CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / CONGRESS : Democrats Downplaying Ties to Clinton : Vulnerable incumbents stress their independence as GOP seeks to exploit President’s drop in popularity.

FRESNO —  Rep. Richard H. Lehman, a conservative Democrat from the San Joaquin Valley, admires President Clinton and thinks he is doing some good things for America.

But the only reference to Clinton in Lehman’s television commercials as he fights for reelection is not one likely to get him invited to the White House for dinner.

Lehman, seeking a seventh term, is trying to distance himself politically from Clinton, and he is not alone among Democratic incumbents scrambling to survive what Republicans hope will be a GOP landslide nationwide.

Several Democratic congressmen from California who find themselves in tight races with Republican challengers are eager to shed their connection to the President, who carried California handily in 1992 but has since seen his popularity drop by about 20 points.

Sensing a chance to narrow the Democrats’ 30-22 edge in the state’s congressional delegation, the Republicans are determined not to let the Democrats edge away from Clinton.

A Republican TV commercial in use across the nation for weeks begins with a picture of Clinton that “morphs” into a picture of the local Democratic incumbent. Last week, the Republicans unveiled three more anti-Clinton commercials, including one that advises voters to “send Clinton’s Congress home.”

To counteract this strategy, Lehman reminds voters in his TV commercial of his bitter fight with the Clinton Administration over water, a life-and-death issue in the California farm belt:

“This year Washington threatened to shut off federal irrigation water unless valley growers surrendered to outrageous demands. Raised on a valley farm, Rick Lehman fought the federal threats all the way to the White House. Washington backed down, and our farmers kept their water . . . Rick Lehman, independent, like the valley.”

The commercial then displays a headline from the Fresno Bee: “Lehman Vows Clinton Will Pay.”

Lehman and other incumbents are hoping their familiarity with voters and their fund-raising advantage will help repel the Republican challenge and the anti-incumbent mood of voters.

In addition, the Democrats are deriding the GOP’s “Contract With America” as proof that the wanna-be congressmen are more interested in ideological purity than in serving their districts. And Clinton is enjoying a slight uptick in the polls because of his foreign policy successes.

Still, those factors have not translated into a willingness by embattled Democratic incumbents to embrace their President. When Clinton came to the San Francisco Bay Area a week ago only two San Mateo County congressmen, both with easy reelection races, came to greet him.

The need to assert independence from Clinton is particularly keen among three first-termers from California who are seen as vulnerable.

Rep. Dan Hamburg, a liberal Democrat from Mendocino County, jumps at the chance to tell audiences of his deep philosophical differences with Clinton over trade policies, Somalia, health care and relations with China.

Hamburg feels close to Clinton as part of the same generation of politicians who were college protesters against the Vietnam War. He says that Clinton is bravely tackling issues ignored by the Republicans.

But Hamburg has no plans to distribute a campaign brochure that he had used in the primary displaying side-by-side pictures of him and the President, a brochure with the headline, “We’re Starting to Make Government Work for Your Family.”

Rep. Lynn Schenk, a “business-oriented” Democrat from San Diego, has a TV commercial saying she “stood up” to the President to vote for a balanced budget amendment.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills) makes the same pitch during speeches, as well as emphasizing that she favored even deeper budget cuts than the President. “I have not been afraid to take on the Clinton Administration,” she tells audiences.

So insistent is the anti-Clinton rhetoric in some races that even some veteran Democratic incumbents are becoming exasperated.

“It’s clear our Republican opponent would rather run against Bill Clinton than against us,” said Craig Miller, campaign manager for nine-term Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills). “But it’s not going to work.

“Tony Beilenson has a very close relationship with the voters of his district, and the voters know there is a big difference between President Clinton and congressman Beilenson.”

Schenk says that if her Republican opponent, Brian Bilbray, “wants to run against Bill Clinton so badly, let him sign up for the 1996 presidential primary.”

Bilbray, a San Diego County supervisor, has mockingly offered to pay Clinton’s air fare to San Diego so he can campaign for Schenk.

Lehman’s opponent, former Mariposa County Supervisor George Radanovich, went a step further. He held a news conference flanked by a life-size cardboard cutout of Clinton and offered to pay both air fare and motel bill if Clinton would come to Fresno to campaign for Lehman.

Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), an eight-term member and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, downplays the political significance of incumbents edging away from the President.

Fazio calls it “standard fare” and just a reaffirmation of the fact that the Democratic Party allows a great deal of internal disagreement.

“There is nothing wrong with the fact that Dan Hamburg disagrees with the President on NAFTA, or Rick Lehman disagrees on water, or Lynn Schenk likes a balanced budget amendment of a different sort than the President,” Fazio said. “Disagreement is not the same as repudiation.”

So buoyed are Republicans by Clinton’s overall slippage in the polls that the party is hoping to defeat one or more of four longtime Democratic incumbents in California: Beilenson, Fazio, Lehman and Rep. George E. Brown Jr. of Colton.

If the GOP succeeds in dethroning some of the four veteran incumbents or three first-termers “targeted” in California, it would be a turnaround from November, 1992, when only one congressman in the state was defeated for reelection: Frank Riggs, a Republican, defeated by Hamburg. This year, Riggs is hoping for revenge.

There are potential bright spots for the Democrats, however.

Fazio believes that Democrats can pick up open congressional seats formerly held by Republicans in Santa Barbara and eastern Riverside County and a Riverside seat now held by Republican Ken Calvert, who was caught with a prostitute last winter.

Fazio’s first priority, of course, is his own reelection. In a briefing for local reporters on issues important to Yolo County, Fazio talked for an hour about transportation, the environment, student loans and federal subsidies for housing at UC Davis. The name Bill Clinton did not pass his lips.

Republican leaders are delighting in the Democrats’ discomfiture. The party needs to pick up 40 seats nationwide to give control of the House of Representatives to the GOP for the first time in four decades.

“The Democrats are running away from their own President,” said Jeannie Austin, co-chair of the Republican National Committee. “What kind of political party is that?”

Democrats are sensitive about allegations of running away from Clinton.

“We are neither running away from the President nor running toward him,” said Miller of the Beilenson campaign.

In Fresno, Radanovich, 39, is branding Lehman a Clinton clone, reminding voters of how often Lehman has supported the Administration, and hurling the epithet “career politician.”

At age 48, Lehman has been in politics his entire adult life: as a legislative aide, an assemblyman and then congressman from a “safe” Democratic district. But redistricting two years ago left him a district that is only marginally Democratic, and in 1992 he barely defeated a political novice.

Unlike other Republican challengers, Radanovich cannot use the 1993 budget bill that boosted taxes for upper-income Americans against the incumbent. Lehman voted against the bill, despite two phone calls from Clinton.

After his no vote, the White House withdrew an invitation for Lehman to go backpacking with Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt in King’s Canyon National Park, which is in Lehman’s district.

As the election nears, Lehman, an avid backpacker, counts that snub as one of the best things that ever happened to him.