LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Dianne Feinstein : The Race for the Senate: Experienced Politican--But Does It Help?

“All my life I’ve tried to make government work,” says Senator Dianne Feinstein. In her first two years in the U.S. Senate she’s done what many consider a remarkable job. She landed positions on two powerful committees--judiciary and appropriations. That helped her get measures passed that brought the state money for earthquake assistance, education, prisons and agriculture.

But in a state--and a nation--angry at politicians and at government, such achievements may work against her in her battle for reelection. Feinstein, 61, first came to national prominence in 1977, when San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. Feinstein, then a city supervisor, announced the deaths in a dramatic press conference, and was soon appointed mayor. She lost a governor’s race to Pete Wilson in 1990, but then won the right to serve out the final two years of his vacated U.S. Senate seat in 1992, defeating Wilson-appointee John Seymour.

Now she faces one-term Republican Rep. Mike Huffington in her reelection bid. The campaign has been expensive and nasty. In March, Feinstein seemed a sure bet to return to the Senate--polls showed her leading the little-known Huffington by as much as 30 points. Today that lead has been whittled down to single digits by an extensive, expensive and negative Huffington advertising campaign. The challenger has painted Feinstein as a “tax-and-spend Democrat,” a professional politician, a Clinton-clone and pawn to special interests. Recently his ads have charged she voted for federal programs that enriched a company controlled by her wealthy investor husband, Richard Blum.

Feinstein has fired back with vigor. Her ads portray Huffington as a spoiled rich kid with no political record who is trying to buy a Senate seat. They’ve lambasted him for refusing to make public his personal income tax records. And they’ve portrayed him as a modern-day carpetbagger, who maintained a legal address in Texas until just before running for Congress in order to avoid California state income taxes. Due to the angry nature of modern political campaigning and the foul mood of voters, Feinstein’s ads have only rarely pointed out her legislative successes.

Still, while Huffington is attracting a good number of so-called Reagan Democrats, Feinstein counts among her supporters a number of prominent Republicans. In spite of her slim lead, Feinstein recently came out in opposition to the popular Proposition 187, which would deny social services to undocumented immigrants. She now faces an almost certain last minute blitzkrieg of Huffington advertising, and dwindling campaign coffers from which to respond.

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Question: What are your legislative priorities if you’re reelected to the Senate?

Answer: My legislative agenda continues to be violence, illegal immigration and welfare reform. In the area of violence, my job will be to see that California gets its fair share out of the crime bill. I’ve submitted a bill to the Senate called the Illegal Immigration Control Act. It would stop illegal immigration at the border by giving Border Patrol the tools they need to do the job. It would also remove any cash welfare benefits, like Medi-Cal, from people here illegally. It would double the penalties for document fraud, and for illegal alien smuggling. I would fund these increased efforts with a border crossing fee of $1.00, which would provide more than $400 million per year.

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Q: If these measures were successful, and we did severely limit the amount of undocumented immigrants, the largest impact would be on agriculture. What do you say to the growers who depend primarily on undocumented workers to harvest their crops?

A: We’ve got over a million people unemployed in the state, and my own recommendation to the growers is that they really make an effort to recruit people in cities who are legal and willing to do this kind of work. I think they may find surprising numbers of people who want to work.

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Q: Why did you decide to come out against Proposition 187, and was it a tough decision to make?

A: Yes, it was, because a lot of people were encouraging me to support it. We spent a lot of time studying it. My conclusion is that it probably violates both the state and federal constitutions. It violates federal law, and as such would put the state at risk of losing about $15 billion in federal money. Now I don’t believe we want to do that.

But more fundamentally, I don’t believe we want our teachers, or doctors to be INS agents. As I read the initiative, every teacher, if they suspected a student was here illegally, would have to report that student. Now think about how you do this. You do it by accent, by skin color. And I do not believe that this is what our teachers should be doing with their time. I think whatever time they have should be focused on teaching. I also believe that school is a very good thing for kids and if you take kids out of school, they then become fodder for gangs, for drug activity, for other problems, because most of these kids are very poor.

I also believe strongly that everyone should be immunized and inoculated. I stood in a clinic in Fresno where 26 children died from the measles, a disease that we thought had been eradicated. Polio is making its way back, and other communicable diseases are returning. It serves us all to make sure that all children are immunized. So I think the way to stop illegal immigration is at the borders, not through our children.

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Q: How significant is it that your opponent, Mike Huffington, employed an undocumented worker as a nanny?

A: I think it’s significant on two levels. One, I think it shows what a very complicated problem this is. Secondly, it rather speaks for itself. He’s endorsed Proposition 187, and clearly wants to take the most stringent of measures (against illegal immigration)--but has himself employed someone who is here illegally for a substantial period of time.

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Q: Let’s talk about some charges he’s made. The first is that your support of the Clinton economic package will mean $37 billion in new taxes for California.

