Within GOP, 38th District Is Battlefield

One Assembly candidate is an insurance agent, another is a high school math teacher. Two are corporate consultants; two are retirees. One is a laid-off software engineer, actively seeking a job.

The best-known of the bunch is Tom McClintock, a former Republican assemblyman anxious to return to public office now that his party has seized control of the Assembly.

Six Republicans and two Democrats are fighting for a chance to replace Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) at year’s end, when she will be forced out of the Assembly by voter-imposed term limits.

The Republicans have mounted more aggressive campaigns for the seat that represents the 38th Assembly District, an area that straddles the Ventura-Los Angeles county line and is dominated by Republican voters.

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“This seat is a complete lock for the Republican Party,” said Scott Wilk, Boland’s chief of staff. “The Republican who wins the March primary can vacation in Mexico the rest of the year and still win comfortably in November.”

Mindful of the importance of the primary election, some Republican candidates started early this year sending out flurries of political mailers--flurries expected to turn into a blizzard between now and March 26.

McClintock has one of the most ambitious election campaigns of the Republican candidates. He plans to spend at least $170,000 to persuade voters that he is a “taxpayer’s hero,” whom they should send back to the Assembly to slash taxes and government spending.

McClintock left the Assembly in 1992 to run for Congress. He lost that bid and then ran another unsuccessful campaign in 1994 for state controller.

He jumped into the 38th Assembly District race at the last minute after he was recruited by one of California’s most conservative and politically powerful organizations, a collection of Orange County-based PACs affiliated with state Senate GOP leader Rob Hurtt of Garden Grove.

That has inspired genuine resentment among the other Republican contenders.

One of them, longtime Simi Valley Republican activist Bob Larkin, sent out a mailer denouncing the “Orange County Octopus” coiled around the 38th Assembly District. “It is made up of the ‘radical right’ Political Action Committees that are shaping the state Legislature to their liking,” the letter said.

One of the Orange County PACs urged McClintock to run after conducting a poll showing he was fairly well-regarded among voters in the district.

So far, contributions from these PACs have yet to show up on McClintock’s financial reports. And McClintock said he does not need their help, having already raised what he needs to run his campaign.

Following a bare-knuckled strategy, McClintock has tried to dry up the financial contributions to his rivals. He sent political power brokers in Sacramento the results of his campaign’s public opinion survey conducted last month showing him with a 4-1 lead over Larkin, his nearest Republican rival.

“We wanted to save them the trouble of wasting their money,” said Wayne C. Johnson, a Sacramento-based consultant to McClintock’s campaign.

Republican candidate Steve Frank of Simi Valley disputes the validity of the poll.

He also takes jabs at McClintock as a professional politician and political opportunist who has been living in Sacramento but rented an apartment in Simi Valley to meet the legal residency requirement for the race.

In contrast, Frank said, he has been living in the district for 20 years, the last eight years in Simi Valley.

Frank bills himself as the most conservative candidate in the race and rattles off a list of conservative causes that range from helping with Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign to stumping for Proposition 187, which denies education and medical benefits to illegal immigrants.

“My aim is not to make laws, but repeal them,” Frank said.

Frank has suffered a couple of embarrassing moments during the campaign, most recently when his campaign sent out a letter that misspelled the name and signature of state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley). She is one of his biggest supporters.

The first uncomfortable moment for him came last month at a state Republican convention in Burlingame.

Opponents placed leaflets on the chairs of conventioneers, detailing how Frank collected nearly $30,000 from law firms after he had denounced statewide ballot propositions aimed at reining in lawyers and various types of lawsuits.

“Don’t be fooled by someone financed by the liberal trial lawyers,” the leaflet said.

Frank defends his opposition to capping attorneys’ contingency fees and creating a pure “no-fault” form of auto insurance, saying he is following true Republican free-market principles and personal responsibility.

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“The issue is, do you have some responsibility when you drive a car,” Frank said. And once the government caps attorneys’ fees, he said, will it then place limits on the fees of physicians, mechanics or accountants. “Unfortunately, the people pushing this don’t believe in the free market,” he said.

Yet the contributions have kept Frank on the defensive, forcing him to respond to attacks from more moderate Republican opponents.

“Trial lawyers have consistently been Willie Brown’s biggest supporters over the years,” notes Ross Hopkins, one of the Republican rivals in the race.

Hopkins, the only Republican candidate from the vote-rich San Fernando Valley, is running as “a local businessman, not a politician.”

He promotes his “real-life experience” as a university professor, a Lockheed public affairs manager and a corporate consultant who would be a friend of business in the Legislature, pushing for a better business climate and upgrading public schools.

