Political Combat Fatigue Engulfs Voters in Hotly Contested District

Almost every day, democracy is crammed anew into Jean Webster’s mailbox in Glendale. It tumbles out when she unlocks the tiny metal door--handfuls of political mail clamoring for her vote.

The tally on a recent day: four mailers from James Rogan, the Republican congressman fighting to hang on to his seat; two from his opponent, Democratic state Sen. Adam Schiff; three from Democratic Assembly candidate Dario Frommer; one from Assemblyman Jack Scott, a Democrat running for Schiff’s state Senate seat; and two from the Republican Party.

“It’s very excessive,” said Webster, a Republican who has lived in Glendale for 35 years. “Just stuffed in my box, every bit of it political. . . . For the most part it’s just repetitious.”

This year, Webster’s town is at the center of a political maelstrom, as a raft of well-funded candidates battle for the U.S. House of Representatives, the state Senate and the Assembly, not to mention the White House. As the campaigns barrel into the final week, people here are being bombarded wherever they turn with overflowing mailboxes, lawn signs, TV ads, and ringing phones and doorbells.

A block from the post office where Webster retrieves her mail, 74-year-old Gonzalo Molina marches down West Dryden Street looking for Democrats. A retired teacher who speaks five languages and does not hesitate to use them with the many immigrants he encounters, Molina brings an almost missionary zeal to his get-out-the-vote precinct walking.

At a gated apartment complex, Molina and his team of students, all Democratic Party volunteers, are momentarily thwarted when a muscular young man refuses to let them in.

“Are you guys here with more propaganda?” the man asks. “I don’t like to be bothered, and I don’t like my neighbors to be bothered.”

But there are at least five apartments behind that steel gate filled with registered Democrats, according to voter lists, and Molina’s got a message for them.

He buzzes each apartment from the intercom posted out front. When a woman leaves the building, he grabs the gate before it closes and quickly hustles his group inside. “Nothing to be scared of,” he says firmly. “Not if you’re polite and you have conviction about what you’re doing.”

But among many residents in this city, voter fatigue has set in. Some appreciate all the attention and dutifully save each political flier, but others complain of waves of “junk mail” and dinner hours interrupted by campaign telephone calls.

Dave French, a 39-year-old accountant, said he simply throws away the three to five political mailers he gets each day.

“It’s just a waste of paper,” said French, a Republican who said he probably will vote for Rogan and for George W. Bush for president. “I’ll be happy when this stuff’s over. Every night on TV, it’s the same thing.”

French lives in a hotly contested precinct west of Brand Boulevard and north of Glenoaks Boulevard, a microcosm of the shifting terrain of Rogan’s 27th Congressional District. In what was once a bastion of white conservatism, a large influx of Asian, Latino and Armenian immigrants has loosened the Republican grip.

The leafy neighborhood, a mix of single-family homes and small apartment buildings, still has a Republican edge in voter registration, 40% to 36%. But the makeup of the entire congressional district tilts the other way, 44% Democratic to 37% Republican.

To win reelection, Rogan is trying to shore up his Republican base while nabbing votes of Democrats and independents.

His race is one of the nation’s most expensive House contests, with he and Schiff expected to spend more than $10 million by election day Tuesday. Another $2.5 million in unregulated “soft” money is also being poured into the race.

Despite all the cash being lavished on the area, an informal survey of voters at the local Ralphs supermarket drew none-too-enthusiastic reactions:

* “I’m getting a lot of phone calls. They’re driving me crazy,” said Melinda Irie, 31, a Republican and the busy mother of a newborn girl. “I usually hang up before they have much of a chance to say anything.”

* “I’ve never been less excited in all my life for an election,” complained 80-year-old Republican Everett Boone. “They’re all a bunch of nincompoops.”

* And from an elderly Democrat who identified herself only as Natalie: “We’re inundated. You should see all that mail. Scott and Rogan and the other one. It’s too much. Nobody even reads it.”

Nowhere, perhaps, has the deluge of glossy political mail hit harder than local post offices. At the north Glendale station, mail volume has soared 42% above normal, forcing postal carriers to work an average of two hours overtime each day, said Terri Bouffiou, a spokeswoman for the Postal Service.

“I can’t wait until Nov. 8,” said station manager Ramela Younekian, who has been putting in 14-hour days and has not seen her 2-year-old daughter for two weeks. The toddler is always asleep when Younekian leaves for work early in the morning and when he gets home at night.

North Glendale’s 20 mail carriers also feel the strain. It’s not that their bags are heavier--Postal Service rules bar them from lugging more than 35 pounds at a time. But they have to sort most of the political mail by hand because their automatic sorting machines are rigged to read envelopes, not thin, glossy fliers plastered with colorful photos.

“I’m tired,” said one mail carrier, who did not want to be identified. “I just want to go home.”

Meanwhile, the hard-core campaign crusaders have no intention of heading home, not yet. Back on West Dryden Street, the indefatigable Molina knocked on another door, his bag brimming with Frommer for Assembly fliers.

When a woman wearing a long T-shirt answered, Molina asked to speak to the registered Democrat whose name was listed on his chart.

“She’s deceased. She died,” the woman said. “She’s dead.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Molina replied without missing a beat. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to give you this literature . . . “