The Races of His Life

SACRAMENTO — State Sen. Tim Leslie is a man of many goals, but at the moment he’s focused on two:

Goal No. 1: Become California’s next lieutenant governor.

Goal No. 2: Beat cancer.

For most people, overcoming an often fatal disease--multiple myeloma--would be enough of a test. Chemotherapy and an iffy prognosis can, after all, combine to strain one’s soul.

But Leslie--a Republican who represents the northeastern quarter of the state--has decided that cancer will not eclipse his plans.

“I fully expect to have a future, and I want to spend that future as lieutenant governor,” said Leslie, 55, a deeply religious conservative. “Yes, I have this disease, and no, it’s not fun. But I’m dealing with it and I don’t see any reason to quit.”

So he campaigns on, with catnaps and doctor visits about his only concessions to the cancer. There will be some hospital time later, but for now he is fully afoot, with disease-fighting drugs dripping into his veins from a dispenser he wears on his hip.

And although no politician would ever wish for cancer, it has brought some unexpectedly pleasant rewards. In a corner of Leslie’s Capitol office, for example, a mound of encouraging mail grows daily.

“We know you’ll whip this!” cheered one sympathizer. Others have shared miracle cures, recommending everything from Chinese herbs to shark cartilage, meditation and a Peruvian vine called cat’s claw.

Inside the normally cynical Legislature, the response has been equally warm. Although Democrats have yet to grant him any sympathy votes, colleagues have been liberal with hugs and words of support. One hairless assemblyman, Democrat Dick Floyd of Wilmington, even agreed to admit Leslie to the “bald men’s caucus” should his hair fall out. (So far, it hasn’t.)

Aside from its personal dimension, Leslie’s mission raises questions about voters’ willingness to support candidates whose health may be in doubt. When the late Paul Tsongas, a former senator from Massachusetts, ran for president in 1992, he tried to ease worries about his bout with lymphoma by airing ads showing him swimming the butterfly.

“We were trying to demonstrate that this was a man who had beat cancer and was vigorous and in good health,” recalled Dennis Kanin, Tsongas’ campaign manager. Public qualms are “undoubtedly something [Leslie] will have to deal with.”

Leslie’s campaign strategists know this, and have already come up with a positive spin. As they see it, the senator will beat myeloma and create an appealing metaphor in the process: Tim Leslie--a gutsy guy who never gives up. Or something like that.

Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, said voters’ reactions to that pitch will depend on how Leslie “looks and acts come April or May, when most people start paying attention to the race.”

“If he can prove through his actions that he climbed this mountain and is a better man for it, then the public may respond,” DiCamillo said.

Round-faced and bespectacled, Leslie is the Senate’s perennial “nice guy,” ever cheerful in a place that abounds with grouches and oversized egos. When constituents address him as “Senator Leslie,” he chuckles and quips, “The Honorable Tim will be fine.”

Colleagues say the sunny demeanor masks a killer political drive: “The guy’s a bulldog,” said Sen. John Burton (D-San Francisco). “If you’re against a bill of his, you’d better keep trying to kill it because he keeps digging up votes until the bitter end.”

Indeed, Leslie has better luck than many conservatives at maneuvering his proposals through a house controlled by Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove) calls him “a finesser. He’s able to talk to the other side better than some of us [Republicans] can.”

One member of “the other side,” the liberal Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), credits Leslie’s pragmatism.

“When he first arrived here, he was one of these dogmatic Christian Boy Scout types who had all the truth and thought everybody else was a heretic,” said Vasconcellos, a friend of Leslie’s. “But he let go of that. He became open and vulnerable to other people and points of view.”

That is not to say Leslie has shed his conservative skin--or the religious values that drive his politics. He is an ardent foe of gambling and the California Lottery and wants to amend the state Constitution to require that minors get parental permission before obtaining an abortion.

Earlier in his career, he opposed efforts to protect gays from employment discrimination, saying homosexuals had a lifestyle that was “not desirable or healthy.”

This year, Leslie captured headlines with a bill imposing tough curbs on young drivers. Under the legislation, teenagers would face new limits on their ability to carry underage passengers and drive late at night. The bill is awaiting Gov. Pete Wilson’s signature.

Elected to the Senate in 1991, Leslie represents an enormous, mostly rural district stretching from Mammoth Lakes to the Oregon line. Despite the territory’s vastness, constituents praise the senator as responsive and accessible. They back up their sentiments with dollars, making Leslie one of the Legislature’s top fund-raisers.

He will need that money as he tries to vault from relative obscurity to statewide office. Two other Republicans, Sen. Richard Mountjoy of Arcadia and Assemblyman Brooks Firestone of Los Olivos, also want to be lieutenant governor and will face Leslie in the GOP primary next year. No Democrats are seeking the office thus far.

Leslie, who grew up in Arcadia and attended Cal State Long Beach and USC, learned he had cancer in April, after he slipped on the stairs at his Lake Tahoe home. X-rays of his injured shoulder produced the diagnosis.

A cancer of the bone marrow, multiple myeloma is a relatively rare disease, afflicting about 13,500 people each year. Leslie’s physician, Dr. Jesse Adams, said that while the cancer is “technically an incurable disease,” many who suffer from it live for years.

“It can be slow, well-behaved, or much more aggressive,” Adams said. “But if it becomes a political issue, that would be an injustice.”

For Leslie, the experience has triggered a sickening sense of deja vu. Eleven years ago, doctors found a cancerous spot on his clavicle and treated it with radiation 30 days before his election to the Assembly.

Then, as now, cancer threatened to snatch away a goal he had doggedly pursued. Then, as now, he stayed the course, relying on religious faith as his guide.

“This is my dream. And without being overly religious or schmaltzy, I believe I’m doing what God wants me to do,” said Leslie, a Presbyterian and member of the Legislature’s weekly Bible study group.

So far, Leslie says, the cancer has had little effect on his campaign--or daily life. His aides have slimmed down his schedule a bit, and he now flies instead of drives to far-flung corners of his district. But the most radical change he’s made, Leslie says, is dietary: “I’ve stopped putting sugar on my cereal.”

And while his aides fretted that the disease might scare off supporters, the opposite appears to be true. Fund-raising is ahead of projections, with the campaign account bulging past $1 million in the last month.

How the disease will affect Leslie’s political chances remains a mystery. Tsongas faced nagging questions about his cancer, but he dropped out of the presidential race before the disease could stir a national debate. And although Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas underwent surgery for prostate cancer, it was many years before his campaign against President Clinton in 1996.

“Tim will face tough questions,” said Ken Khachigian, a veteran GOP strategist, “but I pity the opponent who tries to make the cancer an issue.”

Some say one opponent--Mountjoy--has already taken a step down that road. On the final, frenzied night of this year’s legislative session, the weary Leslie left the Senate at midnight to get some rest. A bit later, Mountjoy began requesting roll-call votes on a series of noncontroversial bills.

Mountjoy said he made the move to slow down the voting and give himself time to read the bill analyses. But the maneuver also served to reveal that Leslie wasn’t there to vote--a fact that Mountjoy could use against him in the campaign.

“I would never do that,” Mountjoy said. “That’s just silly.”

Leslie’s aides don’t buy it: “This was just pure, transparent, negative politics,” said his press secretary, Steve Schmidt.

As for Leslie, he says he won’t waste time fretting that his disease might become a political Achilles’ heel. Instead, he prefers to talk silver linings. Recently, he referred to the letters sent by hundreds of well-wishers, grinned and said:

“If I just get the cancer vote, I’ve got this election won!”