LOCAL ELECTIONS / 41st ASSEMBLY DISTRICT : Running for a New Role : If Sheila Kuehl wins, she will be state’s first openly gay legislator. Michael Meehan, her GOP foe, says he is targeting the ex-actress’s liberal agenda, not her sexual orientation.

From her perch atop a table in a Santa Monica meeting room, Sheila James Kuehl is holding forth on a favorite topic--the glacial pace of making laws work for real people.

“We crawl across the law like inchworms,” says the Democratic candidate in the 41st Assembly District, drawing an appreciative chuckle from her audience.

As a women’s rights lawyer who has toiled for more than a decade on domestic violence legislation, Kuehl knows whereof she speaks. And as a former actress--best known for playing Zelda in the television series “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”--Kuehl knows how to speak.

With her engaging rat-a-tat-tat delivery, pithy one-liners and seemingly inexhaustible energy, Kuehl, 53, is a pro at winning over a crowd. Add to that her inveterate networking, and you have the makings of what local political analysts predict will be a winning effort on Election Day.

That would be a milestone. If elected, Kuehl will be California’s first openly lesbian or gay state legislator.

With the chance to make history, gay and lesbian groups have responded to her candidacy. By Kuehl’s own reckoning, they accounted for about 40% of her contributions through the June primary.

But sexual orientation defines neither the campaign nor the candidate.

Credit for that goes partly to her Republican opponent, reserve sheriff’s deputy and law student Michael T. Meehan, 28. He has dismissed the sexual orientation matter as irrelevant in the race to represent the 41st District, which stretches from Santa Monica to the Ventura County line.

In Meehan’s view, it is Kuehl’s liberal agenda that makes her the wrong choice for a district that includes such suburban enclaves as Calabasas and Hidden Hills. And despite a lack of funds, Meehan insists that the contest will be close. He contends, for instance, that he will be helped by a large turnout of conservative voters attracted to the polls by some of this November’s ballot measures.

Still, there is no questioning Kuehl’s momentum, stemming in part from her easy win over five opponents in the Democratic primary. She also benefits from a decided Democratic edge in the district’s voter registration figures, as well as a war chest in the mid-$400,000 range.

Meehan has raised only $40,000 and lacks the money for a single districtwide mailer.

“I’ve been trying to drum up support (for Meehan) among the Republican leadership,” says GOP consultant Allan Hoffenblum. “But there’s not much interest.”

Though Kuehl rejects the label lesbian candidate, she says being a lesbian has been a character builder. It was the reason, for instance, she got kicked out of her sorority when she was an undergraduate at UCLA.

During one summer vacation, someone rifled through Kuehl’s bureau drawers at the sorority house, finding “incriminating” letters that revealed her sexual orientation. Kuehl says she was summarily booted from the sorority and further humiliated when the stolen letters were spread out on a table for all her “sisters” to read.

“I was devastated,” she says. “I thought that my life was over.”

Of particular concern to her was whether her sexuality would become known to those in charge of the “Dobie Gillis” series. At the time, Kuehl was poised to get her own show, to be called “Zelda.” The pilot for the show had been a hot commodity, Kuehl says, but the final green light for it never came.

Later, Kuehl says, its director “sat me down for a little talk.” She says the director told her, “The President of CBS said you were just too butch.”

Kuehl went on to work at UCLA, eventually becoming an associate dean of students during the turbulent early 1970s. Later, she enrolled at Harvard Law School, graduating in 1978 at age 37.

At law school, she embraced what became her life’s work: trying to improve women’s lot in the legal system. In 1989 she co-founded the California Women’s Law Center, a nonprofit group she left last year.

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Kuehl lives alone in a Santa Monica bungalow with enough Rolodexes to hold what she calls her “Christmas card list” of about 1,500 friends. And it seems as if every group Kuehl has ever been affiliated with has rallied around her campaign.

A reunion/campaign fund-raiser attended by 150 fellow counselors from Uni-Camp, a UCLA summer program for sick and underprivileged children, is but one recent example.

Kuehl’s supporters also include her former colleagues in the “Dobie Gillis” cast, who appeared en masse at a fund-raiser during the primary. Though a Republican, Dwayne Hickman--who played the title role in the series--said he is casting his ballot for Kuehl.

Her public identification as the character Zelda has come in handy, Kuehl says, by making her sexual orientation less threatening. “It jams the homophobic radar,” she says.