western edge of Simi Valley. He said he will not move his wife and two children from Rocklin until July, when his 5-year-old daughter is out of school. At that point, McClintock said he and his wife will decide where to permanently relocate in the district.

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By then, McClintock will also know the results of the Republican primary March 26. The 38th District is overwhelmingly Republican in voter registration, making it extremely difficult for a Democrat to defeat the GOP’s nominee.

The Independent Business PAC is the successor to the Allied Business PAC, a conservative group co-founded by Hurtt that contributed more than $1 million to legislative campaigns last year, according to the government watchdog group Common Cause. It was the third-largest PAC in the state. Hurtt also controls the second-largest contributor, Container Supply Co., which doled out $1.2 million during the last election cycle.

The PAC sought out McClintock after a poll showed McClintock leading the field of Republican hopefuls. The relationship has rankled McClintock’s competitors.

“It is a perversion of our whole democratic electoral system,” said Ross Hopkins, a Republican candidate and business consultant. He said he hopes voters in Ventura and Los Angeles counties reject Hurtt’s plans as “a kingmaker from Orange County.”

Scott Wilk, Assemblywoman Boland’s chief of staff, who is also a candidate, said he has tried to persuade the Independent Business PAC to take a second look at McClintock’s record based on a 1992 report in The Times that described McClintock as opposed to proposals to outlaw abortions.

“McClintock’s weak stand on our pro-life issues will not win in the 38th Assembly District,” Wilk wrote to Danielle Madison, the PAC’s executive director.

In the same Nov. 16 letter to Madison, Wilk also restated his own record on the abortion issue, stating that he and his wife, Vanessa, have contributed time and money to the anti-abortion cause and belong to a fundamental Christian church in Saugus. “I am a devoted evangelical Christian . . . [and] I am unequivocally pro-life,” Wilk wrote.

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Madison has said that her group is not trying to “cram Tom McClintock down the throats” of voters in the 38th Assembly District. She said she did not expect the PAC to contribute to McClintock’s campaign because he showed himself to be a good fund-raiser in his unsuccessful race in 1994 for state controller.

McClintock said he has not been promised any contributions from the PAC, nor has he sought any. “I raised $1.3 million last year and a half-million in 1992” during his unsuccessful congressional campaign. “I’m very confident of my ability to fund my race and assist other candidates elsewhere.”

McClintock also dismissed the complaints about his relationship with the Independent PAC as hypocritical. “They were all courting the support of this PAC, up until the moment that the PAC asked me to look at the race,” he said.

His entrance into the race has strained relations with another conservative candidate. Steve Frank, a Simi Valley-based government affairs consultant, complained that McClintock has not returned phone calls inquiring about his intentions.

“I think Bob Larkin said it best: He’s a poster boy for term limits,” Frank said of McClintock. “A career politician has to do what a career politician has to do.”

Peggy Freeman, a retired Santa Clarita Valley community clinic director, and Robert Hamlin, a retired Ventura County sheriff’s deputy who lives in Castaic, also are Republican candidates in the race.