Umberg Plans Run for State Attorney General : Politics: Democrat’s announcement leaves the race open for his Assembly post. Nine candidates have taken out papers for the 69th District seat.

SANTA ANA —  Preparing for what many believe to be an uphill battle, Orange County’s only Democrat in the state Legislature, Assemblyman Tom Umberg, officially declared his intent to run for state attorney general.

The Garden Grove Democrat paid his filing fee Tuesday and next week will formally kick off his campaign to unseat Republican state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.

Umberg’s entry into the statewide race officially opens up the 69th state Assembly seat, which already has drawn interest from a pack of Democrats and Republicans.

One of the Republicans hoping to replace Umberg tried Tuesday to become the first Orange County candidate running for a major partisan office to collect enough signatures instead of paying the filing fee.

Virgel L. Nickell, 51, of Santa Ana entered the race by submitting to the county registrar of voters 1,750 signatures of Republican voters within the district instead of paying the $525 fee.

Late Tuesday, county officials found that Nickell had submitted enough valid signatures to meet the 1,500 minimum requirement.

“We verified (the signatures) up to the required amount,” said Beverly Warner, election section supervisor.

Donald Tanney, registrar of voters, said, “I’m not aware of any major party assembly candidate qualifying by signatures in lieu of a filing fee,” a provision that came as a result of a 1976 court action.

However, some minor parties without adequate funding may have submitted petitions instead of paying the fee in the past, Tanney said, adding that records tabulating this go back to 1982.

Today is the deadline for candidates for the state Legislature, judicial posts, state constitutional offices or insurance commissioner to file their declarations of intention to run. If the incumbents do not seek reelection, candidates have until Monday to file papers for those seats.

Umberg, 38, a former federal prosecutor and three-year assemblyman, is not only taking on a Republican incumbent, but is expected to face a tough fight in the June 7 primary against San Francisco Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith, who narrowly lost to Lungren in 1990.

But Tuesday, Umberg downplayed the odds, claiming that coming out of the starting gate, he has more in his campaign fund than Smith: $298,000 in his account, compared to Smith’s $36,000 “cash on hand.”

“I am not doing it to finish second,” said Umberg, who sees himself as the best candidate to challenge Lungren in the November general election.

“Certainly, I think it’s a campaign, but we will win the campaign,” Umberg added. “I think people are looking for something other than the same way we have been doing it for the last 10, 20, 30 years.”

His departure from the state Assembly creates political peril for the local Democratic Party, which faces an intra-party battle for the seat while fighting off the Republican Party’s attempts to recapture the only legislative seat now held by a Democrat. Democrats make up 53% of the registered voters in the 69th Assembly District and Republicans 36%.

As of Tuesday, nine candidates had taken out papers for the Assembly race, with five already filing their fees or signatures from registered voters. They include two Democrats, Santa Ana Councilman Ted R. Moreno and Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce President Michael Metzler, who was encouraged by Umberg to run; two Republicans, Jim Morrissey of Anaheim, who formed the Republican Small Business Assn., and Nickell; and Libertarian candidate George Reis of Santa Ana.

The Republican field is expected to widen. Santa Ana school board member Rosemarie I. Avila took out candidate papers, and Costa Mesa attorney Martin Ageson, a longtime Republican Party activist, is expected to formally announce his candidacy this week.

In a recent letter to potential supporters, Ageson said he is running because the first two Republican candidates have not succeeded “in attracting much support.”

“I hope to get (the Republican Party establishment’s) backing,” Ageson said Tuesday, “but I was not asked to do this. This is my idea.”

Nickell, meanwhile, positioned himself as the Republican candidate with community support.

“This number of signatures should amply demonstrate that I have the grass-roots Republican support in this district to win in June and go on to win in November,” Nickell said.

Nickell, a Vietnam naval veteran and assistant to the executive director of Veterans’ Charities of Orange County, said he wants the voters, not money, to get him on the ballot.

“Sometimes candidates . . . are sponsored by some other legislator (so) extensively that the ties are too close. I consider myself very much a maverick--I’m a people candidate.”