CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : Battle for 78th-District Seat Highlights S.D. County Legislative Races

While a newly elected state assemblyman battles to keep his 4 1/2-month-old seat, San Diego County’s other state legislative incumbents--several of whom survived the toughest challenges of their careers last June--are favorites against generally token opposition in next week’s election.

Of the seven state Assembly and two state Senate races on local ballots, the 78th District campaign between Republican Assemblyman Jeff Marston and Democrat Mike Gotch looms as the most compelling.

Not only is Gotch, a former San Diego City Councilman, arguably the strongest challenger found in any of the contests, but the Nov. 6 election, the third race between the two candidates in only seven months, also features a role reversal that has significantly altered the campaign’s dynamics.

During last spring’s special race to fill the vacancy created by Democrat Lucy Killea’s election to the state Senate, Gotch’s eight-year council record often kept him on the defensive. In contrast, Marston, a one-time City Hall and U.S. senatorial aide, was able to campaign as, in his words, “an outsider with an insider’s experience.”

However, Marston’s 48%-44% victory over Gotch in June’s special runoff--which followed the Republican’s first-place primary finish two months earlier--has transformed him into the candidate with the record to defend this fall.

Relishing the change in roles, Gotch, after being all but invisible in the campaign throughout the summer, recently began firing rhetorical salvos at his opponent’s brief legislative record. Among other things, Gotch has faulted Marston for voting against high-profile causes ranging from earthquake insurance, school dropout programs and reduced-price breakfasts for poor children in kindergarten to law-enforcement and treatment of alcohol- and drug-exposed infants.

“In the primary, my opponent had the luxury of having no record,” Gotch said. “While that meant that he had no positives of his own to point to, he also didn’t have the normal baggage of anyone with a voting record that’s made some people happy and others unhappy over time. Now that he has a record, we’re competing on a more level playing field.”

Expressing pride in his legislative record, Marston argues that Gotch has presented a “technically accurate but distorted” picture of his votes by, in some cases, emphasizing selected procedural or amendment votes. Some of the bills that he opposed, Marston said, were “costly or duplicative,” while others were weaker than the measures he eventually supported.

“What Mike likes to do is pick out some of these well-meaning but often flawed bills that sound like they’re going to save the world and then make it seem like I oppose their good goals,” Marston said. “Usually, I end up voting for something very similar or stronger. I liken it to buying a new car. While Mike says, ‘I like the color and the style--I’ll take it,’ I say, ‘I like that, too, but I want to look under the hood first.’ ”

As highlights of his brief record, Marston cites his success in securing $2 million in park funds for the district, a commitment from the state to fully fund and expedite the $117-million Interstate 15 expansion project in the Mid-City area, and his role in preserving a so-called independent living center for the disabled in Hillcrest.

“All of these things were done against great political odds,” Marston said. “When I went to Sacramento, people said I’d be (Speaker Willie Brown’s) No. 1 target, because I’d taken away a seat his party had held for nearly 20 years. The conventional wisdom was I wouldn’t be able to get anything done, because the Democrats would make sure I wouldn’t have anything to point to in November. I didn’t worry so much about having things to point to, but I refused to accept I couldn’t get anything done.”

Simply by forcing Marston to defend himself, however, Gotch, who billed himself as “the only tried and tested candidate” in last spring’s special election, hopes to persuade voters to judge Marston by the same standard--a comparison that the better-known Democrat feels works to his benefit. Even Marston acknowledges that his own polls show that, despite his victory, Gotch’s name recognition remains considerably higher than his own.

“Part of me is still running this campaign as if I’m running against an incumbent,” said Marston, a 35-year-old former aide to San Diego City Councilwoman Gloria McColl and U.S. Sen. S.I. Hayakawa (R-Calif.) “My concern is that, if you don’t know much about either of us, there still could be a tendency to go with the better-known name.”

Gotch’s frequent recitations on how his voting record in Sacramento would have differed from that of Marston actually make the distinctions between the two candidates appear greater than they are.

In fact, the candidates’ philosophical similarity on many major issues has complicated their attempt to distinguish themselves to voters in the 78th District, which stretches along the coast from Ocean Beach to Pacific Beach, extending inland to the Miramar Naval Air Station in the north, south to downtown San Diego and east to East San Diego.

Both Gotch and Marston favor abortion rights, capital punishment, a ban on assault weapons and Proposition 131’s proposal for a 12-year limit on state legislative terms, and oppose offshore oil drilling and aerial malathion spraying. Among their few policy differences, Gotch favors a 15-day waiting period for the purchase of rifles and supports increasing the minimum wage, with Marston taking the opposite position on both issues.

The two also differ on some of the major propositions on next week’s ballot. Known as the council’s strongest environmentalist during his two terms, Gotch favors Proposition 128, the so-called “Big Green” initiative, saying: “Protection of the environment is a fundamental responsibility of government.” Marston opposes the measure, arguing that it “frankly tries to do too much and costs too much.”

