California Congressional Elections 1992

A Green Party member has qualified to run as an independent against Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) this fall, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's office said Friday. David Davis, 40, a musician from Hollywood, submitted more than 16,700 valid signatures from registered voters to place him on the Nov. 3 ballot in the 29th Congressional District, which covers part of the southeast San Fernando Valley and the Westside, Registrar-Recorder spokeswoman Marcia Ventura said.

At the first Fajita Festival along downtown's main street, U.S. Senate candidate Barbara Boxer is working the crowd. She pauses in front of the Doritos stand to pin a yellow Boxer button on Edward Garcia, a worker in a fiberglass factory. Garcia likes Boxer OK; the trouble is that he is not registered to vote. "The way politics is, you know . . . ," Garcia later tells a reporter. "I just never got around to it (registering)."

Pollster Mervin Field has just about seen it all in more than 40 years of taking the political pulse of California, but he says the voter mood has never been as feverish, cranky and unforgiving as it is today. So much has gone wrong in the state in the past two years, Field said in an interview, that the 1992 election campaign holds the potential for the first true California voter revolt in modern times, perhaps ever.

State Sen. Herschel Rosenthal on Friday conceded the fiercely waged Democratic primary in the 23rd Senate District race to Assemblyman Tom Hayden, who is now ahead by 575 votes. The apparent victory is a coup for Hayden, who was fighting for his political life against the powerful Westside political organization of Reps. Henry Waxman and Howard Berman, to which Rosenthal belongs. At a cost of about $1.

Conservative Republican Bruce Herschensohn won the fourth and final slot in California's historic U. S. Senate field Wednesday, and the GOP and Democratic nominees immediately kicked off what promised to be a bruising battle for the two Senate seats. The fall lineup provides a dramatic mix of personalities and ideologies for the two Senate seats, most notably the choice of Democratic voters to field a slate of two women.

Judith M. Ryan, Mary Hornbuckle, Rhonda J. McCune--on Tuesday, they were the names of a movement forecasting great change for Orange County. On Wednesday, they were reminders how much things are the same. The wave of anti-incumbent anger and the support for more women in government that swept across the nation during the spring primaries rolled into Orange County in the form of more hotly contested campaigns than at any time in the last decade.

It's a marquee matchup: one of California's most prominent, endangered incumbent Democrats versus one of the state's most outspoken and conservative Republican legislators. In contrast to this "year of the outsider," the contest between Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) in the 24th Congressional District looms as a high-profile showdown of two career politicians who offer sharply contrasting personal styles and political ideologies.

The Orange County Human Relations Commission on Thursday condemned an anonymous political flyer that attacked the religious beliefs of a Democratic candidate for Congress just before the June 2 primary. The commission, in a unanimous decision, described the flyer as "disgusting and appalling" and called for an investigation.

Somehow, that front page photo last week of John Seymour hugging Bruce Herschensohn reminded me of the Titanic, and the men who huddled together on deck as the lifeboats pulled away. "We're in this together now, John." "Yes, Bruce, I know. See you on . . . the other side." The boys have drawn rough duty. Seymour's opponent, Dianne Feinstein, appears in top form.

Given a chance to voice their anti-incumbent sentiment, California voters Tuesday took the first step toward overhauling the state's congressional delegation by nominating dozens of new faces to run in the fall election. A total of at least 30 Republican and Democratic newcomers were chosen to represent the two major parties in November and compete for 15 open seats in California.