No More Same Old Same Old This Tuesday

As the candidates engage in one last barrage of campaign mailers and personal appeals for votes, one thing is certain about Tuesday’s election: It will dramatically change the Westside’s long-quiescent political scene.

Regardless of who wins or loses, there will be new faces in the state Assembly, state Senate, Congress and on the County Board of Supervisors.

Redistricting and retirements have broken the political gridlock of safe seats and entrenched incumbents. For the first time in years, there are open seats and closely balanced districts with truly competitive contests.

Several of those races reached a fever pitch this weekend, including two Assembly campaigns, a congressional contest, and the battle for the Board of Supervisors.

Nowhere on the Westside has a legislative campaign become more vicious and hard-fought than the new 53rd Assembly District that runs along the coast from Venice to Torrance.

Republican Brad Parton and Democrat Debra Bowen are going down to the wire, berating each other over everything from religion and abortion to taxes and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

It is a campaign that has seen Bowen attack her Republican rival as a right-wing fundamentalist with a religious agenda and Parton fire back by accusing Bowen of behaving like “the brown-shirted Fascists of Nazi Germany.” Parton’s campaign hit-piece sent by the California Republican Party cost him important political support in Torrance, the district’s biggest city.

The district has been hit hard by layoffs in the aerospace and defense industries. Although the area was Republican when the district was created early this year, Democrats and pro-choice groups mounted a successful voter registration drive and, when the final figures were tallied, had overtaken the GOP.

The area will be closely watched Tuesday night since it is a key battleground in the fight over which party will control the Assembly.

With the stakes high, the Republican Party and GOP leaders have been pumping tens of thousands of dollars into the Parton race in the final days, while the Democratic Party and its labor union allies have been underwriting Bowen’s closing bid in slightly smaller amounts.

Abortion is a key issue in the race. Bowen is drawing the support of abortion rights groups; Parton, who favors tight restrictions on abortion, receives backing from conservative Christian groups and financiers of the religious right in California politics.

The issue is also key in the larger 36th Congressional District, which extends from Venice to San Pedro. Democrat Jane Harman, an attorney with extensive Washington connections, moved to Marina del Rey in order to run. Republican Joan Milke Flores is a Los Angeles city councilwoman with deep roots in the southern part of the district.

Like the Assembly district that it overlaps, the congressional district is closely matched between Democrats and Republicans. It affords a classic choice between liberal and conservative.

An even sharper contrast is evident in the 24th Congressional District, where Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson, a liberal Democrat, is fighting Republican Assemblyman Tom McClintock, a staunch conservative.

Beilenson, who has long represented the Beverly Hills-Westwood area in Sacramento and Washington, was forced by redistricting to run in much tougher terrain, extending from Malibu over the Santa Monica Mountains to the western San Fernando Valley and into Ventura County.

Similarly, Democratic Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman was forced by population changes and political considerations to move west into the new 41st Assembly District, which includes Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and the western San Fernando Valley.

Friedman is in an expensive showdown with Republican Christine Reed, a former Santa Monica councilwoman. Sensing an opportunity for an upset, Gov. Pete Wilson and Republican leaders have sent Reed more than $185,000 in the final weeks of the campaign.

Unlike other campaigns with sharp ideological distinctions, both Friedman and Reed support abortion rights. Both have support from environmentalists, although Reed’s record of backing some controversial commercial developments in Santa Monica contributed to her defeat in 1990.

A moderate Republican and an ally of Wilson’s, Reed has been attacking Friedman as “part of the problem in Sacramento” because he has been a supporter of Assembly Speaker Brown.

Friedman, a liberal Democrat, has sought to distance himself from Brown, portray himself as an independent lawmaker and paint Reed as a blind follower of the Republican governor.

Reed has accused Friedman of being soft on crime because he opposes the death penalty. He has fired back with a flurry of law enforcement endorsements and a record that includes sponsorship of laws increasing penalties for rape and cracking down on armed gang members.

Both candidates have pledged their support for education but disagree over how much the state can afford for the schools in the midst of California’s worst economic problems since the Depression.

Reed accuses Friedman of being a captive of the California Trial Lawyers Assn. and the attorneys who have contributed heavily to his campaign.

In this race, like the others, voters will decide whom they believe.

History will be made Tuesday when the voters in the vast 2nd Supervisorial District elect a black woman to the county Board of Supervisors. Two liberal Democrats are engaged in a costly battle: State Sen. Diane Watson and former Rep. Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

The district has long been the domain of veteran Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who is retiring. As redrawn, it cuts a swath across part of the Westside from Mar Vista through Culver City, Rancho Park, Mid-Wilshire and Crenshaw before heading through riot-ravaged Koreatown, South-Central Los Angeles and beyond.

Elsewhere, voters in parts of Venice, Marina del Rey, Playa del Rey and Westchester will cast ballots in another brutal contest between Supervisor Deane Dana against challenger Gordana Swanson, a Rolling Hills city councilwoman.

One nationally known incumbent whose career advancement is assured is Democratic Assemblyman Tom Hayden of Santa Monica. After investing almost $700,000 of his personal and political funds, Hayden won a Democratic primary slugfest against state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal of Los Angeles and Pacific Palisades public relations consultant Catherine O’Neill.

The district, which covers most of the Westside and extends into the San Fernando Valley, is so solidly Democratic that no Republican ventured onto the primary ballot. But a Republican write-in candidate, Leonard McRoskey, won the right to oppose Hayden. After conceding the race and suspending campaigning last summer, McRoskey is back in the fight.

Hayden joins Democratic Assemblyman Burt Margolin and Assemblywoman Gwen Moore, whose return to Sacramento is all but certain even before voters go to the polls. Likewise, voters in heavily Democratic districts are expected to send Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Julian C. Dixon back to Washington.