Salinas a Key Front in Battle for Assembly

Peter Frusetta’s campaign trail is more like a meandering path.

One day last week, the first-term Republican assemblyman’s handlers penciled him in to attend a rally in Gilroy with Elizabeth Dole. Frusetta, 64, a cattle rancher known for his cowboy hats and neckerchiefs, had every intention of showing up.

Local newspapers and television stations would be there to photograph him with Dole. That couldn’t help but boost his reelection campaign, which, in turn, would help the GOP.

Republicans hold a 41-seat majority in the 80-seat Assembly, partly because of Frusetta’s upset victory in 1994. This year, Republicans and Democrats again are battling for control of the lower house, and a main front is Frusetta’s Salinas Valley district.

The high political stakes aside, Frusetta needed a break. So he skipped the event and took a rest at home. The day before, handlers couldn’t reach him. The reason: He got to thinking about how he hadn’t seen his elderly cousin Eleanor for a while, so he dropped by her place.

When he’s on his ranch in Tres Pinos--and he’s there a lot--he doesn’t pick up his phone. Cell phones often don’t work there. So his handlers must drive out to track him down.

Frusetta’s Sacramento campaign consultant, Wayne Johnson, can only shake his head. Frusetta, he says, is the consummate citizen-politician.

“How do you chew a guy out for visiting his cousin Eleanor?” Johnson says.

There was a time when no one would have noticed. When Frusetta captured the seat in 1994, Republican Party bosses didn’t give him a nickel, let alone assign a consultant to run his campaign. He and his friends hand-painted campaign signs, loaded them onto his ’82 Ford pickup and hammered them up by themselves.

All that has changed. Democrats have declared Frusetta to be a top target for defeat. Their candidate is Lily Cervantes, 40, a former Coastal Commission member. More recently, Cervantes worked as a prosecutor in the Santa Cruz County district attorney’s office.

“The road to 41 runs through Salinas,” says Assembly Democratic Leader Richard Katz of Sylmar, heading the Democrats’ effort to retake the lower house. “If we win, we certainly have the majority back.”

Indicating the importance placed on the race, Democratic Assembly members and the state party have given Cervantes at least $185,000 of the $288,000 total she raised through the end of September.

“I’m not intending to lose the Frusetta seat,” Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle said, promising to spend as much as it takes to ensure Frusetta’s reelection. Led by Pringle, Republican lawmakers and the state GOP have given Frusetta more than half of the $320,000 he has raised so far.

“It makes me feel a little helpless,” Frusetta said before a recent campaign appearance. “Last time, I had my thumb on everything.”

Politicians don’t get much more folksy than Frusetta. He calls himself the cowboy in the Capitol.

His news releases read like letters from a traveling relative. He writes about changes in the weather, how he observed a blackbird perch on his car bumper and eat bugs from the radiator, the influence of lobbyists, and the speakership fight that dominated his first year in office.

He was among the few Republicans who considered breaking from the GOP and supporting Democratic-backed Republican candidates for Assembly speaker. But he’s Pringle’s supporter now, calling him honest, though “a little bit too far right.”

“I was indeed at times disgusted,” Frusetta said. “It was disillusioning. I thought there would be more harmony. I was disturbed to see lobbyists play such a big role.”

Democrat Cervantes also positions herself as an anti-politician, quoting a Jay Leno definition of “politics”--poly, meaning many; tics, meaning bloodsuckers.

She endeavors to portray Frusetta as something more than a cowboy. She cites a Los Angeles Times investigation that identified him as the largest user of the Assembly’s franking privilege, sending more than $100,000 worth of letters to his district.

“I’m not a bit ashamed of what I did, not at all,” Frusetta said, contending the mailers were used simply to keep constituents informed.

The two candidates could not be more different. Frusetta is a father of four, grandfather of eight and patriarch of a fourth-generation family who oversees a 10,000-acre cattle, oat and barley ranch.

Cervantes is single and has no children. Her parents divorced when she was a teenager. She has no contact with her father, but thinks he’s a farm worker. Her mother drives a bus, though when Cervantes was a child, her mother worked in tomato packinghouses.

Cervantes’ activism dates to her teenage years, when she was living in government housing in the Salinas Valley town of Gonzales with her four brothers and mother. Around 1973, a political organizer who had worked for the United Farm Workers knocked on the door.

“I can remember what he said: ‘I want to talk to you about your rights,’ ” Cervantes said.

The organizer proceeded to get Cervantes’ mother involved in a tenants’ rights organization and Cervantes in a youth group. The organizer handed Cervantes a copy of labor organizer Saul Alinsky’s book, “Rules for Radicals,” and demanded that she read it.

The organizer’s name was Richie Ross. Ross soon left the Salinas Valley for Sacramento, and went on to become one of the Democrats’ preeminent political consultants. Cervantes got back in touch with him after she completed law school at Santa Clara University.

Then, two years ago, seeking a candidate to run in what was an open seat, Ross urged Cervantes to enter the race. She lost to Frusetta by fewer than 400 votes. Ross is handling her campaign this time.

In the rematch, Cervantes has some factors in her favor. Democrats hold a lead in registration--52% to 34%. In presidential years, Democratic turnout generally is higher than in off years. Most local newspapers have endorsed Cervantes. But sources in both parties say the race is close, with Frusetta slightly ahead in internal polls.

Cervantes, realizing Frusetta’s popularity, is careful when she criticizes him. After Frusetta told an audience of insurance agents that he takes no money from political action committees, Cervantes, in an almost apologetic tone, said: “I don’t want to be cruel, but he does take money from oil companies.”

The night before, Cervantes, speaking to local police officers, told how she can hear gunfire from the house she shares with her mother. She homed in on one of the Assembly’s most controversial votes of 1996--legislation that would have allowed virtually any adult not convicted of a felony to obtain a permit to carry a concealed gun.

“I would never have supported that bill,” Cervantes said. She never mentioned that Frusetta voted for the bill. She didn’t have to. Frusetta’s young Republican campaign workers scurried around the room handing out a written explanation of the bill and why Frusetta voted for it.

Some police officers take the pro-gun vote personally, assuming that if more people are armed, more will get shot. Still, the local police endorsement went to Frusetta.