California's Crazy Primary

By DAN GOODGAME

Pity poor Ed Zschau. A Republican candidate for the Senate, he yearns to meet the voters and debate the issues. But instead, he finds himself spending $2.1 million teaching Californians to pronounce his name. (Try shout without the t.) This campaign, in a state as vast and variegated as California, must be waged in 60-second television ads, which must be fueled by endless fund raisers. As Zschau explains, between bites of an airport snack shop's meatball sandwich, "You simply can't shake enough hands and kiss enough babies to get elected in this state."

That is probably just as well, because the voters' hands and babies would be exhausted by the crowd of 13 candidates running in California's June 3 Republican primary for the Senate seat now held by Democrat Alan Cranston, 71. The candidates are wildly diverse, ranging from Zschau, a millionaire Silicon Valley Congressman, to Eldridge Cleaver, the former Black Panther leader; from right-wing TV Commentator Bruce Herschensohn to Supply-Side Economist Arthur Laffer to indicted-then-unindicted Congresswoman Bobbi Fiedler.

Republican Strategist Stuart Spencer observes that "right now, you can take a blanket and throw it over the top five candidates; they're that close." The winner, adds Spencer, "will be the one who has the money to spend on television in the final weeks." All told, the G.O.P. hopefuls are expected to spend some $9 million. So far the champion cash collector and the candidate with the most media sizzle is Zschau, 46, a former Stanford business professor and successful electronics entrepreneur (founder of System Industries, Inc.) who has earned broad respect after only two terms in Congress. At fund raisers across California, high-tech execs like Hewlett- Packard Co-Founder David Packard and other businessmen such as Reagan "Kitchen Cabinet" Member Armand Deutsch hail Zschau as "one of us" and provide a copious flow of campaign cash, expected to top $3 million.

Confident and articulate, Zschau bears a certain narrow-eyed resemblance to Actor Richard Gere. In a statewide Mervin Field poll taken last November, Zschau was the preferred candidate of only 3% of registered Republicans. By March he had soared into the ranks of the leaders with 11%. As an exemplar of the pragmatic brand of California Republicanism, rather than a "true believer" of the right, he is the only one who draws support from all regions of the state.

While Zschau has moved up fastest, "Undecided" still led the race in the same March poll, with 28%. The stumbling longtime front runner, with 14%, is Ed Davis, 69, a state senator and former Los Angeles police chief who once proposed that convicted hijackers be hanged in public view at airports. White- maned and barrel-chested, Davis is a man of considerable physical presence and selfighteousness. It was he who accused Fiedler of offering to pay off much of his campaign debt if he would drop out of the race. Fiedler was indicted on the charge, but a judge dismissed the indictment for lack of evidence. Still, an odor of vague notoriety has clung to Fiedler's campaign --and Davis' too.

Fiedler, 49, rose to prominence as an outspoken opponent of school busing. She bills herself as the candidate most loyal to President Reagan and hammers away at Zschau's anti-Administration stands on such issues as the MX missile and aid to the contra rebels in Nicaragua (though Zschau has reversed himself to endorse contra aid).

Staunch support of anti-Communists is a campaign centerpiece for Bruce Herschensohn, 53, an acerbic and deeply conservative commentator for the ABC television station in Los Angeles. Herschensohn's foreign policy acumen is often praised, lately by former President Nixon, who starred at a fund raiser for him in Newport Beach. Herschensohn commands the allegiance of many hawkish Republicans, but G.O.P. pros fear that he is the sort of somewhat scary hard-liner whom the incumbent Cranston has trounced in three straight Senate elections.

The sleeper in the Republican primary is Mike Antonovich, 46, a Los Angeles County supervisor who has toiled long and loyally in the campaigns of Ronald Reagan and California's popular Republican Governor George Deukmejian. Antonovich has some novel ideas (illegal Mexican immigrants should be stopped at the border by armed U.S. soldiers; gay men should combat the AIDS epidemic by going straight). He also has a habit of answering specific questions with tiresome civics lessons that begin, "Under our Constitution, there are three branches of Government . . ."

Among the eight stragglers is Arthur Laffer, 45, the supply-side economist whose "Laffer Curve," first sketched on a cocktail napkin, helped convince President Reagan that lower taxes would produce more Government revenue through economic growth. Laffer, a big-ticket lecturer and Pepperdine University professor, is consistently the most original and provocative in his policy proposals (place a large bounty on terrorists; allow free entry of Mexicans as European-style "guest workers"). He admits to inexperience as a campaigner but maintains ebullient good humor.

The most unlikely Republican candidate is Cleaver, 50, the former Black Panther leader whose campaign office is decorated with his convict photo and old Panther posters. His hair is graying, and he now wears fraying business suits in place of the outrageous codpiece he sported in the '70s. But Cleaver proved that he remains a powerful orator, telling delegates to the California Republican Convention that he is "a man with the courage to change, to grow" and one who now is determined to defeat the Democrats, "who have made black people dependent on the federal budget." He drew the most enthusiastic ovation of any Senate candidate there.

As Cleaver's reception indicates, the California G.O.P. is a much more open party than in years past. It is also catching up with the Democrats in loyalty. Last fall Pollster Field asked California voters whether they identified more closely with the Democrats or the Republicans. For the first time since Field began asking this question in 1958, the respondents split almost evenly, 46% for the Democrats and 45% for the G.O.P.

Many hard-core California G.O.P. voters, conservative in both economic policy and social policy, are lining up with Herschensohn or Antonovich. Newer converts, whom pollsters identify as economically conservative and socially moderate, tend to support Zschau or Fiedler, both of whom favor the Equal Rights Amendment and oppose further government restrictions on abortion.

A fat slice of the electorate, however, has still not managed to sort out the candidates in the Republican primary herd, as Zschau was reminded at the Los Angeles airport. The ticket agent, a cheerful woman, pronounced Zschau's name correctly, and the candidate's face brightened as he thought, That last $500,000 ad blitz is really paying off. Then, as he waited for the ticket agent to wish him luck, she exclaimed, "Boy, what a lucky guess that was!" Zschau smiled sheepishly, shrugged and was off to San Diego to raise money for another pronunciation lesson.