By William Claiborne
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 25, 1998; Page A04

LOS ANGELES — A year ago, the Senate race in California promised to be one of the hottest in the country this political season, with expectations of a crowded field of Republican hopefuls jostling one another for the chance to unseat seemingly vulnerable Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in November.

For a while, the contest seemed to have the makings of a high-profile primary shootout in the June 2 primary. Among prospective GOP candidates mentioned were Susan Golding, the popular mayor of San Diego; several well-known congressmen, including Reps. Frank Riggs and Sonny Bono; a couple of veteran statewide officeholders, Treasurer Matt Fong and Secretary of State Bill Jones; and a flashy multimillionaire entrepreneur, Darrell Issa. There was even talk of actor Charlton Heston, a bedrock conservative, taking on the liberal Boxer, who was high on the GOP hit list.

That was then. This is now: Bono died in a skiing accident; Golding, Riggs, Jones and several other would-be GOP contenders dropped out rather than test Issa's deep pockets and the expected blizzard of television ads. Heston turned his attentions to the National Rifle Association's leadership.

And the Senate race went off the screen.

Narrowed down to two contenders – Fong and Issa – on the GOP side and with Boxer running unopposed, the Senate race – California's first blanket primary in which voters can cross over and vote for candidates of any party – has become practically invisible. It has been overshadowed by a rancorous gubernatorial campaign and largely ignored by California's television news programmers, who seem to have concluded that any political campaign story this year is pretty much a room-emptier.

Even though Issa has spent $7 million of his fortune on television advertising – a record for a Senate primary anywhere – a recent independent poll showed that only one in five likely voters recalls seeing ads for Senate candidates. Most of those who recall seeing any television ads said they saw Issa's spots. Fong began airing his commercials last week, and Boxer has opted not to spend any of her campaign funds on television ads during the primary.

Even less prominent on the airwaves has been "free media" or television news coverage of staged campaign events, which used to be a staple in California's intensively competitive television markets but which this year has yielded to the nightly fare of drive-by shootings, high-speed freeway chases, convenience store holdups and other crime news that fits the axiom "if it bleeds, it leads."

"Maybe if they held a debate on a freeway and covered it by helicopter, it would make the 5 o'clock news," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, political scientist at Claremont Graduate University and television political analyst here. "I've never seen such an imbalance between the number of paid political advertisements and the paucity of television news coverage."

Fong and Issa have appeared together at one candidates' forum so far, and that received no coverage in most of the state's television markets.

To a candidate like Fong, who has raised $2.6 million against the $10.2 million Issa has invested in his campaign, the lack of free media can be devastating. Sometimes Fong painstakingly organizes campaign events tailored almost exclusively for television coverage, only to have no camera crews show up.

"We get some coverage in secondary markets like Fresno and Bakersfield, but in Los Angeles and other big markets, the [campaign] announcement is covered, and that's about it," said Fong's media coordinator, Steve Schmidt. "We still hustle for TV coverage, but it does get frustrating when no one shows up."

Fong, in an interview, said that he will succeed in defining the contrast between what he described as a "novice walk-on candidate not ready for prime time" and the chief financial officer of a state with the world's seventh-largest economy who is responsible for $32 billion in investments.

"The angst of voters who wanted to throw the bums out that you heard in 1990 and 1991 doesn't exist now. Voters feel good about the economy, and his [Issa's] message lacks substance," Fong said.

Moreover, he said a voter backlash against self-financing millionaire Al Checchi in the gubernatorial race is likely to rub off on Issa because "people may see his name a lot in ads but they don't want him buying an election."

Despite the spending gap between Issa and Fong, a Los Angeles Times poll published Saturday showed Issa statistically was tied with Fong among likely voters, 22 percent to 20 percent. Boxer had 40 percent support, with 18 percent undecided. In prospective fall match-ups, Boxer led Fong 49 percent to 36 percent and just managed 50 percent against Issa, who received 35 percent.

Issa, 44, has relied heavily on television spots that portray him as "different" from career politicians like Fong – a hands-on businessman, who enlisted in the Army in his senior year in high school and rose to the rank of captain and, with his wife, Kathy, invested his life savings of $7,000 to start what has become the world's leading manufacturer of car-alarm systems.

Many of his TV spots have a conservative bent, advocating "one strike and out" for first-time drug peddlers and asserting flatly that building more prisons reduces crime. More recently, Issa began running comic-relief ads of his bloopers and miscues made during the filming of earlier spots in an attempt to lend what his communications director, Matthew Cunningham, said was a "warm, human dimension to a real person."

Fong's ads have stressed his experience in appointive and elective office, his roots in California – Issa moved here from Ohio in 1985 – and his fiscal responsibility at a time when the state's economy is booming and the budget has a record surplus.

"People are enjoying a good economy and they want to maintain it, which means that running as an experienced Republican will be an advantage," said Schmidt.

But whether that – and any other – message gets across to voters in a campaign that seems to be barely noticed remains a question.