GOP Striving to Hold a Political War Zone

Steve Kuykendall, a Republican state assemblyman, is hosting a cocktail party at a rent-a-ballroom under the Vincent Thomas Bridge in the Los Angeles Harbor. As he speaks to a group of 100 or so Republican supporters, massive container ships go by every few minutes, filling up the bay windows behind him.

As symbols go, the harbor is a fitting one for Kuykendall. It is in the heart of his 54th Assembly District, which stretches from his hometown of Rancho Palos Verdes, through San Pedro and into Long Beach, where most of the voters live.

It is an area now held by Republicans, but it is one rich with Democratic votes.

“These are the kind of seats Republicans need to hold to maintain our majority in the Assembly,” said Kuykendall, who is running against Gerrie Schipske, a lawyer and nurse practitioner from Long Beach.

Like other legislative districts in Long Beach and southeast Los Angeles County, the 54th is considered a swing district, one that could go either way in the Nov. 5 general election and thus influence the balance of power in the state Legislature and Congress.

Kuykendall’s district is part of a cluster of one congressional, one state Senate and three Assembly districts that includes all or parts of Long Beach, San Pedro, Compton, Bellflower, Lakewood, Downey and surrounding communities.

The region is a mix of heavy industry, with the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors, major aerospace plants and seemingly endless miles of post-World War II tract housing.

It is also known for independent voters and one-term incumbents. In this political war zone, four incumbents have been defeated in the last two election cycles. Voters don’t seem to have preferences, knocking off both Republican and Democratic legislators.

One of the factors feeding the rapid turnover of seats is the relative parity between Democrats and Republicans, according to those who have studied the politics of the region.

Even though Democrats are in the majority, many of them have a history of voting Republican. In seeking parity between the parties when it redrew district boundary lines in 1992, the state Supreme Court helped turn two once-safe Republican seats into tossups and contributed to the defeat of one Democratic incumbent.

Given the fickleness of voters in the region, both parties have been pouring volunteers and campaign contributions into the races.

In the end, the 1996 state and federal elections could be decided by how well President Clinton’s reelection campaign goes. In 1992, when Clinton ran strong, Democratic candidates also ran well, defeating one Republican incumbent and nearly toppling another. But in 1994, a Republican year, Democrats got swamped and lost two Assembly seats.

“Out of 139,000 ballots cast in 1992, I lost by 542 votes,” said Republican Assemblyman Phil Hawkins of Bellflower, who came back two years later to defeat Democratic incumbent Bob Epple by a comfortable margin. “In 1992, I think I lost because of George Bush. The Clinton sweep came through and I just didn’t have enough money to keep up.”

Already this year, Clinton has been in Long Beach to applaud and promise support for the Naval Shipyard, the McDonnell Douglas aircraft plant and the public schools.

“Bill Clinton has been in and out of Long Beach so much you would think he was running for the City Council,” said Parke Skelton, a Los Angeles political consultant who is working for Kuykendall’s opponent, Democrat Schipske.

Hawkins, who is running against onetime Democratic legislator Beverly Karnette in the 27th Senate District, is one of those anxiously watching Clinton’s strong showing in voter opinion surveys. Asked how he thought Clinton’s apparent popularity might affect his race, Hawkins said “more than I want it to.” Karnette, a career schoolteacher, lost her seat in the Assembly to Kuykendall after one term. She and Hawkins are running for the Senate seat being given up by veteran Sen. Robert G. Beverly, who has served the maximum number of terms allowed by law.

Two years ago, Kuykendall was elected by fewer than 600 votes, defeating Karnette, a Democrat, to literally become the Assembly’s 41st Republican and help give the GOP the controlling majority in the 80-seat Assembly for the first time in decades.

In the process, he made headlines when he became the recipient of an eleventh-hour $125,000 contribution from tobacco giant Philip Morris. The money came in so late that Kuykendall did not have to report it until after the election, but it did arrive in time for the assemblyman to pay the postage for large bundles of political mail that arrived at voters’ doorsteps just before the election. Kuykendall concedes it was a significant factor in his narrow election victory.

This year, there have not been large contributions from tobacco interests--Kuykendall said he would refuse to accept money from cigarette manufacturers--but Schipske is keeping the issue alive by juxtaposing her nursing background with his support from tobacco interests. For example, she prescribes a bottle of “tobacco cash withdrawal pills” for Kuykendall.

During the current campaign, Kuykendall has come under fire for using tax money to mail out an oversized broadside attacking liberals in the Legislature as being soft on crime and urging constituents to write to the Legislature in support of tougher criminal sentences.

Kuykendall, who showed up as one of the 80-member Assembly’s top 10 users of the franking privilege in a Times computer analysis, said that using the mail is the best way he has to reach constituents. He said the money to pay for the mailings comes out of his $240,000 annual office budget.

Schipske, supported by a coalition of teachers, nurses groups, firefighters, police and the League of Conservation Voters, said the flier was “a transparent way to use public money to campaign.”

In other area Assembly races, former legislator Richard E. “Dick” Floyd of Wilmington is trying to get back into the Assembly in the 55th District, which includes parts of Long Beach, Compton and Carson. He is running against Republican Ronald Hayes, a Long Beach businessman.

Two candidates who have never run for state office--community college instructor Sally M. Havice and Richard Lambros, a public affairs director for an apartment association--are running in the 56th District for the seat being given up by Hawkins. That means the district, which includes parts of Long Beach, Lakewood, Cerritos and Downey, will have its third representative in four years.

As an example of the high stakes involved in running for these offices, Lambros, despite his lack of experience, ranked third among all Assembly candidates in generating cash contributions in the March primary, according to a statewide survey by the California Public Interest Research Group, part of the coalition backing Proposition 212, the campaign reform measure that would sharply curtail campaign contributions.

Lambros took in $470,000 in the primary, the survey showed. Hawkins ranked second among Senate candidates, taking in $601,000 in the primary.

As a result of the turnover of seats, Rep. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach), is the leader in seniority among all officeholders in the Long Beach area after just four years representing the 38th Congressional District.

Horn, the former president of Cal State Long Beach, is being challenged by Rick Zbur, an environmental attorney. Their race is one of several key congressional races in California that national party officials say could break the 26-26 deadlock among Republicans and Democrats in the California congressional delegation.

Horn, who represents a district in which Democrats have held as much as a 50%-35% edge in voter registration, has been stressing his bipartisan approach to issues such as protection of Medicare.

Zbur, meanwhile, is trying to remind Democrats that the Long Beach/Los Angeles harbor area was represented in Congress by Democrat Glenn Anderson for 22 years until Horn won the seat in 1992 upon Anderson’s retirement.

“Our task is to bring these Democrats home,” said Zbur. “The president is going to do very well in Long Beach, and the more he comes here the more it helps Democratic candidates.”