Candidates Set Apart by Styles of Lawmaking : Senate race: When it comes to passing bills, Assembly members vying for the 35th District seat can take it or leave it. But some say shaping legislation is a top priority.

SACRAMENTO — Their conservative rhetoric may sound the same, but the three veteran Assembly members vying for the vacant state Senate seat in Orange County have very different records when it comes to the raison d’etre of the Legislature--making laws.

Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) has sponsored and passed the most legislation of the bunch, including bills with statewide impact in the areas of education and recreational fishing.

Assemblyman Nolan Frizzelle (R-Fountain Valley) says he’s willing to introduce bills, but he’s not preoccupied with the legislative game. When it comes to the general idea of making law, Frizzelle says he can take it or leave it.

And Assemblyman John R. Lewis (R-Orange) mostly leaves it. Throughout his 10 years in Sacramento, Lewis has built a solid reputation as a government-leery lawmaker who introduces very few bills, rarely speaks up in public and routinely votes no on his colleagues’ ideas.

The three are among a field of 10 candidates hoping to come out on top of a March 19 special election primary to fill the 35th District Senate seat, which includes Disneyland. The seat was vacated in January when Gov. Pete Wilson appointed Orange County lawmaker John Seymour to the U.S. Senate.

The other candidates are: Republicans William A. Dougherty, John S. Parise, Dana Reed, Charles V. Smith, and Jim Wronski; Democrat Francis X. Hoffman; and Libertarian Eric Sprik.

The winner will have big legislative shoes to fill. Seymour has been among the most prolific lawmakers in the state Senate, averaging 97 bills every two years while his Senate peers averaged 70.

“How else do you serve your constituency?” Seymour said last week, when asked how vital it was for his successor to pass laws.

Whether a legislator should be judged on the number of bills he sponsors and tries to maneuver through the political gantlet in the Capitol is an open question. Responding to constituent requests is another important aspect of the $52,500-a-year elective position.

But Seymour and other legislators say the grunt work of writing, debating, shaping and approving legislation is a top priority. And the state Constitution specifically assigns the sometimes unglamorous job of making laws to the full-time Legislature.

“There’s a reason we call them legislators ,” said Lisa Foster, executive director of California Common Cause. “The reason is that we expect them to legislate. That’s the way the government functions in our system. They’re supposed to pass laws.”

And while Republicans from Orange County and elsewhere can be expected to labor under a greater political handicap in the Democrat-controlled Legislature, they should still be active participants who try to push major bills, said former Assembly Republican leader Robert Naylor.

“There are still some legislators who do little more than cast yea votes or no votes, introduce minor bills and carry only a few of those to conclusion,” said Naylor, now a Sacramento lobbyist. “It’s not unfair . . . to consider them to be relatively less effective.”

Naylor declined to say whether that description would fit any of the three Assembly members running for Seymour’s seat. All of them carried fewer than the average of 55 bills for each Assembly member during the 1989-90 session, according to statistics for that period.

But Lewis posted far and away the most anemic record of the group.

His portfolio of 14 measures was the second-lowest in the 80-member Assembly, trailed only by a San Diego rookie who was voted out of office after three months on the job.

A political junkie, the assemblyman from Orange is best known for his behind-the-scenes campaign strategies designed to help Assembly Republicans elect more of their own to the lower house. It was in his role of campaign mastermind that Lewis allegedly authorized the forgery of President Ronald Reagan’s name on thousands of letters sent out in four 1986 Southern California Assembly races. He was indicted on the charges in 1989, but the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento overturned them last year.

During 1989, when he was battling the forgery charges, Lewis didn’t have a single piece of legislation pass out of the Capitol. In 1990, he had five bills signed into law. This year, he says he’ll introduce four.

Considered a front-runner for the vacant Senate seat, Lewis declined to match his legislative record against that of the man he hopes to replace. “I don’t want to get into any comparisons between myself and John Seymour in this interview,” he said recently.

However, Lewis said he considers legislation to be “the least important barometer that exists” of effectiveness, adding that he’s tried to execute the will of his inland Orange County constituents by playing political “defense” against government-promoting measures. Voting records for last session show Lewis voted no 24% of the time--tied for the most in the Assembly.

