Stage Set for Partisan Battle Over Control of Legislature

A seven-month struggle for partisan control of the California Legislature began Wednesday after a primary election in which conservative Republicans won a third grudge match in the Assembly and Democrats solidified their tenuous grip on the Senate.

Tuesday’s low turnout set the battle lines for an expensive ideological fight for dominance in the 80-member Assembly and 40-member Senate, to be settled in the Nov. 5 general election.

Barring surprises, the outcome is expected to be decided in a dozen key Assembly contests and a handful of open Senate seats.

Turnout in the fall will be critical, said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican political consultant in Los Angeles and chief author of California Target Book: The Authoritative Guide to Campaign 1996.

“The biggest question is how many candidates are running for president,” Hoffenblum said in describing what would bring voters to the polls. “That is the unknown factor, and what impact that will have on California.”

All 80 Assembly seats are up for election this year, along with half of the 40 Senate seats.

The grudge match was in the Central Valley, where conservatives defeated incumbent Assemblyman Brian Setencich of Fresno, a Republican who was speaker for four months late last year, mostly with the support of Democratic members. He was the third Republican or former Republican Assembly member deposed out of revenge for collusion with the opposition party. The others, Paul Horcher and Doris Allen, were defeated in recall elections last year.

The major victory for Democrats came in a special election for a vacant state Senate seat based in the peninsula south of San Francisco. Veteran Assemblyman Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto) defeated Republican Patrick Shannon, 31, a former aide to Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, in a district that has been held by Republicans for decades.

Sher will serve the unexpired term of Republican Tom Campbell, who resigned from the Senate after winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Sher and Shannon will meet again in November for a full four-year term.

With Sher’s victory, Democrats now hold 22 Senate seats, Republicans hold 16 seats and independents hold two.

Senate Republican Leader Rob Hurtt of Garden Grove said Democrats out-organized the Shannon campaign.

“They had an experienced candidate and we didn’t,” he added. “That makes a difference.”

“I feel much better about November because there is time and continuity,” Hurtt said.

In the Assembly, Setencich succumbed to an eleventh-hour infusion of $200,000 in campaign contributions to his little-known opponent, Robert Prenter, 31, a surgical instruments salesman.

The funds came from the California Independent Business Political Action Committee of Pasadena, the successor to a committee controlled in part by Hurtt. One of the committee’s co-founders was identified as Prenter’s uncle, Edward G. Atsinger III, owner of a chain of Christian radio stations.

A Republican source close to Hurtt and his associates in the political action committee described the upset as “payback.”

“When you look around, every one that crossed them is gone,” the source said.

Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), who is Hurtt’s chief protagonist in the upper house, put it another way: “It certainly demonstrates the willingness of the Republican right wing to purge anyone who ever disagrees with them.”

Other than Setencich, Lockyer said, the primary was “a disaster” for Hurtt.

Lockyer cited the Sher victory in a crucial Senate contest and the victory of incumbent state Sen. Teresa Hughes (D-Inglewood) over a challenger from her own party, Assemblyman Curtis R. Tucker Jr., also of Inglewood.

Hurtt stunned political experts two weeks ago when he pumped $40,000 into Tucker’s campaign, ostensibly because Tucker would be more friendly to California business interests in the Senate. Although the race was thought to be close, Hughes won the Democratic primary with 58% of the vote.

Because the district is overwhelmingly Democratic in registration, winning the primary is tantamount to reelection.

Hurtt dismissed his involvement in the Tucker campaign as “a little rear-guard action.”

GOP chances of gaining ground in the Senate were also diminished with the loss of the Hurtt-backed candidate in a district now held by Sen. Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton).

Johnston has been on the GOP target list of potentially vulnerable senators.

Experts who picked through the returns Wednesday cautioned against looking too deeply for signs of what might happen in the general election.

Among Republican races, Hoffenblum said, “there were areas where moderates won and areas where the religious right won. It was a pretty mixed bag. A lot depended on who had the most money.”

One of the big winners Tuesday was the Democrats’ Latino caucus, led by state Sen. Richard Polanco of Los Angeles and Assemblyman Cruz Bustamante of Fresno.

“The Latinos ran a highly sophisticated operation,” Hoffenblum said. “They were doing good targeting, making sure the money got to the right places. . . . They’re learning how to play the game.”

He cited the victory of Tony Cardenas, a Sylmar real estate broker, in the strongly competitive Democratic primary to succeed Assembly Democratic Leader Richard Katz, who is one of the 25 Assembly members forced to retire this year because of term limits.

Times staff writer Max Vanzi contributed to this story.