Legislator in a lopsided race

If the state’s persistent budget crisis has stirred anti-incumbent sentiment among voters, you’d be hard pressed to see much evidence of it in Tuesday’s special election to fill the vacant seat in the Los Angeles-area’s 26th state Senate district.

Democratic Assemblyman Curren Price Jr. doesn’t appear to be breaking a sweat in his lopsided contest against two underfunded, although energetic, opponents: Republican Nachum Shifren and Cindy Varela Henderson of the Peace and Freedom Party.

Price, serving his second term in the Legislature, emerged as the top vote-getter in the eight-candidate March 24 primary to replace Mark Ridley-Thomas, who left the Senate seat upon his election last year to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. But Price fell short of the majority needed to win the seat outright.

The ethnically and economically diverse district -- which includes parts of Hollywood, Silver Lake and South Los Angeles, Baldwin Hills, Ladera Heights, Culver City and some Westside Los Angeles communities -- is 66% Democratic, and political experts expect Price to win easily.

He topped a field of five Democrats in the low-turnout, open primary, collecting about 36% of the 24,000 ballots cast. Shifren won about 12% and Henderson less than 2%. Price has raised close to $600,000, according to campaign finance records filed with the secretary of state, while interest groups independently spent $1.15 million to support his candidacy -- nearly all of it in the primary.

None of this seems to faze Shifren, a rabbi, public school substitute teacher and triathlete, who said he has spent about $2,000 on his campaign, mainly on brochures about his conservative views.

He said he has volunteers contacting voters and uses his website, www.rabbiforsenate, to disseminate his ideas.

“I actually expect to win,” Shifren said. “I definitely offer a radical alternative to the tax-and-spend Democrat.”

Shifren said two critical issues are crime and education.

He advocates making imprisonment a tougher experience as a deterrent and cracking down on illegal immigration.

He wants schools to raise academic standards and would “deny the right to vote for anyone that does not pass state standards in education.”

He also wants “only American citizens” to receive food stamps, welfare, education, hospital services and even “loans and mortgages.”

Both Henderson and Shifren criticized Price for not debating them during the runoff campaign.

Henderson, a telephone technician, said she got into the race because of the state’s financial crisis. She would raise property taxes for corporations, charge companies for extracting oil from the state and increase income taxes for the wealthiest 1% of Californians.

Such measures, she said, would provide nearly enough money to reverse the latest round of state budget cuts, which target teachers, public health services and programs for the elderly and disabled.

“I’m running to put stuff back on the table that never should have been taken off the table,” Henderson said.

She said she has raised “very darned little” money and is campaigning door-to-door whenever she is not at work. Her website, www.votecindy4senate.com, details her views.

Henderson, who said she does not support the state fiscal measures on Tuesday’s ballot, also calls for ending the two-thirds vote needed to pass a state budget and for reforming the state’s three-strikes law.

“We’re keeping a lot of nonviolent offenders, primarily drug offenders, in prison at a very high cost,” Henderson said.

Price, who has racked up endorsements from elected officials, business and community leaders and clergy -- www.currenpricejr.com -- has called for raising taxes on Californians who earn more than $1 million a year and would impose a five-year freeze on fee hikes at state colleges and universities.

As an Inglewood councilman, he helped defeat efforts of Wal-Mart to open a store in that city and since his 2006 election to the Assembly has worked on measures to foster job creation and encourage business growth.

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jean.merl@latimes.com