Rep. Beilenson Struggling in Reelection Bid

As he faces voters in November, Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) is struggling against a mighty anti-incumbent riptide and a well-financed GOP foe in Richard Sybert, a former top aide in the Wilson Administration.

These perils have thrust the 61-year-old Beilenson’s bid for a 10th term into the national limelight. CNN has focused on Beilenson’s plight, as have a slew of political pundits. All insist that they smell blood in the affluent 24th District, which takes in Sherman Oaks, Malibu and the Conejo Valley.

But Beilenson, a senior member of the powerful House Rules Committee, is far from defenseless as he enters what is likely to be the toughest battle of his career.

The emerging outlines of Beilenson’s strategy are classic. He is not your average politician, Beilenson maintains: not a Beltway insider, not a slavish poll watcher, not a special interest tool. In other words, not an incumbent bum who should be thrown out of office.

The strategy is not new to Beilenson. The congressman, who served in the state Legislature before going to Washington in 1976, used it in 1992 to stymie another foe, former Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), who is now running for state controller.

With potent effect, Beilenson boasted that he took no special interest campaign contributions from political action committees but that McClintock did.

And if that wasn’t enough to establish himself as a different kind of politician, Beilenson in April, 1992, also split dramatically with his liberal roots to support a constitutional amendment to prohibit children of illegal aliens from automatically becoming U. S. citizens just because they were born in the United States.

When the votes were tallied, Beilenson scored a lopsided 56%-38% victory.

Analogies can be dangerous, however.

This is not 1992. In that year, the collapse of the Bush-Quayle campaign caused shock waves throughout the California GOP ticket. In 1994, after two years of Democratic hegemony in the White House and the Congress, the undertow pulling at incumbent Democrats is so powerful that it even appears to be vexing the reelection bids of such icons as House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Nor is Sybert, who is president of a Santa Barbara-based toy design firm, another McClintock. Sybert, 42, is a moderate, while rightward-leaning McClintock had his flanks easily turned by Beilenson in the bid for the district’s centrist vote.

“It’s going to be very difficult for Tony Beilenson to paint me with the same brush he used on McClintock,” Sybert said in a recent interview.

Nor can Beilenson credibly claim to be a new breed politician, Sybert has charged. The incumbent has used his franking privileges to flood his district with taxpayer-financed mailings that are simply an adjunct to his reelection campaign.

According to Roll Call Magazine, a Washington-based political tip sheet, Beilenson was the 23rd biggest spender on franked mailings during the first half of 1994. And as the third highest ranking Democratic member of the Rules Committee, Beilenson is top lieutenant in the ruling partisan gang, he said.

“Tony Beilenson is a classic liberal,” Sybert said the night he won the Republican nomination. “He’s soft on crime, weak on defense and tough on taxpayers.”

Voters of the 24th District should be outraged, Sybert added, that Beilenson voted for Clinton’s deficit reduction plan, which resulted in a hefty tax boost that hit the district’s large upper-middle class hardest.

Beilenson admits that Sybert is a formidable foe. “It’s a competitive district,” he said in an interview. “It’s a district the Republicans are targeting, and it’s different than it was in 1992. McClintock was very conservative, and 1992 was a very big year for Democrats.”

But the Beilenson team is loading up on Sybert ammunition, pointing out the challenger’s appetite for political action committee contributions and to the fact that he is a 24th District newcomer.

As head of the governor’s Office of Planning and Research, the Harvard Law School-educated Sybert was the top policy wonk in the Wilson Administration from 1991 to 1993 after spending 13 years as a lawyer in a major Downtown Los Angeles law firm.

Sybert jump-started his bid for the 24th District GOP nomination by loaning his campaign more than $420,000 of his own money. He swamped his four Republican foes and was quickly dubbed a rising star by the Republican national party.

In recent days, the 24th District has hosted a parade of GOP luminaries who have stopped by to laud Sybert and help him raise money. Last month, they included two Cabinet secretaries from the Reagan Administration, Jack Kemp and Edward Bennett. Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) is scheduled soon, and last week’s visitor was House GOP leader Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

Predicting that Beilenson was beatable, Gingrich pledged the maximum support possible for Sybert’s campaign from the GOP national party even as he helped the candidate raise $30,000 from local sources at a brunch at the luxurious Lake Sherwood estate of a Ventura County car dealer.

On the issues, Sybert backs Proposition 187, the statewide ballot initiative to deny key public services to illegal immigrants; has signed the GOP’s so-called “Contract With America,” a pledge to back a balanced budget amendment and congressional term limits, and has advocated tougher laws on crime. But while his rhetoric is often tough, Sybert is a moderate on the hot-button topics of gun control and abortion.

Sybert has clearly given the Beilenson team a workout, but the incumbent’s crew is ready.

The recent Gingrich visit only further demonstrated how deeply the Sybert campaign is indebted to Republican outsiders and the money they can attract, said Craig Miller, Beilenson’s campaign consultant. That this would be the case, Miller contended, is not surprising: After all, Sybert is a newcomer to the west San Fernando Valley.

“Rich Sybert has no inherent support in the community,” Miller said. “He’s totally dependent on Republican powerbrokers and PACs for his support.”

In fact, records show that Sybert did not establish his residency in the 24th District until Oct. 4, 1993, and that he has assiduously courted business PAC funding. On Sept. 24, he held a fund-raiser in Washington just for PAC donors.

Miller also accused Sybert of being an opportunist who originally planned to run for the 27th Congressional District seat that includes Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena.

Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale) has also confirmed that Sybert, who owns a home in Pasadena, where he had resided prior to moving to Calabasas in the West Valley, had considered challenging him in this year’s GOP primary.

Meanwhile, Beilenson points with pride to his deep, longtime involvement with measures to protect the Santa Monica Mountains, his success in amending this year’s federal crime bill to provide $1.8 billion to reimburse states hit hardest by the cost of incarcerating illegal immigrants in their state prisons, and his vote to support Clinton’s deficit reduction plan.