Feinstein wins; Pombo trailing

Sen. Dianne Feinstein easily won a fourth term Tuesday, while an incumbent Central California Republican congressman was locked in a tight race, struggling to withstand the national Democratic wave.

Feinstein, 73, handily dispatched former state legislator Richard Mountjoy, a Republican from Arcadia who had raised little money and attracted no national Republican backing of note.

“This looks like it’s going to be a very good night for people who want a new direction,” Feinstein said Tuesday evening, beaming beneath a large “Dianne 2006” banner at Delancey Street, a rehabilitation center in San Francisco. “This, I think, is going to be a new day in American politics.”

Feinstein will have served 20 years in the U.S. Senate by the end of her new term and will be 79. Her mix of liberal views on most environmental and social issues and her moderate stands on taxation and defense contrasted with Mountjoy’s anti-illegal-immigration and anti-abortion-rights stands.

In a closely divided Senate, moderates such as Feinstein could become more influential. Indeed, she has prided herself on being able to work with moderate Republicans.

Feinstein, first elected to the Senate in 1992, survived the national Republican sweep in 1994 and won Tuesday even though her friend, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, was trounced in his race for governor.

“Sen. Feinstein is going to be an important leader,” said Art Pulaski, head of the California Labor Federation. “She is going to help us get to the bottom of the mess that [President] Bush created.”

In the most competitive of California’s 53 congressional contests, seven-term incumbent Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), 45, battled Democratic challenger Jerry McNerney, 55, to represent what had been a comfortably Republican district stretching from Stockton to the Bay Area’s eastern suburbs. With a majority of the votes counted, Pombo trailed his challenger.

The two candidates couldn’t be more different. Pombo favors jeans and cowboy boots. He’s a former feed lot operator and truck driver from a prominent San Joaquin Valley family. McNerney, a blue blazer and gray slacks man, has a doctorate in mathematics and is a wind power expert.

Pombo, who never served in the military, is a staunch supporter of the Bush administration policy in Iraq. McNerney spent two years at West Point and calls it a “war of aggression.” Pombo opposes embryonic stem cell research; McNerney is an enthusiastic supporter. McNerney lost to Pombo 61% to 39% two years ago.

Pombo is chairman of the House Resources Committee, which oversees the Department of the Interior and Indian gambling issues. He entered the contest as the heavy favorite in a district where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 43% to 37%.

But as polls showed the race tightening, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee broke with an earlier position that Pombo could not be beaten and spent more than $200,000 on the McNerney campaign. It was the only congressional race in California in which the national Democratic Party played a significant role.

Environmental organizations -- led by Defenders of Wildlife, Americans for Conservation, the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club -- provided the biggest campaign support for the Democratic candidate.

Pombo angered environmentalists last year when his committee staff proposed selling off 15 national park sites, including more than 15 million pristine acres in Alaska. Pombo also urged more offshore oil drilling, a step that incurred Feinstein’s wrath.

And his effort to weaken the Endangered Species Act went “to the core of what we fight for,” said Mark Longabaugh, political director of Defenders of Wildlife, which joined with Americans for Conservation to spend more than $1 million to oust Pombo.

Texas financier David Bonderman, a business associate of Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, gave at least $375,000 to the groups. Getty heiress Anne Earhart of Corona del Mar gave $100,000, and Julie Packard of Soquel, Calif., gave $50,000.

“We just want him gone, period,” Longabaugh said of Pombo.

Pombo and his supporters gathered Tuesday night at the Waterloo restaurant outside Stockton and acknowledged that the race was tight.

“I wouldn’t change a thing,” he said, referring to his political stands.

He also took a swipe at Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), probably the next speaker of the House, saying: “I hope she does a better job as speaker than she did as minority leader.”

To rally his supporters, Pombo had brought in Vice President Dick Cheney, President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush to campaign in his district. By election day, the National Republican Congressional Committee had injected $1.4 million into the race.

Altogether, the cost of the race could top $7 million.

According to pollster Ben Tulchin of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Pombo’s stands on the environment were to the right of most voters in his district, one that has become less conservative as the suburban population has grown east of the Oakland hills in Pleasanton, Danville and Livermore.

“The reality is that Pombo gave all the environmental groups a lot of things to work with,” said Tulchin, retained by Defenders of Wildlife to survey the district.

To the north of Pombo’s district, eight-term incumbent John T. Doolittle (R-Roseville) was leading his opponent, Charlie Brown, even though Doolittle faced allegations of corruption, including that he had used campaign money to enrich his family.

Pombo and Doolittle employ their wives as campaign fundraisers. Doolittle’s wife also worked for Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was convicted in a continuing corruption scandal. Doolittle has termed Abramoff a friend, and Democrats have sought to link Doolittle and Pombo to the scandal.

Doolittle’s district enjoys one of the highest Republican registration rates in the state.

In another race of note, in northern San Diego County, Republican Brian Bilbray had a wide lead against Democrat Francine Busby in a rematch of their campaign in June.

That month, Bilbray defeated Busby in a special election to win the seat formerly held by Republican Randy “Duke” Cunningham, now in federal prison for taking bribes.

California will send at least one new member to Congress: Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield).

McCarthy is replacing his mentor, retiring Rep. Bill Thomas, the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

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rone.tempest@latimes.com

dan.morain@latimes.com