MINOR PARTIES' DEBATE SHOWS CANDIDATES' MAJOR DIFFERENCES

ORANGE -- In a substance-filled debate punctuated by moments of zaniness,
the five minor party candidates for governor met in Orange County this week
to air wildly divergent views and dump on mainstream candidates Dan Lungren
and Gray Davis, who were no-shows.

The candidates used the first-of-its-kind forum to vocally condemn being
left out of the four Davis-Lungren debates and demand reforms to an
electoral process they say unfairly excludes them.

``We have finally broken through this two-party system and gotten an
opportunity for . . . unapproved candidates to talk before an unapproved
audience about unapproved issues,'' Steve Kubby, the Libertarian, said in
the close of the debate. ``If we can't air the unapproved, politically
incorrect views during the electoral process, when do we do it?''

Sandwiched among serious discussions of reducing health care costs,
improving public schools and solving crime, the Natural Law candidate
proposed transcendental meditation, the Libertarian described his first
experience with medicinal marijuana and the Peace and Freedom candidate
declared it was time for a public takeover of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

The Green Party and American Independent candidates also appeared on the
Chapman University stage, which prominently featured two empty podiums to
mark the absence of Lungren and Davis.

Like their mainstream brethren, several of the candidates ducked
controversial questions, such as whether the state needs to increase
per-pupil spending for public education. Other times, the candidates
offered practical advice, for example, advocating eating more fruits and
vegetables to improve health. One quoted Walt Whitman, another the Bible.

The unorthodox forum included shouting audience members and an impromptu
candidate-hugging session when a break was called so the C-SPAN camera
operator could reload video for the nearly three-hour session.

Growing influence

But in a testament to the growing influence of third-party candidacies, the
event attracted reporters from several major newspapers around the state
and included questioners from Common Cause and the League of Women Voters.

The November ballot marks the largest-ever crop of minor party candidates
for governor in a general election. The Reform Party is the only one of
eight parties qualified to run for office in California that is not
fielding a candidate.

The influence of minor party candidates has been gradually increasing with
their number. Third-party candidates garnered 2 percent of the vote in the
November 1986 governor's race but nearly 5 percent in 1994, with a similar
percentage of voters telling pollsters they plan to choose a third-party
candidate on Nov. 3.

All over the map

The third-party candidates are all over the ideological and geographical
map: Natural Law candidate Harold H. Bloomfield, 54, is a Yale-trained
psychiatrist from Del Mar who proposes herbal medicines and transcendental
meditation as solutions to high health care costs and the high rate of
recidivism among prisoners. He suggested the hugging session during the
debate break.

The Green Party's Dan Hamburg, 50, is a ponytailed ex-Democratic
congressman from Mendocino County who turned Green after growing disgusted
with a ``corporate welfare state'' that ignores income inequality and the
environment. While his colleagues appeared in dark-colored blazers, Hamburg
showed up in a purple work shirt and jeans.

Nathan E. Johnson, 55, the American Independent candidate, is a San Diego
bus driver who stresses his biblical leanings and the fact that he is the
only ``pro-life, no exceptions'' candidate for governor. Fiercely anti-tax,
he derides ``the Demicans and Repbulicrats'' for putting ``their hands in
your pocket.''

Kubby, 51, the Libertarian, is an online outdoor-magazine publisher from
Lake Tahoe who sponsored the medicinal marijuana initiative, Proposition
215, and now rails against a system that won't allow its implementation. On
Monday, Kubby recalled how his college roommate, Cheech Marin of Cheech and
Chong fame, introduced him to marijuana after he was diagnosed with cancer.
``I discovered that that little herb that he gave me seemed to make my
symptoms go away,'' he said.

Peace and Freedom's Gloria La Riva, 44, is a self-described socialist and
San Francisco newspaper union activist who believes education through
college, child care and health care should be free to all. ``It is the
workers who have created all of this wealth,'' she said.

More often than not Monday night, Hamburg, La Riva and Bloomfield sounded
liberal themes of relying on government to solve problems, while Kubby and
Johnson espoused the conservative viewpoint that government is the problem.
Their most heated exchanges, civil by comparison to Lungren and Davis
debates, came over crime, taxes and education.

Three-strikes law

Arguing that the three-strikes law is necessary, American Independent
Johnson said, ``In the Bible there are no prisons. You got quick justice,
and it was based on restitution.'' He argued that ``people make a decision
to be a career criminal; they just don't fall out of the sky.''

Hamburg, of the Green Party, called for repealing the law for both social
and fiscal reasons: ``What it costs to keep a prisoner (for a year) is
about what it costs to send a child to Harvard. The difference is the
curriculum.''

Libertarian Kubby is an outspoken critic of government programs. ``When a
new law gets passed, when a new tax gets enacted, does that benefit your
life in any way, shape or form?'' he asked the audience, made up mostly of
students and retirees from Leisure World. ``Or does it just prop up a
system that is failing and continues to fail?''

Responded Peace and Freedom's La Riva: ``To say no taxes is really
obfuscating the reality that one class or the other has to pay taxes,
either the rich or the workers.''

When asked what advice he would give students in public school today,
Kubby, who backs vouchers, shouted, ``Escape!'' La Riva, who opposes
vouchers, replied, ``Why should government enhance the privileges of the
few?''

Changing demographics

The candidates also discussed the changing demographics of California.

``I think we need to learn how to transcend in our culture, and the way you
transcend is first and foremost to spend at least part of your time closing
your eyes,'' said Natural Law's Bloomfield. ``Latinos are going to be the
majority in the state of California very shortly, and if they wind up
treating white folks the way white folks have been treating them, better
watch out. So we need to practice transcending and love.''

Hamburg concluded: ``Some of the panelists seem much more radical than me.
I'm amazed. It's an unusual position for me to be in.''

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