Zschau Pulls Ahead; Prop. 51 Wins Easily : Campbell and Curb Victors; Davis Leads

Rep. Ed Zschau and political commentator Bruce Herschensohn were locked in a close race in the Republican U.S. Senate primary early today.

Former Republican Lt. Gov. Mike Curb meanwhile appeared headed for victory in his bid to win back his old job, moving strongly ahead of state Sen. H.L. Richardson of Glendora, according to preliminary results. The winner will face Democratic Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy.

In the Republican primary for state controller, state Sen. William Campbell of Hacienda Heights appeared victorious over two rivals, Assemblyman Don Sebastiani and former chairman of the State Fair Political Practices Commission Dan Stanford.

In the Democratic primary election for the open seat of state controller, Assemblyman Gray Davis of Los Angeles opened a lead over state Sen. John Garamendi of Walnut Grove in the early counting. Assemblyman Alister McAlister (D-San Jose) was third.

Throughout the day, election officials measured an unusually low voter turnout, perhaps a record low for a statewide primary in a gubernatorial election year.

In the GOP Senate primary, Zschau, whose beginnings were in the high-tech so-called Silicon Valley of Northern California, made a statewide showing while Herschensohn, whose political base was rooted in his Southland television audience, registered hardly any significant support outside Southern California. The two far oudistanced a tightly bunched group of other candidates, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, state Sen. Ed Davis of Valencia and Rep. Bobbi Fiedler of Northridge.

The winner will be matched against three-term Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston in November.

With 57% of precincts reporting, the vote among leading Republican Senate contenders was:

Results Vote % Ed Zschau 384,871 36 Bruce Herschensohn 307,271 29 Michael D. Antonovich 97,778 9 Bobbi Fiedler 81,276 8 Ed Davis 74,940 7 Robert W. Naylor 31,649 3 Arthur B. Laffer 26,225 3

Some experts said part of the reason for the low turnout was the lack of competition in the race for governor. Neither Republican Gov. George Deukmejian nor Democratic challenger Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, faced any significant primary opposition. They will meet in a Nov. 4 general election rematch of their 1982 contest.

With 57% of precincts reporting, the vote among the Republican lieutenent governor candidates was:

Results Vote % Mike Curb 609,928 57 H.L. Richardson 464,436 43

With 57% of precincts reporting, the vote among candidates for controller:

Democrats

Results Vote % Gray Davis 616,450 51 John Garamendi 450,471 37 Alister McAlister 145,168 12

Republicans

Results Vote % William Campbell 471,983 48 Don A. Sebastiani 268,805 27 Dan Stanford 171,360 17

State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig was reelected handily to his nonpartisan office. He appeared to reach the 60% margin of victory that he wanted over two hardly known opponents to validate his school reform efforts.

In local elections, Los Angeles County voters trounced a ballot proposition to make the assessor’s office appointive rather than elective.

State Sen. Paul Carpenter of Norwalk led a field of candidates for the Democratic nomination for a vacant seat on the state Board of Equalization; and John J. Lynch, a deputy county assessor, was leading in the race for county assessor.

Election results were not even final before Democrats Cranston and Bradley issued debate challenges.

Cranston, who spent election night in Washington, sent a telegram to the chairmen of the California Republican Party and several minor parties proposing to debate “the important national issues and especially on topics of concern in our state, including the toxic waste, the needs of our children and international trade.”

Bradley challenged Deukmejian to a series of 14 debates starting Sept. 4 in San Francisco and ending Nov. 1 in Monterey or Salinas.

“The people of California want candidates to discuss the issues, and a series of debates between the gubernatorial candidates on everything from taxes to toxics is the best way to do that,” the mayor said.

Soul of the GOP

The GOP Senate primary was not only a regional contest but also a $10-million battle for the soul of the California Republican Party.

Zschau presented himself as tomorrow’s kind of Republican, a free-enterpriser with a light hand on the old-fashioned social and moral issues that have dominated the GOP here for years. He reached out to the baby-boomers and those under 45 in particular with his pragmatic message of economic opportunity, mixed with moderate environmental themes.

Zschau argued that times are changing and that if President Reagan’s dream of voter realignment and GOP dominance is to be achieved, the party would have to broaden its appeal.

