Democrats Try Again to Unseat Incumbent

Stretching from the bustling ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles through the middle- and working-class suburbs of Lakewood, Paramount, Bellflower and Downey, the 38th Congressional District is one that Democrats long thought should be theirs.

Democrats had expected to take the newly drawn seat in 1992, when they held a nearly 10-point registration edge over Republicans.

But the voters went for Steve Horn, the well-known former president of Cal State Long Beach and a moderate Republican political scientist who had worked in the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s and for then-Sen. Thomas Kuchel in the 1960s. Every two years since, Democrats have tried and failed to knock off Horn, even as the registration gap favoring them doubled to its current 51%-31%.

This time, it’s Long Beach-born Gerrie Schipske’s turn to try. She is a health care policy attorney, nurse practitioner and college instructor with strong union backing, who edged out the Democratic House leaders’ handpicked candidate in the tough four-way primary last March and has been campaigning hard ever since.

Democrats over the summer added the Horn seat to their national target list and have sent party stars to help Schipske with fund-raising and campaign appearances. But the race is not drawing the level of financial resources and attention lavished on several other Southern California races that are considered more likely for Democrats to capture.

Despite the mushrooming Democratic registration and Schipske’s labor ties in a union stronghold, most analysts say the odds are with Horn.

Schipske, 50, said she is not discouraged.

“The only political analysis that counts is the voters that come out on Nov. 7,” said Schipske, who in late summer resigned her job as a health policy analyst for the Service Employees International Union to stump full time.

Offering herself as a “leader with a heart,” Schipske has campaigned on familiar Democratic themes--including education and health care reform--and says she wants “to give working families in the district a voice in Washington, D.C.”

She has tried to portray the centrist Horn as out of step with his district and aligned with the House’s “right wing leadership.”

Horn, 69, citing his longtime ability to attract Democratic and independent voters with his attention to district issues and constituents’ problems, said he is optimistic.

“I have fought for all the people, not just Republicans. . . . That is why I win in this marginal district,” Horn said.

“But I take nothing for granted,” he said, adding that he expects to be outspent again this election--as he was in 1996--and plans to continue with his somewhat unconventional but--so far--winning, campaign style.

So Horn’s campaign headquarters is once again housed in the Long Beach apartment of his son and campaign manager, Steve Horn Jr. And he has begun sending out the familiar wordy political mailers--short on photos and long on details about issues and accomplishments.

“I believe that candidates have a responsibility to communicate intelligently with the voters. That’s why my brochures always have a lot of text and very few pictures,” Horn said in one recent mailer. And, he added, when one political newsletter said the mailers looked horrible, “We took that as a compliment!”

Most independent political analysts do not consider the Horn-Schipske matchup competitive enough to include in their handicapping reports of the top races.

“It’s just below the radar screen,” said Amy Walter, House editor of the Cook Political Report in Washington, which tracks campaigns across the country.

“This district is so appealing to Democrats, but they just can’t seem to find the right formula to beat Horn,” Walter said, adding that Horn is “a well-established, pretty popular, nonconfrontational member of Congress” with proven staying power.

“He’s walked barefoot through the coals of reelections before, and a lot of [Democrats] in Washington feel like they don’t want to get their hopes up,” Walter said.

Horn has always been something of a maverick. According to Congressional Quarterly, Horn in 1999 voted with the GOP majority on key legislation 68% of the time; the average was 86% for House Republicans. He voted to impeach President Clinton in 1998 but broke ranks with the GOP and sided with organized labor this year in opposing legislation that loosened China trade restrictions.

Horn favors abortion rights, backs gun control and wants the federal government to increase its spending on special education to give some relief to local school districts. Unlike many Republicans, he backed this year’s major “patients’ bill of rights” health care reform bill, which passed the House but has stalled in the Senate.

He refuses to accept money from political action committees and favors banning the largely unregulated “soft money” contributions to political parties.

As chairman of the House subcommittee on government management, information and technology, Horn helped push through legislation to help the government collect from its debtors and prodded federal agencies to deal with such issues as computer readiness for the changeover to the year 2000.

Locally, he spearheaded funding for a major flood control project and for construction of the Alameda Corridor, which will speed truck and rail cargo from Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors to transcontinental railroad switching yards near downtown Los Angeles.

Schipske has worked tirelessly to raise money and draw attention to her campaign. An open lesbian, she has received help from gay rights organizations. Last week, President Clinton was to appear at a Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund luncheon in Los Angeles to benefit Schipske’s campaign. The crisis in the Middle East forced its cancellation, but Schipske said Clinton called her personally and promised to reschedule.

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, is providing her with precinct walkers and telephone volunteers in the district, which has about 50,000 union members. The political action committees of labor organizations and other groups have provided more than one-third of the $449,000 she had raised by Sept. 30, the end of the most recent campaign finance reporting period.

Schipske, however, was spending the money about as fast as she could rake it in, the report on file with the Federal Election Commission shows. She had just $11,558 left at the end of the reporting period, while Horn, who has raised less overall than Schipske, had $403,131 on hand for the crucial closing weeks of the campaign.

Some of Schipske’s funds have gone into running three cable television ads for the last four weeks, including one in Spanish. About 18% of the district’s 280,000 voters are Latinos.

With help from other Democrats, however, Schipske hopes to reach her campaign budget goal of $800,000 by election day. U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer is holding a fund-raiser for her today, and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) and Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, have made several trips to the district to help her.

Schipske has hit Horn on a couple of local issues, blaming his vote in support of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act for the controversial closing of Long Beach Community Hospital this year.

And, with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in tow last week, she declared, “Steve Horn is not the environmentalist he claims to be,” taking Horn to task for sponsoring a measure that would have exempted the city and county of Los Angeles from additional sewage treatment requirements.

The Horn campaign said he was trying to spare local governments, which had sought his help, the expense of building new treatment projects because they already met or exceeded clean-water standards with their current treatment methods. The campaign also downplayed the role of the broadly supported balanced budget legislation, which cut some health care facility funding, saying many other factors contributed to the hospital’s demise.

In implying that Horn should have opposed the budget legislation, Schipske “has put herself on the far extreme . . . even in the Democratic Party,” campaign manager Steve Horn Jr. said.

Congress’ still-running session has kept Horn in Washington during the week, but he has spent nearly every weekend stumping through the district, meeting with constituent groups and attending such community events as a city parade in Bellflower.

Also on the ballot are Libertarian Jack Neglia and Karen Blasdell-Wilkinson of the Natural Law party.