“When business people fail to solve problems, they go out of business,” one Hopkins brochure says. “When politicians fail, they just raise taxes or run for another office. We need more business leaders in government--and fewer politicians.”

Larkin is another Republican candidate running as a businessman who vows to “bring business principles to government.”

Larkin has lived and worked in Simi Valley as a State Farm Insurance agent for the past 27 years. “Everyone talks about what we need to do for business,” he said. “I’m the only one who has lived it day to day for 27 years.”

A former chairman of the Ventura County Republican Central Committee, Larkin is well-regarded among mainstream Republicans. He has locked up the endorsements of most of the county’s Republican officials, including Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury and Assemblymen Nao Takasugi (Oxnard) and Brooks Firestone (Los Olivos).

Besides his pro-business message, Larkin is seeking support from Republican women who share his views on preserving abortion rights. “I don’t believe that the government should be in the doctor’s office,” he said. “Women should make their own decisions.”

Peggy Freeman of Castaic is the only woman in the race. She touts her experience as the former executive director of a nonprofit community health clinic in the Santa Clarita Valley as good training for the Legislature. She retired from the job last year.

“I’ve had hands-on experience in the areas that have caused such problems in the bloated bureaucracy,” Freeman said.

Specifically, she said her expertise in health care would help the Legislature cope with the increasing share of public assistance that will be given to states in federal block grants.

Freeman asks voters to look closely at the candidates’ backgrounds to determine who is best qualified.

“We have one insurance manager, we have two consultants. We have a retired sheriff’s deputy, we have a politician. We have one working woman who is retired, and that’s me,” Freeman said.

“Do we need more consultants or politicians up in Sacramento? Tell me, what does an insurance man know about health care or education or welfare? I’m someone with real-world experience and a common-sense approach to solving problems.”

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Robert C. Hamlin, another Castaic resident, is also running in the Republican primary. What Hamlin has lacked in money for glossy brochures and slick ad campaigns, he has tried to make up for with sheer determination.

“Too many people equate victory with money,” he said. “I have personally knocked on 10,000 doors. I’ve got the stress fracture to prove it.”

Hamlin, a retired deputy sheriff, has been walking precincts for the past six months, taking his campaign door-to-door to those areas with residents who are likely to vote.

He said he has been knocking on all doors instead of targeting just those Republicans who are most likely to vote in the GOP primary. “I talk to everybody. I want to be ready for the November election, too.”

Hamlin retired on disability from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department in 1991 after an altercation with an inmate at the Ventura County Jail. A gang member knocked him to the floor and beat him in the head, he said, damaging a portion of his inner-ear that affects his sense of balance.

He makes jokes about the lingering injury: “I tend to imitate Jerry Ford once in awhile.”

Hamlin said he pays no attention to the sniping among his competitors, preferring to focus on himself and his message of supporting law enforcement and pushing for “truth-in-sentencing” laws. “If a criminal is sentenced to serve eight years, the individual serves eight years. Period.”

The Democratic contest has been a much friendlier affair.

Both Democratic candidates--Jon M. Lauritzen, a high school math teacher from Chatsworth, and David E. Ross, an unemployed software engineer from Oak Park--go out of their way to compliment each other at political forums.

“He’s a nice gentleman,” Ross said of his opponent. “He’s active in Democratic clubs. I’ve never been active in the Democratic Party organization. I always took a more independent stand.”

Ross said he felt he needed to be independent to work with elected leaders of both parties during the years he served on the Oak Park Municipal Advisory Committee. The committee advises county supervisors on the needs of the tiny community.

“Politically, there is not a lot of difference between the two of us,” Lauritzen said. “I lean a little more toward labor and raising the minimum wage. He’s never belonged to a union and I’ve always been a union member.”

Lauritzen, who has been active with the United Teachers of Los Angeles, said the union is helping spread his proposals to increase public school funding and set up a task force to control gang violence.

Lauritzen is endorsed by the state Democratic party and the party’s San Fernando Valley chapter.

Ross said he will begin airing 30-second spots on cable TV on Monday that emphasize his 14 years of experience in local government and his integrity. Ross will not accept any PAC donations or any contributions of more than $500.

Ross said he has collected about $1,800 so far, mostly from himself and relatives.

Ross said he was laid off from his last job as a software engineer in October. And like many victims of cutbacks in the defense industry, he is intently seeking a job--mixed in with campaigning for the Assembly seat.

“It would pay me more than I’ve ever earned,” Ross said of the Assembly post.