Governor Hopefuls Keep On Debating

Amid signs their race is tightening, the three major Republican candidates for governor debated at long distance Thursday, scrapping over Enron, electability and which of them is truest to the Grand Old Party.

Richard Riordan, stumping in the San Fernando Valley, canceled a long-planned ski trip to spend more time campaigning--an indication of nervousness in the frontrunner’s camp.

Bill Simon Jr. bestowed a new fitness center on East Los Angeles’ Garfield High--thanks to his family’s charitable trust--and then traveled to Orange County and Palm Springs, where he stepped up attacks on his two main GOP rivals.

Bill Jones held a news conference in Sacramento, lumping Riordan and Democratic Gov. Gray Davis together under the Enron umbrella. Jones’ strategists, meantime, readied a last-ditch TV campaign, the first paid advertising of the secretary of state’s cash-strapped effort.

While the Republicans fanned out from Long Beach, site of Wednesday night’s third and final debate, the man each hopes to face in November was addressing a Sacramento youth forum and defending his acceptance of Enron campaign cash.

“Nobody in America fought the energy companies, including Enron, harder than I did,” said Davis, who accepted $119,500 from the energy giant before its sudden collapse.

Asked by a reporter afterward to comment on Wednesday night’s debate, the governor declined.

But most analysts agreed: After roughly three hours on the same stage--sparring over abortion, taxes, gay marriage and even whether spouses are fair political game--the Republicans emerged from their series of debates with former Los Angeles Mayor Riordan still the candidate to beat.

For that, the Riordan camp was grateful, especially given the candidate’s penchant for gaffes and inopportune asides on the campaign trail.

But Simon, a Pacific Palisades businessman making his first run for office, seemingly performed well enough to pull himself into contention--particularly if the turnout on March 5 draws heavily from the party’s most ideological voters.

“The odds would seem to favor a Riordan win,” said Jack Pitney, a Republican analyst who teaches politics at Claremont McKenna University. “But weird things can happen in a low-turnout primary.”

In that case, Pitney said, “the people who show up are the most motivated in the Republican Party. They tend to be the most conservative and they’re the ones who’ve favored Simon.”

But Jones hopes to shake their allegiance to Simon with an ad campaign he aims to launch Monday. Acknowledging the steep odds, one strategist said, “We’ve got a rifle and we’ve got one bullet. While there is a chance to win this thing, we’ve got to be dead on.”

The ad, filmed this week, features former Republican Gov. George Deukmejian criticizing Riordan’s longtime support of Democratic campaigns and causes--a theme Jones pressed Thursday at his Sacramento news conference.

He defended his criticism during the debate of Riordan’s wife, Nancy Daly Riordan, for giving thousands of dollars to Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Maryland’s Democratic lieutenant governor. “If Dick Riordan cannot convince his wife to be a Republican, how can he convince anyone else to be a Republican?” Jones asked.

He renewed his criticism of Riordan and Davis for accepting past donations from Enron, and for meeting with its ex-chairman, Kenneth Lay. The Enron debacle is “about the power companies and the power brokers, It’s about trust and integrity--and the lack thereof,” Jones said.

“You have to be able to go after Davis on energy. I can. Dick Riordan cannot.”

For the most part Thursday, the former mayor ignored Jones’ attacks, much as he has throughout the campaign.

Speaking at a breakfast of the San Fernando Valley Lincoln Club, a group of GOP moderates, Riordan focused on Davis and his aggressive fund-raising.

“We’ve seen a governor, Gray Davis, who seems to think the only thing you have to do as governor is to raise money,” he said.

He accused Davis of “looking at polls” rather than handling California’s problems with transportation, housing, health care and the economy. “You have 1 million unemployed in the state, and yet you have a governor and a Legislature that’s the enemy of business,” he said, broadening his partisan criticisms.

Riordan had planned to leave Thursday for four days at his vacation home in Sun Valley, an Idaho ski resort, after a 10-day stretch in late January and early February when he made no public appearances in California. But he abruptly canceled those plans and scheduled a series of campaign stops, including one today in Thousand Oaks.

“It’s a campaign, and a candidate’s schedule is always in flux,” spokeswoman Kim Serafin said. Simon started Thursday at Garfield High School, where he attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new fitness center that was funded by his family’s charitable foundation. The candidate told students that the program is based on an ancient Greek theory of “sound body, sound mind”--a phrase he repeated in Latin.

Then it was off to a lunch meeting of the Orange County chapter of the Brigham Young University management society.

“I’m the conservative Republican in the race, and that’s because I’m someone who believes in traditional values,” Simon said, citing his involvement in launching the family-friendly channel PAX-TV.

For most of the race, Simon has been loath to criticize his opponents--particularly Riordan, a personal friend. But as the gap in the polls has narrowed, Simon has been increasingly willing to take his rivals to task, a pattern that continued Thursday.

For the first time, he salted his standard campaign speech with attacks on Riordan and Jones. He accused Jones, a former GOP Assembly leader, of shepherding the largest tax hike in California history through the Legislature in 1991. That was a measure meant to help close a $14-billion deficit the state faced.

And Riordan, Simon said, “has made statements that he is open to an Internet sales tax, hostile to Proposition 13, and that Californians are under-taxed.”

He also took a swipe at Riordan’s refusal to detail how he would handle the state’s $12-billion budget deficit until after the primary. “I think voters are entitled to make an informed decision,” Simon said.

*

Times staff writers Michael Finnegan and Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.