The two disagree on ballot proposals to increase the tax on alcohol, beer and wine. While Gotch supports the “nickel-a-drink” Proposition 134, so called because it would raise taxes by about that much, Marston favors Proposition 126, the alcohol industry’s less costly alternative.

Throughout the summer and early fall, Gotch’s exceedingly low profile--marked by infrequent public appearances, closure of his headquarters, loss of a campaign consultant and general inactivity--prompted speculation that he had all but conceded the November election to Marston. Within political circles, a widely shared theory was that Gotch simply had little heart for a third race against Marston after two embarrassing setbacks in a contest he entered as an overwhelming favorite.

Gotch, who resumed active campaigning only about one month ago, insists that he was quietly redesigning his strategy, even while conceding that fund-raising difficulties since his loss forced him to adopt “a low-budget, not low-key campaign.” As of last week, the candidates or committees working on their behalf had spent about $300,000 each, but Marston has raised much more than Gotch since their special June runoff for the six months remaining in Killea’s unexpired term.

“We retrenched and decided to try to take the focus off me by comparing records, but for that to happen, we had to wait for him to develop a record,” Gotch, 43, explained. “We also had to think of ways to economize and scale back some of the pizazz. We’re still communicating our message, but with less flash. Besides, I’m a scrapper. I wasn’t about to just walk away from this thing.”

Moreover, any assumptions about the potential impact of Gotch’s “lost summer,” as one consultant half-jokingly terms it, must be weighed with this caveat: By virtue of his high name recognition, Gotch does not need to be as active as most challengers. As Marston himself puts it: “Mike’s a viable candidate just by having his name on the ballot.”

In part, that political reality reflects the fact that the 78th District is one of the most competitively balanced state legislative districts in California. While incumbents in most local districts have the advantage of double-digit voter registration gaps that favor their respective parties, Marston’s GOP is the minority party in the 78th District, where Democrats hold a narrow 43.7%-42.2% edge.

“It’s a tough but winnable district, the difference in June wasn’t that much and I think there’s at least a 50-50 chance of turning the outcome around this time,” Gotch concluded.

The same cannot be said about San Diego’s eight other state legislative contests, most of which feature overwhelmingly favored incumbents in “safe” districts heavily outspending lesser-known opponents.

The relative somnolence comes even though several local legislators--notably, Encinitas Republican Sunny Mojonnier and San Diego Democrat Pete Chacon--faced the sternest tests of their political careers in June’s primary, races dominated by debate over their alleged ethical transgressions.

However, having survived their stiff primary challenges with surprising ease, Mojonnier and Chacon, like their legislative colleagues, began and will end the fall campaign as favorites--which has more to do with their districts’ lopsided partisan makeup than with any significant change in their political fortunes.

The only contest in which a challenger is given even an outside chance of an upset is in the 75th Assembly District, where Solana Beach school board member Deidre (Dede) Alpert is attempting to block Mojonnier’s bid for a fifth two-year term. Libertarian John Murphy and Peace and Freedom Party member Vi Phuong Huynh also are on the 75th District ballot.

Mojonnier has drawn heavy criticism even from within her own party over a series of recent political controversies. Last February, Mojonnier agreed to pay a $13,200 fine for double-billing the state and her campaign committee for business trips, as well as for using political donations to pay for fashion and beauty treatments for her staff. Along with other state legislators, she has been faulted for routinely using state-paid sergeants-at-arms for personal tasks, such as chauffeuring her children and escorting her home after evening parties.

Although Alpert has waged an energetic campaign aimed at capitalizing on the anti-Mojonnier sentiment generated by those and other incidents, she is severely handicapped by running in a district with a daunting 52%-33% GOP registration edge. In addition, she has been outspent by a 9-to-1 margin, $269,000 to $29,000, though most of Mojonnier’s funds were spent last spring.

As severely uphill as Alpert’s campaign is, challengers in most of the other districts confront even bleaker prospects:

* In the 74th Assembly District, incumbent Republican Robert C. Frazee of Carlsbad faces Democrat Gerald Franklin and two minor-party candidates.

* Tricia Hunter (R-Bonita), elected in a special election last year that attracted nationwide attention as a referendum on the volatile abortion issue, is opposed by Democrat Stephen Thorne and two minor candidates in the 76th District.

* 77th District Assemblywoman Carol Bentley (R-El Cajon) faces Democrat Thomas Connolly and two minor candidates.

* Democrat Chacon, whose acceptance of a $7,500 check from a cash cashers’ organization in 1988 after he abandoned legislation opposed by the group drew criticism similar to that faced by Mojonnier, is a heavy favorite to win an 11th term in his 79th District race against Republican Roger Covalt and one minor-party candidate.

* Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista) faces Republican Kevin Kelly and two minor candidates in the 80th District.

* State Sens. William Craven and Wadie P. Deddeh are expected to have little difficulty retaining their seats against relatively weak opponents. Craven, an Oceanside Republican, faces only two minor party candidates in the 38th District, while Deddeh, a Democrat from Bonita, has drawn opposition from Republican Muriel Watson and two minor candidates.