South Bay Race Shapes Up as a Key Battleground

As local political contests go politically moderate 36th Congressional District will be about as big as they get.

Considered a key battleground in the struggle to control Congress, it has already drawn national attention, and leaders of both major political parties are poised to direct money and other aid from around the country into the fray.

The race is so important that President Clinton appeared as a special guest at a Harman fund-raiser in Washington last week, while House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) plans to come West and host a campaign lunch for Kuykendall in the district later this month.

“This is one of those districts that is going to constitute ground zero in the battle for control of Congress,” said political scientist Sherry Bebitch Jeffe of the Claremont Graduate University. “Only those extremists who do not care about winning, or who feel they have a point to prove, will not fall into line” behind Harman or Kuykendall, she added.

Not so fast, say a couple of local activists who are challenging the two seasoned officeholders for their parties’ nominations in the March 7 primary election.

Political experts don’t give the underdogs, Republican Robert T. Pegram and Democrat James C. Cavuoto, much of a chance. But most acknowledge that Pegram’s and Cavuoto’s determined campaigning could heighten interest in the race and force primary winners to work harder in a fall campaign that is expected to be tough and close.

The district--which swings south along the coast from Venice through the South Bay beach cities and the Palos Verdes Peninsula to San Pedro and includes Torrance, Lawndale and Lomita--is the quintessential swing district.

Republicans and Democrats hold nearly equal portions of the district’s 330,655 registered voters, who in general show they favor environmental protections and abortion choice but dislike big government spending. A recently resurgent aerospace industry is a key district economic engine, as is Pacific Rim trade.

The GOP expected to win the seat when districts were redrawn in 1992, according to veteran political consultant Allan Hoffenblum, whose California Target Book provides detailed, nonpartisan analyses of the state’s legislative and congressional races.

But Democrat Harman, aided by her considerable personal wealth, beat a conservative Republican opponent that year and held on to the seat for two more terms. She gave it up in 1998 to run for governor, and Republicans seized their opportunity. They nominated moderate Kuykendall, who was then a state assemblyman, from a field of five, and he defeated Democrat Janice Hahn that fall, 49% to 47%.

Kuykendall assumed--correctly--that Democrats would try hard to take back the seat this year. He began campaigning--showing up at myriad political and civic functions and raising reelection money--almost as soon as he was sworn in. By the end of 1999, he had collected $437,780 and had $248,000 in the bank, campaign finance records on file with the Federal Election Commission show.

Harman, urged by Democratic congressional leaders and Gov. Gray Davis, entered the race just days before the December filing deadline. She has spent virtually all her time since then putting together her campaign organization and raising money.

In December, she brought in $73,944 in contributions to add to the nearly $35,000 she had left over from her last campaign, records show. In January, U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both Democrats, along with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), hosted a fund-raiser for Harman in Northern California. In addition to the help she got from Clinton last week, Harman will be the beneficiary of a fund-raiser sponsored by Davis next month.

But she so far has kept a low profile at home--skipping a candidates forum in Torrance last month, for example. Her absence has led her opponents to taunt: “Where’s Jane?”

Roy Behr, Harman’s campaign consultant, said she has been working hard, “visiting with individuals and groups, seeking endorsements and support, and she has been doing that from the day she announced.”

Harman’s focus is already on the fall general election, and anything she does in the primary will be with November, not March, in mind, Behr said.

“Our ultimate goal is to win the general, and to the extent that requires activities in the primary, we will conduct those,” Behr said.

Kuykendall isn’t waiting.

“The district is too big, and the race is too important,” Kuykendall said, referring to the slim, five-seat edge Republicans hold in the House of Representatives.

He has been courting the aerospace industry, once a bastion of Harman support, lining up endorsements from dozens of local elected officials and touting his efforts on behalf of the district, such as securing funds to dredge Marina del Rey’s harbor and improve the Ballona Creek wetland.

According to the Congressional Quarterly, Kuykendall sided with the president on 38% of the measures last year on which Clinton took a position. (The House GOP average was 23%.) But Harman’s campaign will try to paint him as too conservative for the district, blasting him, for example, for supporting budget cuts in programs for students, workers and the elderly.

“Our message is that Jane fits the district better than he does,” Behr said.

Harman’s wealth, from her own family and her husband’s audio equipment manufacturing business, gives her an advantage in a race in which there are limits on contributions but not on the amount of their own money that candidates can spend. On the other hand, said consultant Hoffenblum, “There is nothing Republicans won’t do to save the incumbent.”

A Variety of Challengers

So what about these underdogs?

Democrat Cavuoto, a former publisher of technology magazines, is a political moderate who got into the race at the urging of local Democratic activists before Harman made up her mind. He has raised very little money--$1,633, plus a $20,000 loan from himself by year’s end--but he has backing from several local Democratic clubs that are angry because national leaders left them out of the loop in seeking a challenger to Kuykendall.

Cavuoto set up a Web site (https://www.cavuoto2000.com) and promised that if sufficient numbers of voters visit it, he will donate money to their favorite high schools instead of spending it on campaign mailers.

(The other Democrat on the primary ballot, Farshad Rastegar of Lawndale, does not appear to be campaigning. Also on the primary ballot are Libertarian Daniel R. Sherman, Matt Ornati of the Natural Law Party, and John R. Konopka of the Reform Party.)

Pegram’s candidacy reflects the ideological split in the GOP. A conservative who opposes gun controls and abortion and wants to abolish the income tax, he is backed by the right-of-party-center California Republican Assembly.

When Pegram ran for the seat in 1998, he finished fourth in a five-way race. This time he lent his campaign $103,500, and had raised $3,648 by year’s end, records show, which he is spending on a campaign office and signs throughout the district. He filed a complaint with federal election officials about a mailer that Kuykendall sent to constituents at taxpayers’ expense. (Kuykendall said it was a legitimate and necessary communication that had been screened by a congressional commission.)

Harman’s and Kuykendall’s primary challengers “are more of a big nuisance than anything else,” Hoffenblum said.

“They might make [the front-runners] spend money or do a little more [during the primary] than they might have liked, but other than that, they will probably have very little impact,” Hoffenblum said.

Jeffe concurred, although she said either challenger theoretically could siphon sufficient votes from his respective party’s front-runner to send the nominee into the fall contest looking somewhat weaker.

“A little intraparty competition can be healthy, but the reality is, neither of the two challengers constitutes a real threat to the front-runners,” Jeffe said, “At least not today.”