ELECTIONS : Beverly to Run for Congress; Doerr Will Seek Assembly Seat

Election-year jockeying intensified in the South Bay this week as El Camino College Trustee William Beverly announced that he will run for Congress and Redondo Beach City Councilwoman Barbara Doerr said she will seek a seat in the state Assembly.

Beverly, the son of state Sen. Robert G. Beverly (R-Manhattan Beach), said Wednesday that he will run in the newly drawn 36th Congressional District, a GOP-leaning area stretching from the Palos Verdes Peninsula to Venice.

Although his opponents in the June 2 GOP primary are expected to include Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores and Maureen Reagan, daughter of former President Ronald Reagan, Beverly says his polls show he stands a good chance of winning.

“The polling actually tells me that I have a significant lead over Flores and Reagan,” said Beverly, 41, former president of the South Bay Union High School District’s board of trustees. “That gives me motivation. . . . I just wanted to know that I had a reasonable chance.”

Doerr, 48, announced Tuesday that she will run in the Republican-leaning 53rd Assembly District, a newly drawn area that includes the beach cities, most of Torrance and part of the Westside.

Doerr has been in public office since 1981, when she was elected mayor of Redondo Beach. After serving the maximum eight years as mayor, she was elected to the City Council in 1989. Doerr joins two other Republicans in the Assembly race--Redondo Beach Mayor Brad Parton and Torrance City Councilman Dan Walker.

An outspoken council member and a grass-roots campaigner, Doerr said she does not believe that she and Parton will neutralize each other--and help Walker--by splitting the Republican vote in Redondo Beach.

“All of us will be campaigning districtwide,” she said Wednesday. “We all have had equal press exposure and visibility in the greater South Bay community.”