CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS 58TH ASSEMBLY DISTRICT : Primary Race Among GOP Candidates Likely to Remain Close

With a little more than a month left in the campaign, some of the five Republican candidates seeking to replace departing Assemblyman Dennis Brown are struggling for money, others remain virtually unknown, but all are running hard in a race that is likely to remain close through the June 5 election.

Brown, the 12-year Republican assemblyman from Los Alamitos, set off the last-minute scramble for his seat just last month when he made the surprise announcement that he would not seek reelection in his coastal district, which stretches from Huntington Beach into Long Beach.

“I think it’s just going to come down to the very end,� said candidate Jeffrey A. Kellogg, a Long Beach councilman. “You’re just going to see a mad rush at the very end.�

Republicans face the only primary for the 58th Assembly District on June 5 since only one Democratic candidate, Luanne W. Pryor of Long Beach, and one Libertarian Party member, Scott Stier of Long Beach, are entered in the race.

The other Republicans are Seymour Alban, a 65-year-old physician from Long Beach; Jan Hall, another Long Beach City Council member; Huntington Beach Mayor Thomas J. Mays; and Peter E. von Elten, a vice president at MOLA Development Corp. in Newport Beach.

Republicans hold a registration edge in the district of about 51% to 39%. Just more than half of the voters are in the Long Beach portion of the district, but the majority of Republicans are in Orange County.

The two candidates who have never run for political office--Alban and von Elten--have the most money. Alban said he expects to spend up to $400,000 in the primary, and von Elten’s campaign was hoping for more than $200,000.

The three city politicians running for the office complained that they will be vastly outspent, with some estimating their campaigns at $100,000 or less. They noted, however, that von Elten and Alban would require more money to win because neither has a political base.

As for issues, the environment has been a hot button in most races this year, but it has been emphasized even more in the 58th district race because of the 394,000-gallon oil spill that blackened the Orange County coast following a tanker accident in February.

That incident practically created Mays’ candidacy. Local and national television in the critical hours after the spill gave the local mayor a ubiquitous presence as he spoke on behalf of angry residents.

Mays, 36, along with all of the Republican candidates except Kellogg, has come out against additional offshore oil drilling and in favor of more regulation to protect the coast from spills.

Kellogg, who has worked with his family’s oil company operating on-shore drilling sites, said he does not believe the waters off the 58th district shores should accommodate more drilling, but he would not rule out his support for a specific project.

“You have to take it on a case-by-case,� he said.

Ironically, despite all of the Republican candidates appealing for environmental votes, the district has been represented for 12 years by an assemblyman who was rated one of the worst in the state by the League of Conservation Voters.

Doug Linney, political director for the league in San Francisco, said the campaign to replace Brown is a high priority for the group because it has a chance to replace one of its strongest opponents with a conservationist.

Linney said the group plans to question each of the candidates. So far, it has talked only to Alban.

“We feel fairly comfortable with him as a candidate,� Linney said.

Alban is the only Republican candidate who expressed support for the so-called Big Green initiative, a sweeping environmental measure that qualified Thursday for the November ballot. Alban said, however, that he was reluctant to endorse the measure because he believed it was being used by Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Van de Kamp as a campaign tool.

Some of the other Republicans said they supported portions of the sweeping measure, but not in its entirety.

Developer von Elten, 46, said he demonstrated concern for the environment when his company paid to clean up a toxic waste dump in Huntington Beach before building houses on the site.

“It was a model cleanup, and not a penny cost to the taxpayers,� said von Elten, also a Vietnam veteran.

On other issues, all of the Republicans except Mays are opposed to laws that prohibit a woman from seeking an abortion. Of the four who support abortion rights, only Kellogg is opposed to government funding for poor women seeking abortions.

At a candidates’ forum Thursday night in Long Beach, which Kellogg did not attend, Mays was the only candidate opposed to some forms of gun control.

The other three candidates supported a 15-day waiting period for obtaining a gun and a ban on assault rifles.

“Gun control is not going to solve the crime problem,� Mays said. “Criminals won’t have to wait for a gun.�

On Proposition 111, the proposed 9-cent gas tax to pay for transportation improvements, all of the Republican candidates supported the measure except Kellogg, who said he was unsatisfied with how the state spends the existing gas tax.