Herschensohn represented the more traditional vein of conservative GOP politics--a fire-breathing, anti-communist on foreign policy and a subscriber to the conservative social agenda promoted by Herschensohn supporter Jesse Helms, the Republican senator from North Carolina. Herschensohn’s target group was the ideologically conservative voter, a generally older Republican but also including some young activists.

Herschensohn, too, believes GOP politics are changing. But in his eyes, candidates need not move to the left to find the mainstream because the electorate had turned sharply to the right with Reagan’s landslide election in 1984.

To many voters, the Senate primary was memorable for the unprecedented and ugly strife between Davis and Fiedler. A complaint from Davis led to Fiedler’s indictment on charges that her campaign tried to lure him out of the race with a promise to help raise $100,000 to pay off Davis’ campaign debt. The indictment was dismissed by a judge 33 days later but bitterness lingered between them until the end and shadowed their candidacies.

Antonovich struggled for a theme and for voter enthusiasm for months, and then finally unloaded an intense attack on both Zschau and Herschensohn at the close of the campaign.

If the Senate race was 18 months in the making, the primary election for state controller was almost an overnight affair. Not until 48 hours before the deadline for filing candidacy papers did incumbent Democrat Ken Cory announce he is quitting, opening the way for five legislators and a former political appointee to test their ambitions.

Garamendi and Davis both had their eyes plainly on still higher office when they jumped at the chance to move from the Legislature to a statewide position, if an obscure one. McAlister, a veteran lawmaker, professed to want only the controller job, not a steppingstone. It was a race that almost completely bypassed the matter of which of them would be best at the unglamorous job of writing the government’s checks, the primary task of the controller.

Instead, the Democrats found themselves split regionally between Garamendi and McAlister in the north and Davis in the south. Garamendi, in particular, questioned whether Californians would want to trust their money with a “Beverly Hills politician” like Davis. And Garamendi attacked Davis’ long service as chief of staff to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

Missing Children

Davis emphasized his campaign to circulate pictures of missing children. McAlister complained about the ambitions of both rivals.

On the GOP side, Sebastiani, a young maverick conservative, and Campbell, a veteran mainstream legislator, campaigned against one another, all but ignoring Stanford. They competed to outdo each for who is the most fiscally conservative.

The Republican contest for lieutenant governor was a battle of former friends and two conservatives of long standing--Curb, a country music industry executive, and Richardson, a 20-year Senate veteran associated with the gun owners lobby.

They stressed differences with McCarthy, including their opposition to the November reelection of California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, whom McCarthy supports.

McCarthy for his part was unopposed in the primary as were three other incumbent Democratic statewide officeholders, Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, Secretary of State March Fong Eu and Treasurer Jesse Unruh.

Eu Challenger

Only against Eu did Republicans field a well-known challenger, an Orange County supervisor and former assemblyman, Bruce Nestande of Orange. Unruh drew no GOP opponent at all on the ballot, and three little-known Republican attorneys competed to challenge Van de Kamp.

All four elective seats on the state Board of Equalization were on the ballot. The attention was focused on the one open seat, the 4th District, which includes most of Los Angeles County excluding the West Los Angeles-Santa Monica region and the San Fernando Valley, to replace retiring Richard Nevins. A crowded field of 11 was dominated by three Democrats with known political credentials--Los Angeles County Assessor Alexander Pope, state Sen. Paul B. Carpenter of Norwalk and former state Sen. Nate Holden of Los Angeles.

Carpenter was the bigger spender and Pope had the greater name identification. The board, the only elected body of its kind in the nation, administers state taxes, except the income tax, and hears appeals on all tax disputes.

Another Board of Equalization district, the 2nd, stretching the coast from Santa Monica to San Francisco, was dominated by incumbent Democrat Conway Collis of Santa Monica. The other seat in the Southern California region, the 3rd, which covers much of Orange County and sprawls south and east from there, was the province of Republican incumbent Ernest J. Dronenberg Jr.

Replacement for Pope

The Los Angeles assessor race to replace Pope was also a crowded affair. A dozen contenders sought the nonpartisan office, which is responsible for assessing values on property for tax purposes. Three men were making repeat tries for elective office--Gordon Hahn, a former assemblyman and Los Angeles councilman; Jim Keysor, a former San Fernando Valley assemblyman, and Frank A. Hill, who nearly upset Pope in the 1978 assessor’s race.

Complete election results on Pages 12 and 13.