Local Politics Wins in San Jose : Congress: GOP says Democrats’ tactics failed to turn Tom Campbell’s successful race into a referendum on Newt Gingrich.

National Republican leaders spent Wednesday crowing that GOP candidate Tom Campbell’s impressive victory in a congressional special election in San Jose marked a repudiation of Democratic attempts to link him with the foundering reputation of House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Yet Tuesday’s election probably instead confirmed the well-known tenet of one of Gingrich’s predecessors, the late Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, who said: “All politics is local.”

Up against a national campaign to paint him as a Gingrich clone, Campbell found--with the help of a $1.5-million war chest--that local voters remembered the moderate Campbell they had long known, and not the archconservative image crafted by his opponents.

Even given his high name identity in the district, Campbell’s victory was striking, a 59%-36% romp over former San Jose City Councilman Jerry Estruth, a Democrat. Another candidate, independent Linh Dao, pulled 5% in the race to succeed longtime Democratic incumbent Norman Mineta, who resigned the 15th District seat to take a job with defense contractor Lockheed Martin.

Campbell, 43, has represented part of the congressional district in the state Senate since 1993. From 1988 to 1992, he represented a neighboring district in Congress and was well known to the computer industry that dominates the area. That helped him overcome a narrow Democratic majority in registration in his new district.

Estruth’s strategy to wrap Campbell in a Gingrich cloak was almost completely unsuccessful, other than forcing the Republican winner to spend more money than might have been necessary had the race lacked national repercussions.

Democratic leaders, smarting from the defeat, chose to color it in victorious hues. They insisted that Campbell won only because they forced him to distance himself from Gingrich, and they left no doubt that they will continue to flog GOP candidates with the speaker’s image.

“The California special election was a warning shot across the GOP’s bow,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler.

California Democratic Chairman Bill Press added that Campbell entered the race a prohibitive favorite due to his prior service in Congress and his unsuccessful 1992 bid for the U.S. Senate.

“No strategy works 100%,” he said. “I think Republicans last year succeeded in making all politics national and to a great extent we Democrats have succeeded in making all politics national this year. . . . The fact it didn’t work here doesn’t mean it doesn’t work or isn’t valid.”

National GOP leaders, including Gingrich, insisted that the anti-speaker tactics employed in the Campbell race had proved a dismal failure--and would by extension ill-serve the Democrats in 1996.

“If it was a referendum, about 59% of the people in that district didn’t buy it,” Gingrich said in Washington. “I hope [Democrats] decide . . . that focusing on me is better than creating a positive agenda. I can’t think of anything more likely to keep them a permanent minority.”

But the reality of the race suggests that both parties are, at most, only partly right.

Campbell, with pro-abortion rights views and his longtime defense of the environment, may have been the toughest sell for Democrats to make in their nationwide efforts to tar all Republicans as Gingrich allies.

For one thing, it apparently rang false to many voters that the more progressive Campbell would be, as Estruth put it, “a vote to continue the Gingrich agenda.” For another, Campbell was not in Congress during this session, meaning that he could not be directly criticized for votes taken under Gingrich’s speakership. That will not be true for those Republicans, particularly freshmen, running for reelection next fall.

But the race also proved that it is possible for Republicans to escape the comparison. “Jerry Estruth, Campbell’s opponent, took every opportunity to bash the speaker of the House and the Republican agenda,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour. “The people of California’s 15th were reminded repeatedly of their opportunity to say ‘no’ to the Republican revolution. They didn’t.”

Campbell’s ascension to Congress, coupled with the Friday resignation of newly convicted U.S. Rep. Walter R. Tucker III of Compton, means that Republicans will temporarily hold a 26-25 majority in the California delegation.

It is the first time since 1958 that Republicans have controlled the delegation, but it is not likely to last long. Democrats typically win at least 75% of the vote in Tucker’s district.