CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : Burden of Proof : Will the Year of the Woman Carry Its Weight? Both Major Parties Bet Money That It Will

Until a mere 15 years or so ago, the state Capitol didn’t have a bathroom for women senators because the state didn’t have any women senators.

This year, more than 50 California women are candidates for the state Senate and Assembly. As many as 31 have a good chance to win. Another 19 women are running for places in California’s record 52-member delegation to the House of Representatives, and at least six are sure to be elected, doubling the number of women the state now sends to the House.

“God bless California. You guys are cooking out there,” said Ellen Malcolm, president of the women’s political action committee EMILY’s List, which ran a how-to “boot camp” for prospective women Democratic candidates in February.

EMILY’s List has seven times more members and has raised twice as much money as it had in 1990--$6 million nationwide for Democratic women candidates who favor abortion rights. Its Republican counterpart is the WISH List, which supports GOP women who back the right to an abortion.

“It’s not the Year of the Woman, it’s the decade of women,” said Colleen Dermody, a political researcher at the Fund for the Feminist Majority, which offered guidance to potential candidates this year when 80% more women are running for state office in California than in 1990.

For all the numbers, will the Year of the Woman talk carry any weight?

Both anti-abortion and feminist groups are channeling money and energy into California campaigns, expecting that it will have an impact. In this state, where an estimated 52% of registered voters are women, the gender gap yawns as a party gap: 49% of women are registered as Democrats, 34% as Republicans, compared to 42% and 43% for men. Democrats especially are hoping that those numbers will be the secret combination to crack open some heretofore safe seats in Sacramento.

“That’s part of the difference in this campaign. We’ve been involved in the strategy of flooding the ticket, getting massive numbers of women to run even where conventional wisdom said she couldn’t win,” said Patricia Ireland, head of the National Organization for Women. She stumped the state recently for NOW-PAC’s campaign “Elect Women For a Change.”

From where Dermody sits, “as women are campaigning in record numbers, they’re finding their sex is an asset this year.”

So potent does the potential look to both parties that Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin (D-Fremont), seeking her fourth term, says people have suggested that her moderate Republican opponent Lindy Batara won in the primary in part because of the name--voters thought “Lindy” was a woman. Since then, “a lot of people have said to me: ‘What’s she like?’ ” Batara is a man.

Five women now sit in the state Senate; two do not face reelection this year, and the other three appear likely to be reelected. Two more--Republican Cathie Wright of Simi Valley and Democrat Teresa P. Hughes of Los Angeles, both assemblywomen--will probably win.

Seventeen women sit in the Assembly. By January, there could be 24, if things break women’s way in close races where gender, incumbency and abortion rights have emerged as defining issues.

State Sen. Becky Morgan (R-Los Altos), who commands respect on both sides of the aisle, is “disappointed” that few of the Class of ’92 women are Republicans, but acknowledges that apart from political differences over government-versus-private industry issues, “certainly moderate women, pro-choice Republicans, are suffering from a party that has discarded us, and I will be that blunt.”

Conservative and anti-abortion groups and PACs have put more than $1 million into legislative campaigns in California this year. Groups backing abortion rights, such as the California Abortion Rights Action League (CARAL), have battled back, with far less money but with assists such as slate mailers promoting candidates who favor abortion rights; 200,000 such mailers are going out to independent and Republican voters who support abortion rights. Planned Parenthood here is sending out 50,000 voter’s guides showing candidates’ positions on family planning and abortion.

Anticipating that abortion rights may be a decisive factor for some voters, CARAL’s Robin Schneider said certain candidates are “class-A hypocrites who are saying all of a sudden that either they’re pro-choice or support legal abortion. . . . We’re seeing anti-choice candidates run away from the anti-choice label.”

Some races to watch:

* The 53rd Assembly District, in the South Bay, a district stricken by defense cuts. Conservative Redondo Beach Mayor W. Brad Parton has received more than $100,000 from religious right and anti-abortion groups in the campaign against Democratic attorney Debra Bowen, who favors abortion rights. So defining does this race look that Bowen is one of the few state legislative candidates getting an assist from NOW.