A: That package has succeeded in slowing the growth of the deficit, and it’s reduced the size of government. But let me address the tax issue. There are 13 million personal income taxpayers in California. Only about 170,000 had their taxes go up--2.1 million had their taxes go down, and the rest had no change in their taxes at all. So, the bottom line is that the very highest income earners--less than 1% of Californians, and mostly those who earn more than $250,000 a year--were the only ones that had their income tax go up.

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Q: The other charge, which is being trumpeted in full-page ads, is that your husband benefited from legislation which you voted in favor of. . . .

A: Well, that’s nonsense, because he’s actually lost money in that company. What I voted for was the Health and Human Services appropriations bill, which includes funds for student loan programs. Almost half of all (college) students need loans. Now, my opponent may not know that, but that’s the case in life.

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Q: Do you find it ironic that all of your political accomplishments are being used against you--that suddenly all your experience is not a plus, but a minus?

A: As a mayor and supervisor in a difficult city (San Francisco) I learned the skills that have enabled me to perform for the people. And I have probably done as much as anyone in the history of this country who’s ever gone to the United States Senate and served just two years. And it is ironic, because I believe I have earned a vote for a six-year term. My opponent went to the House at the same time I went to the Senate, and he hasn’t earned it, because he hasn’t done anything. And not only that, what he has done, in lie after lie, is to distort who I am--my record, my family. And he’s done it with the view that he can buy a United States Senate seat, and I don’t think a Senate seat should be bought. It ought to be earned.

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Q: What would you say then to a voter who might accuse you of being part of the problem, who might say, “It’s professional politicians like you who’ve gotten us into this mess?”

A: First of all, nothing is going to stop in Washington, whomever is elected. There will be authorization bills, and appropriation bills, because that’s the way the Senate works. What is important is that the Senate works for California. And it hasn’t been working for California. No Californian had been on the Senate Appropriations Committee for 25 years until I got there. And I have been able to see that California gets its fair share. We have all these other smaller states, whose senators have seniority, and they protect their states. I went up there, I worked for California, and I succeeded--in appropriations, with the crime bill, the Desert Protection Act, with economic programs. I’ve done this in two years. Now what I’m saying to people is give me six years, and watch me work for you.

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Q: Huffington talks a lot about the fact that we don’t need more legislation--that government is too big. What do you see as the limits of the federal government?

A: I agree that the government is too big. I voted to cut the federal work force by 272,000 people. He did not. I cut my own budget by about 38% over two years and saved $2.8 million. Now who’s been for smaller government? It’s rhetoric.

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Q: Let me ask you about the foul mood that voters seem to be stuck in. How do you account for this anger toward government and politicians?

A: Well, if everything Huffington said about me were correct--even I wouldn’t vote for me. But it isn’t. No one in the history of this country has ever spent what Michael Huffington is spending to buy a United States Senate seat. We will be outspent by $20 million. And all of that money is being used to call me names--terrible names.

When I came out against Proposition 187 he said, “She’s finally shown her real colors--they’re yellow.” He’s called me a tax dodger, because, when my (former) husband was dying, for two years I didn’t have taxes due, so I didn’t pay taxes. And yet he has stiffed the state, maintained a sham residence in Texas to avoid 1990 California taxes on the sale of his business, and he won’t reveal his personal income taxes as I have.

This constant barrage fuels people’s cynicism. I think there were people who thought good of me until they heard these things. And I can’t go up against him, ad for ad, and match it. It’s very hard to correct the record, once these things are said. And people don’t know who he is.

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Q: But do you feel there’s something inherently wrong with a person using their wealth to finance a campaign?

A: Yes I do. I believe there ought to be limits, and I voted for campaign spending reform. Interestingly enough, he did not. But the bottom line is, if Michael Huffington weren’t willing to spend $30 million, this race wouldn’t be a contest. He doesn’t have the political base to raise money. And he’s fueling this race with his own money, and yet he won’t tell anybody where it came from, by making his taxes public.

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Q: Do you have days when you feel like this business of politics--particularly the campaigning--has become so mean and so base that it may not all be worth it?

A: Many days. When I see my family brought into this, and when I see myself called “the special interest candidate.” I mean, that’s just baloney. It’s very hard.

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Q: Do you think the kind of negativity that’s characterized so many races, including your own, is going to increase--what’s going to happen?

A: I’m hopeful that once this election is over--it’s certainly the worst one of my life--that I can go back to work, keep my commitments to people, and work to make this a better state. You know, I’ve spent my life in California. I’ve been in every county in this state. And I really deeply feel that I’ve got to continue to do this. I’m good at it, I’m effective, I can work on both sides of the aisle and get legislation passed.

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Q: If Huffington wins, along with a few other Republican Senate candidates, the GOP could end up controlling the Senate. What would that mean for the Clinton Administration--and for California?

A: It means all the committee chairs change. You would have Jesse Helms as head of foreign relations and Bob Packwood as head of finance. The power in the Senate would be in very different hands, and that would mean no campaign spending reform, no lobby disclosure reform and probably no extension of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

But I don’t believe Michael Huffington will win. I think the people of California have sense, and I think they know who cares about them, and their families, and their state. And I think they’ll conclude it’s not Michael Huffington, it’s Dianne Feinstein.*