Campaign Foes Charge Senator Ducked Debate

State Senate candidates Tom Hayden and Catherine O’Neill have accused Sen. Herschel Rosenthal of hiding from voters by canceling all joint appearances in the district last week, including a cable television debate that had been arranged to fit his schedule.

A spokeswoman for Rosenthal insisted that the cancellations stemmed from the press of legislative business in Sacramento during the period in which the annual state budget is prepared.

“You really have to make a judgment about whether the things you’ve been working on for a year or two are significant or whether you’re willing to let them die while you come down and appear on a television show,” said Lynette Stevens, Rosenthal’s campaign manager.

Rosenthal was unavailable for comment.

The three Democrats are running in a hotly contested primary in the new 23rd Senate District. It includes most of the Westside north of the Santa Monica Freeway (10) and portions of the southern San Fernando Valley.

O’Neill said she views Rosenthal’s assertion that he is too busy “to appear for the highest visibility event of the campaign” as nothing more than a “classic, incumbent, low-visibility tactic.” The event O’Neill referred to is a debate that had been scheduled to be taped for Century Cable at 5 p.m. Thursday.

She offered an alternative explanation: “Mr. Rosenthal has realized from his early involvement in the election that he is no longer able to engage in the give and take of debate,” O’Neill said. She declined to say whether her remark was a reference to Rosenthal’s age. He is 74.

Hayden was equally incredulous, saying the cancellations were a campaign strategy to prevent Rosenthal from answering “uncomfortable” questions about his relationships with special interests.

“There’s a back-room Hersch that people don’t know about,” Hayden said. “The strategy is to keep Hersch in mothballs.”

Hayden campaign manager Duane Peterson sent reporters a list of daily flights between Los Angeles and Sacramento, noting that there is no reason why one could not do his legislative business during the day and be back in the district for debates at night.

“It’s all baloney,” said Hayden. “I worked all week in Sacramento and came home every night.”

In addition to withdrawing from the Century Cable debate, Rosenthal also missed appearances at an event jointly sponsored by the Malibu Democratic Club and the local chapter of the National Organization for Women. He did not appear at a meeting of the Palisades Complex, a group of parents who are education activists in Brentwood and Pacific Palisades.

Alan Niederman, coordinating producer of the cable show moderated by Bill Rosendahl, said the debate has been postponed for a week in the hope that Rosenthal will reconsider. If not, an empty chair will mark his place.

Although Niederman said it is not unusual for candidates to eschew forums as a strategy, “it is unusual to get a specific date from a candidate and then have them back out.”

The date was selected to suit Rosenthal’s schedule, Niederman said.

Since the campaign began, Rosenthal has attended 10 events, mostly at local Democratic clubs, where all candidates have appeared, Stevens said. Most of these were not-give-and-take debates.

On Rosenthal’s schedule last week were committee sessions on bills varying from breast implant regulations to job training in the inner city, Stevens said.

He opposed in committee a bill sought by Gov. Pete Wilson to streamline the environmental permit process and presented a bill on the Senate floor that provided for utility services for the poor.

“As you can see, this is not minor stuff,” Stevens said.

In general, lawmakers involved in hot campaigns frequently miss legislative sessions. And because flights to and from Sacramento are frequent, it is also common for Los Angeles-area lawmakers to fly back and forth daily in such situations.

Senate Democratic Leader David Roberti of Los Angeles, for example, is embroiled in an intense special election fight in the San Fernando Valley. He was excused from two out of three floor sessions last week because of “personal business,” Senate Clerk Cheryl Brown said.

The actual Senate floor sessions took up about 6 1/2 hours last week, Brown said.

Rosenthal’s low-profile campaign reflects a strategy often adopted for incumbents by his consultants, the team of Michael Berman and Carl D’Agostino of Los Angeles.

Berman and D’Agostino often rely on a last-minute mail blitz, in some cases combined with television ads, to present their candidates to voters.

“His handlers have told him to hide now that the press and voters are starting to pay attention,” contended Peterson, Hayden’s adviser.

Stevens said it was only a coincidence that Rosenthal’s decision to miss last week’s campaign events was similar to the Berman-D’Agostino strategy in other races. She did not rule out joint district appearances in the last few weeks of the race.