* In the 10th Assembly District in the Sacramento-area, Democrat Katherine L. Albiani, a Perot supporter, school board member and president of California Elected Women, is running against Sacramento County Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Bowler, an anti-abortion Republican who has received more than $70,000 from Southern California conservative and religious groups. Registration in this district is 47% Democrat to 42% GOP.

* Two women--one favoring abortion rights, the other anti-abortion--are running in an equally uncertain race in the Modesto area’s 25th Assembly District, where 48% of voters are Democrats and 41% are Republicans. Democrat Margaret Snyder, a longtime Modesto school board member, is campaigning against Barbara Keating-Edh.

Snyder, who has the support of law enforcement and teachers unions, calls herself a fiscal conservative and she supports abortion rights. Although flyers tout Keating-Edh as a political neophyte, in 1974 she was the Conservative Party candidate against New York Sen. Jacob Javits and got 900,000 votes. She co-founded Consumer Alert, a conservative lobby that battles Ralph Nader on consumer matters. Keating-Edh has gotten more than $80,000 from conservative Christian groups.

* Orange County’s only Democratic state legislator, Tom Umberg, is seeking his second term against Republican Jo Ellen Allen, state president of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. Democratic registration has risen by three points in the 69th Assembly District, to 53%, and GOP registration has dropped from 40% to 37%. Both candidates are spending sizable sums, although Umberg may have the financial upper hand. Allen has more than $50,000 from religious right organizations.

Gender may make a difference in several other Assembly races:

* In Riverside’s open 64th Assembly District race, in a Republican-inclined part of the state where women fared well in the primaries, Democrat Jane Carney goes up against moderate Republican Ted Weggeland with credentials from Chamber of Commerce and Bar association groups, and the support of popular state Sen. Bob Presley (R-Riverside).

* In the sprawling 80th Assembly District, which covers parts of Riverside County and all of Imperial County, two women are in a very tight race. Moderate Republican incumbent Tricia Hunter, an abortion-rights supporter who knocked off anti-abortion opponents in the primary, may find her incumbency a drawback against Democratic attorney Julie Bornstein, even in this usually Republican-inclined district.

* The battle of the year in the Year of the Woman may be Senate District 39, in San Diego. The GOP is gunning for Democrat-turned-independent Lucy Killea--who backs abortion rights--and the seat she won from them. Her opponent is well-financed conservative former state Sen. Jim Ellis. Republicans hold a 43%-38% edge over Democrats, but 13% are independent.

* Two women, both moderates, want to represent the 7th Assembly District: Sonoma Vice Mayor Valerie Kent Brown, endorsed by California NOW, and moderate Republican Janet G. Nicholas, a Sonoma County supervisor, who has the support of Gov. Pete Wilson, in a district that favors Democrats 56% to 32%.

At least six women will join the state’s expanded 52-member delegation to the House of Representatives. Two are incumbent shoo-ins, two will win in the two races where both major party candidates are women, one is a Democrat in a slam-dunk Democratic district and the other is running against a candidate who has a cancerous brain tumor. Half a dozen other races also hold possibilities for the women candidates.

But in one long-shot campaign, in the heavily Republican 52nd Congressional District in San Diego, Democrat Janet Gastil is hoping that two things will work against incumbent Republican Duncan Hunter--his 407 overdraft checks on the House bank, and his joining Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) in advising President Bush to raise questions about Gov. Bill Clinton’s trip to the Soviet Union as a student.

Keep an eye on Orange County’s 39th Congressional District; both parties certainly are. Interest piqued after a Democratic poll showed the long shot, Fullerton Councilwoman Molly McClanahan, with surprising numbers against Republican state Sen. Ed Royce, in this 51% GOP-39% Democratic district.

Back in 1974, when Democrat Leona Egeland was first elected to the Assembly, the legislative women’s caucus, she joked, could meet in a phone booth. “It’s so exciting now,” she said last week. “It’s like coming of age. We will be there in great enough numbers to be noticed for our own diversity, as opposed to being just women.”