“A lot of legislators introduce a lot of legislation either for ego reasons or (because) it is almost a game to see how many bills you can get chaptered into law,” Lewis said. “That’s a game I don’t want to play.”

Still, Lewis’ legislative cupboard isn’t completely bare. Of the measures he’s written and nursed into law over the years, Lewis said he’s most proud of several that deal directly with his Assembly district. One, passed in 1987, staved off bankruptcy for the Yorba Linda schools by merging their elementary students into the Placentia Unified School District. Another, passed in 1982, saved the first homeowners in a new e a st Yorba Linda subdivision from paying exorbitant property-tax assessments. A third kept in place a city of Orange Fire Department financing scheme to pay for paramedic service.

Hardly of statewide import, Lewis agrees, but the laws nonetheless show he is an effective advocate. “When the people in my district have problems, I’ve been able to solve them,” he said at a recent candidate forum.

But his Assembly challengers say they have more to show for their time in Sacramento. They say their style toward lawmaking is far different from that of Lewis.

Yet, statistics show the difference has worked only marginally better for Frizzelle and Allen.

Frizzelle, elected in 1980, introduced 44 measures during the last session, but only seven survived the legislative gantlet and were signed into law. He plans to introduce 25 measures this year.

Asked about his legislative performance, Frizzelle said he doesn’t get overly excited about making laws.

“I don’t pride myself on carrying it or not carrying it,” said the Fountain Valley Republican. “If there’s a problem that can be solved with legislation, I do it. If it is a problem that can be worked out with the different agencies, I’ll do that. . . . Legislation is not where it’s all at.”

Over the years, Frizzelle has written legislation--some successful, some not--aimed at creating toll roads, cutting off welfare cheats, easing pollution standards on pile-driving hammers and indemnifying believers in faith-healing from lawsuits if their children died from lack of medical attention.

The measures he lists as his greatest accomplishments include a 1985 law that extended medical payments to stroke victims, as well as a 1982 law that closed a loophole allowing people to qualify for California welfare payments although they live out of state. He is also fond of a 1985 law to protect low-income mobile home owners from sudden rent increases, as well as a 1986 law that makes people filing false child-abuse reports liable for any damage they cause--such as loss of reputation or employment.

“Sometimes,” Frizzelle confessed, “I’ve managed to pass bills that I paid little attention to. And other times, I’ve loved bills that I haven’t gotten passed, but I bring them back.”

Assemblywoman Allen has also proven to be tenacious, and her record during the past two years is the longest of the three legislators hoping to succeed Seymour.

Allen, taking a political swipe at Lewis, said she pushes more legislation because “it’s extremely important to just not come up (to Sacramento) and say, ‘I hate government. It’s so restrictive. It’s so onerous. . . .’

“It’s important to make sure we’re solving problems, not only for our own constituencies but statewide. If all you’re doing is voting no to everything, you’re not offering solutions to problems.”

Allen has introduced 29 measures this year. During 1989-90, she authored 49 measures, dropping dozens of the bills but still managing to get 17 signed into law.

Ironically, it was one measure she couldn’t steer through the Democratic Legislature that formed the basis for what she says is one of the biggest accomplishments of her career, which began in 1982--a ban on the use of monofilament gill nets for commercial fishing along the Southern California coast.

Allen introduced the ban twice as a bill, but it was killed both times in an Assembly committee. Frustrated, she converted the idea into an initiative, ran a signature-gathering effort and put the ban on the November ballot, where it was approved by California voters.

Other laws Allen says she’s proud of include the 1990 measure she helped write that began addressing inequities in school funding, which she claims has discriminated against suburban school districts; another 1990 law that allows school districts to use some theory-driven vocational education classes to apply for college credit; and a 1988 measure allowing involuntary hospital stays of longer than 72 hours for mentally ill patients believed to be dangerous to themselves or others.

In comparison to Frizzelle and Lewis, Allen has fared well. But in comparison to the rest of the Legislature, said Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Mike Roos, (D-Los Angeles), all of the Orange County Assembly members hoping to succeed Seymour enjoy only limited visibility and statewide impact.

“In the end,” Roos said, “they all very much resemble John Lewis. . . . They remain steadfast in protecting their view of the world, and their view of the world tends rarely, if ever, to transcend the territory they represent.”