ELECTIONS ’88 ORANGE COUNTY : Thierbach Calls Pringle Mailer Insult to Latinos

Democratic Assembly candidate Christian F. (Rick) Thierbach went on the attack Wednesday, accusing his Republican opponent in the 72nd Assembly District of engaging in a “sleazy campaign” and distributing literature that “borders on racism.”

Thierbach, an Anaheim resident, said one political mailer in particular from GOP candidate Curt Pringle “is an insult to the Hispanic community.” The mailer about crime in the district--picturing a graffiti-covered wall and the statement “It’s us against them”--is an attempt “by fair-haired Curt Pringle” to link “Hispanics to drugs and crime and that’s offensive,” Thierbach said.

Pringle, a Garden Grove planning commissioner, denied the charge and responded by calling Thierbach a “tool” of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown Jr. (D-San Francisco). Pringle added: “I’m committed to ridding our community of the problems that plague us, whether it be crime or drugs or gangs or Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.”

The personal attacks began during a breakfast meeting of the Garden Grove Kiwanis Club that was attended by about two dozen people and continued in separate interviews. The breakfast meeting was one of the first times the opponents have met face to face in their race to fill the seat vacated when Assemblyman Richard E. Longshore (R-Santa Ana) died June 8.

During the breakfast, Thierbach, a deputy district attorney in Riverside County, said Pringle is “pursuing the Orange County campaign dream--a smear campaign . . . never mentioning any issues.” He told the gathering that the campaign’s overriding issue is Pringle’s “lack of integrity” because he continues to mislead voters about Thierbach’s residency and his record in the district. Thierbach, 38 and a board member of the Anaheim Union High School District, repeatedly denied that he is a carpetbagger.

But Pringle, 29 and a longtime Garden Grove resident, said Thierbach moved into the district only weeks before the filing deadline and is “receiving his orders from Brown and other Sacramento Democrats.”

Linking Thierbach and Brown has emerged as one of the central tactics of the Pringle campaign. Pringle’s consultants believe that Brown is viewed negatively as an outside force by voters in the largely blue-collar central Orange County district. Thierbach has lived in Anaheim for several years and moved into an Anaheim neighborhood that is within the district’s boundaries in early 1988.

In a mailer sent this week to 40,000 households in the district, Pringle’s campaign continued to criticize Brown for laying off most of Longshore’s staff and essentially “closing his offices.” The outside of the mailer is a sketch of the front door of Longshore’s district office with a sign hanging from the doorknob that reads: “CLOSED by order of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.” The mailer contends that Brown “fired the Longshore staff” to help Thierbach.

To reinforce the attacks on Brown, Pringle’s campaign last week spent $10,000 on a series of radio commercials that ran on several Los Angeles-based stations, according to Carlos Rodriquez, Pringle’s Sacramento-based consultant.

A spokeswoman for Brown said Longshore’s office remains open and denied that the Speaker is personally involved in Thierbach’s campaign. “Rick Thierbach is nobody’s puppet, certainly not Mr. Brown’s,” spokeswoman Susan Jetton said. “Willie Brown is interested in his race, but not involved to the point of walking districts. The whole charge is ridiculous.”

Both parties see the 72nd District race as a key contest in view of the redistricting scheduled to occur after the 1990 census, and are expected to contribute money and volunteers to the effort. Republicans reportedly are prepared to spend more than $1 million to help Pringle capture the seat.

In the one Pringle mailer that particularly angered Thierbach, there is no mention of Latinos. But Thierbach said the graffiti is Latino and one of the pictures used in the mailer portrays a group of young Latino men. The thrust of the mailer is to blame crime on “weak courts and bad laws” put in place by Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

When asked whether he was singling out Latinos, Pringle said:

“No way. In this district we have Hispanic gangs, Vietnamese gangs, black gangs and white gangs. Gangs are a problem, and all we were trying to say is it’s time to stop them.”