38th District

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.

Keith Richman could win two political offices Tuesday, but he can keep only one -- either his state Assembly seat or the mayoral job in a newly independent San Fernando Valley. It might be an easy choice; if voters shoot down Valley secession, the Republican physician could be a mayor without a city.

Two years ago voters in the 38th Congressional District put Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) back in Congress. Dornan has been an embarrassment to the district, and the Congress. His style is brash, bullying and off the wall. He shoots from the hip and lip, and too often misses the mark. In discussing issues he is prone to lapse into fits of frenzy, punctuated by rapid-fire one-liners, fist-pounding gestures, statistics, facts and rambling emotional rhetoric.

The state's new congressional district boundaries are spelling big changes for Long Beach. Its port--a major economic engine for the region--and most of its predominantly white, affluent neighborhoods have been sliced from the rest of the city and added to a new district drawn to favor Orange County Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican. And most of the rest of the city--ethnically diverse and poorer--has been included in the district of Carson-based Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, a Democrat.

Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills), 54, was first elected to the Assembly in 1990. The former owner of a real estate brokerage firm, Boland is married and has three children. Democratic challenger Josh Arce, 19, is a UCLA sophomore who lives with his mother in Chatsworth. The conventional view is that the San Fernando Valley is a GOP redoubt. But Boland is only one of two Valley Assemblymembers. Democrats control four other area Assembly seats.

Two Democratic candidates have entered the race for a state Assembly seat representing portions of the West San Fernando Valley and eastern Ventura County. Jon Lauritzen, a Canoga Park High School teacher, and John Birke, a San Fernando Valley attorney, have joined the race in the Republican-leaning 38th District. The candidates are vying for a seat now held by Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills). Boland's district stretches from Granada Hills to Simi Valley.

After weeks of walking precincts--and wearing holes in the bottom of a pair of black penny loafers--Superior Court Judge David O. Carter on Wednesday gave the county registrar of voters 4,038 signatures in support of his candidacy for Congress. Carter filed a week after another Orange County Democrat, Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) turned in his papers for the 38th Congressional District seat now held by conservative Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove).

A Democratic candidate who vowed not to run in November if nominated appeared headed for victory over a supporter of a political extremist in the 38th Congressional District primary election Tuesday. The apparent win by "non-candidate" Barbara Jackson of Buena Park, a Planned Parenthood official whose withdrawal from the race came too late for her name to be dropped from the ballot, virtually assures another term for Rep. Robert K.

Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills) has the advantages of money, incumbency and a well-booked schedule of personal appearances to secure her bid for reelection in the mostly Republican 38th District. Democratic nominee Howard Cohen--who last spring launched his shoestring campaign with a news conference at his parents' house--is walking door to door for votes and hoping for a miracle. Libertarian Party candidate Devin Cutler, 26, of Canoga Park is also running for the four-year seat.

Dave Carter rarely gets more than a befuddled nod and a polite smile from the voters he meets as he trudges door to door, selling his long-shot congressional campaign in Orange County. But the response was different when he stopped by one Garden Grove home recently. "Hi, my name's Dave Carter. I'm a judge, and I'm running for Congress the old-fashioned way against Bob Dornan," he told Barbara Highbarker when she answered the doorbell. "You're not as silly as he is, are you?"

The date that looms most urgently for Gerrie Schipske, the Democrat who is trying to unseat Rep. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach) is not Nov. 7, the day of the general election. It's June 30. That's the close of the current campaign finance reporting period, and Schipske strategists figure that the Long Beach nurse practitioner and attorney needs to reach mid-race fund-raising goals by then to demonstrate her candidacy's viability to national Democratic leaders.

BILL MORROW Morrow has been one of the leaders of GOP efforts to reform the state's civil litigation system to limit lawsuits. * Party: Republican * Age: 44 * Residence: Oceanside * Education: Bachelor of science, political science, UCLA, 1976; law degree, Pepperdine University, 1979. * Career highlights: Major in Marine Corps, eight years active duty, four years reserves. Lawyer. After heated Republican primary fight, won Assembly seat in 1992 in first run for office.

With Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills) forced out by term limits, the 38th Assembly seat is up for grabs. Former Republican Assemblyman Tom McClintock is attempting a political comeback. He faces Democrat Jon Lauritzen and Virginia Neuman of the Natural Law Party in the Nov. 5 election.

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.

Two Democratic candidates have entered the race for a state Assembly seat representing portions of the West San Fernando Valley and eastern Ventura County. Jon Lauritzen, a Canoga Park High School teacher, and John Birke, a San Fernando Valley attorney, have joined the race in the Republican-leaning 38th District. The candidates are vying for a seat now held by Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills). Boland's district stretches from Granada Hills to Simi Valley.

Peggy Freeman, former director of a Val Verde health and social service center for the poor, has joined several other Republicans in the race for the 38th Assembly District seat that is being vacated by Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) next year. Freeman, 55, served as executive director for the Samuel Dixon Family Health Center from 1991 to 1994.