GOP Zeroes In on Influential Fazio in Conservative Area

They found a flat spot under two pine trees for the table. At the last minute, somebody brought an arrangement of fall flowers, so they stuck that in the middle. There is a jug of coffee, but nobody is drinking.

The guest of honor on this Saturday morning is their congressman, Rep. Vic Fazio of West Sacramento, a powerhouse in the Democratic Party and one of the most influential Californians in Congress. But they didn’t vote for him in 1994 here in tiny Red Bluff below Mt. Shasta. The site of this meeting is St. Elizabeth’s Community Hospital--a Catholic establishment receiving a pro-choice Democrat in a conservative county that prefers Republicans. Five people have shown up to greet him. This little gathering is not exactly warm and fuzzy.

An advocate of early cancer detection is complaining that rural women have no access to mammograms.

“What are you doing Monday?” Fazio inquires. “Wanna come down and talk to Donna Shalala about this?” The woman’s face goes blank. The secretary of Health and Human Services, a member of the Clinton Cabinet, here in Red Bluff? A town of 13,000 where three years ago you couldn’t even find a cappuccino?

“Seriously,” Fazio presses. “You wanna come down, you can have five minutes to tell her your frustrations.”

It is this sort of clout that might deliver Fazio from what is, again, the election of his life. For all of his influence in Washington--as Democratic Caucus chairman he is third in the minority leadership--Fazio is the party’s most vulnerable senior Democrat this year. Just two years ago, he outspent unknown challenger Tim LeFever 7 to 1 and won with a paltry 49% of the vote.

This time the GOP wants to finish the job. It has marked Fazio a prime target, in the company of Minority Whip David E. Bonior of Michigan and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Martin Frost of Texas, all tall timber the GOP would love to fell. And pundits say Fazio is the most endangered of the lot.

Newt Gingrich, Dan Quayle, Dick Armey and Charlton Heston have come to the Sacramento Valley to campaign for LeFever, a 35-year-old real estate agent from Dixon who is making a second run at the nine-term Fazio. The GOP has pumped $65,000 into the LeFever campaign, the maximum allowed.

“Mr. Fazio is on the run,” said Craig Vieth, spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee. “He’s part of our radical roster, and we’ve got a good candidate.”

Fazio’s troubles began in 1990 when California’s 3rd District was redrawn to include the northern Sacramento Valley’s rice fields, cattle ranches and tiny towns that don’t take kindly to government. Registered Democrats still slightly outnumber Republicans district-wide, but the gap is closing. They love him in the liberal Davis area, but he struggles in the north. Worse, McClellan Air Force Base, one of the region’s largest employers, was ordered shut down last year by the federal base closing commission.

“This is a very conservative district, and Vic Fazio is a very liberal congressman,” LeFever said. “He doesn’t think like us, act like us, look like us. He is extremely out of touch with his constituents.”

LeFever still embraces the “contract with America” and its now unpopular mastermind, Newt Gingrich. He opposes gun control, abortion and the family leave law. He favors term limits, a balanced budget amendment and the death penalty--issues he says resonate among rural and suburban voters.

As the contest over who will control the House grinds toward the finish, this is one of the more closely watched races in the country. A Fazio defeat would signal real muscle as the GOP struggles to do what it hasn’t done since 1931, hold onto the House two sessions running.

“What a coup it would be to take out Vic Fazio,” said Elizabeth Wilner, managing editor of the Cook Political Report. “There is great symbolism in being able to knock off a member of the party leadership. It gets a dynamic going that you don’t get in the Average Joe races, and Fazio is not in a very good situation.”

A Sacramento Bee poll early this month showed Fazio leading LeFever 50%-30% with 17% undecided. But Fazio aides note that the poll was conducted before LeFever aired a controversial television spot. The ad transforms the face of Richard Allen Davis, convicted killer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, into the face of Fazio, then decries his opposition to the death penalty. Fazio supporters hope that it will backfire.

“Outrageous,” White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta said of the ad. “Vic has always run tough races in this district. . . . We are confident he is going to win, but we are keeping an eye on it.”

It may be as much a measure of his clout as his desperation that Fazio has delivered to his district in the closing weeks of the race two Cabinet secretaries to address what urban snobs might dismiss as podunk politics. (He had Transportation Secretary Federico Pena out talking about how best to wash Yolo County school buses.)

LeFever scoffs at Fazio’s Washington sway: “Time and again we heard he is very powerful and we need him to keep McClellan Air Force Base open. Well, it closed on his watch.”

The closure was indeed a blow to the incumbent. Fazio tries to focus on his efforts to privatize the base and keep jobs in the district. “I’ve done everything I could to keep it open and even more to give it a future now,” he said.

If this 54-year-old veteran lawmaker has been changed at all by two years of LeFever breathing down his back, it might be seen in his meticulous attention to the problems of the so-called “cow counties” that redistricting bequeathed him. No problem seems too small for his attentions. This year he convinced Pacific Gas & Electric to run a gas line in Mineral, a little town of about 500 that was still relying on wood-burning stoves for cooking. His district stretches 200 miles; he has driven 75 miles to see six people.

“It’s important that you be physically there in the district as much as you can be, particularly when you are Avis having to try harder to be No. 1,” Fazio said.

*

A gun-metal gray Lumina awaits in the hospital parking lot and Fazio starts out for Orland, the olive capital of California. The wind is blowing and the air smells of burning rice fields, a fact of life around here. Fazio, whose hair was red before it turned gray, carries a sun block for his fair skin and an inhaler for his asthma, both of which seem aggravated by the Sacramento Valley climate.

The cell phone rings.

“Hi, Lane, how are you!” It’s Lane Evans, a Democrat from Illinois. He’s panicking. The GOP has marked his race and he needs cash. He has come to the right place.

“I guess you’re getting inundated, huh?” Fazio says soothingly. “How much cash do you have on hand? . . . We’ll definitely be able to help somehow . . . at least $500. . . . We’ll try to do more than that . . . OK, where do you want me to send it?”

He hangs up and grins. “That’s why the Republicans would like to get rid of me.”

One of the most prolific fund-raisers in the House, Fazio has raised $1.9 million and spent $1.2 million of it, leaving a fair amount to spread around to other Democratic candidates in need. LeFever by contrast has raised $396,000 and spent $211,000.

Whether the anti-government, take-no-prisoners style that served LeFever so well in ’94 will play in ’96 is unknown. Some say if conservatism sells anywhere, it is out here among California’s ranchers and farmers.

It remains to be seen whether Fazio’s grass-roots attempt to appeal to those conservatives will rescue him, whether enough lifelong Republicans like Denny Bungarz, a Glenn County supervisor, will forgive Fazio’s position on national issues and remember what his considerable leverage delivers back at home.

“I can overlook any of those areas I’m not happy with nationally, because what he’s done for the district is just outstanding,” Bungarz said, noting that he and his congressman disagree on gun control, welfare reform and a balanced budget amendment, to name a few issues. “Glenn County voted for LeFever last time . . . but quite frankly, why should we vote for a guy who is going to end up in the bottom of the pile when we’ve got someone in the top three?”