Forum on Drugs Gives Cranston Relief From Lincoln S&L; Queries : Politics: Narcotics and gangs dominate panel discussion in Norwalk. Collapse of the thrift institution doesn’t come up.

The pundits say he’s finished and the pollsters say he’s plummeting, but what about the man on the street?

U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, beleaguered by his entanglement in the Lincoln Savings & Loan debacle, held a community forum in Norwalk on Saturday and guess which subject never came up?

Lincoln Savings & Loan.

“I don’t think this is the appropriate place for that,” said Marsha Reed of Downey. “And I’m glad it didn’t come up.”

That was the reaction of some others in the meeting, which was attended by about 100 people in Norwalk City Council chambers.

“I’m here to get better informed on all issues,” said Bill Vane of Norwalk.

What they all wanted to talk about was the topic Cranston himself had chosen: drugs.

And although Cranston could control the first hour of the discussion and keep it off the collapse of Lincoln Savings & Loan, he was an easy target for any questions on the matter during the last half hour, when those in the audience got their chance to speak.

But that segment reflected the earlier one. In fact, what the senator witnessed was riveting, often emotional, testimony from civic leaders and average citizens who are determined to take their communities back from the gangs and drug dealers.

“We need for more people in our community to get involved,” said Richard Rios, a member of the panel that assisted Cranston. “People assume that somebody else will take care of the problem until suddenly it is on their doorstep.”

He and others said they were impressed that a U.S. senator would spend his Saturday morning with them.

A teen-age girl who is finally drug free after five hellish years pleaded to the adults present, “Get involved with your kids!”

And Lee Baca, area commander for the Sheriff’s Department, told the senator that Los Angeles County has become “the gang capital of the nation” because parents are not supervising their children.

Cranston, who raised two sons, nodded in agreement.

The senator seemed elated at the way the forum went. He scribbled notes, applauded after some of the testimony and asked numerous questions himself.

For longtime Cranston-watchers, this was the signal that no matter how rough it gets for the senator in the Lincoln Savings matter, he will stick to his determination to run for a fifth term in 1992.

Although he began holding community forums after going to the Senate in 1969, he did not seriously turn to them until January, 1985. Preparing to run for reelection to the Senate in 1986, Cranston was considered extremely vulnerable because of his failed presidential campaign in 1984.

Suddenly, Cranston began to show up everywhere in California, soliciting the opinions of voters on major issues and using his clout to make civic leaders and experts available at the forums.

But can a heavy schedule of forums over the next three years help Cranston reverse his sagging prospects? Political professionals think it will be a tall order.

Some Californians who testified in Congress recently blamed Cranston personally for money they lost by investing in uninsured junk bonds that were sold by Lincoln Savings out of its branch offices.

Almost overnight, Cranston’s job rating plunged and even Democratic voters told pollsters they thought he should resign his seat or at the least not seek another term.

Cranston was one of five senators who met with federal regulators investigating certain practices of Lincoln Savings. The senators did so at the request of Lincoln Savings President Charles H. Keating, from whom they had received contributions.

Cranston insists he was simply trying to force action on a matter that had dragged on for years.

But with the issue not even arising in Saturday’s forum, and with some of those present professing little interest in it, Cranston may know something the pundits don’t.

Eve Nelson of Norwalk said the Lincoln Savings issue was “one of the factors we’ll have to consider when we vote (in 1992) but it isn’t the only one. You have to look at everything Cranston’s done or not done.”