Bay City News
The battle for the congressional seat held for two decades by Norman Mineta may turn into a contest over which of the two top candidates is best at defining his opponent.
Democrat Jerry Estruth sometimes seems to be trying to ensure that when voters look at Republican Tom Campbell they see House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Meanwhile, Campbell, a moderate who bounced back from losing a 1992 U.S. Senate bid in the Republican primary to take over Rebecca Morgan's state Senate seat, is running ads identifying Estruth with a $60 million bond loss suffered by San Jose when Estruth was a City Council member.
The 15th Congressional District includes all Sunnyvale neighborhoods located east of Lawrence Expressway, plus the area west of Lawrence bound by Highway 237 to the north, Highway 101 to the south and Fair Oaks Avenue to the west. About 12,000 people, or 10 percent of the city's population, live in that area.
The election to fill the congressional seat, which also includes southern San Jose, the city of Santa Clara, the western Santa Clara Valley and about half of Santa Cruz County, is scheduled to be held Dec. 12.
The campaign has already attracted national attention from analysts looking for an early read on the 1996 presidential election and the new Republican Congress.
"I decided to enter the race because I think the national issues are extremely important," Estruth said in an interview last week. "I don't like the direction the new Gingrich Congress is taking the country."
Estruth discounts the value of Campbell's 1988-92 congressional service and notes that Campbell voted to make Gingrich minority whip.
Pointing out that Campbell has run for four different partisan offices in the last five years, Estruth said that, sometimes, common sense is worth more than experience.
"I'm not a politician," Estruth said. "I'm a son of this valley."
He said Campbell has taken a wrong turn since winning endorsements from key environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club in 1993. And he noted that the California League of Conservation Voters, which endorsed Campbell in the 1993 state Senate election, this year endorsed Estruth.
Asked about his specific policy complaints, Estruth said Congress is making erroneous cuts in Medicare, environmental protection and education.
But while both candidates agree that the federal budget can be balanced in seven years, Campbell's enthusiasm for the idea sets him apart.
In fact, Campbell, a Stanford Law School professor, said he wants to move to the U.S. House of Representatives from the state Senate seat he now holds because he believes he can make a major contribution to the issue of the budget, especially as a member of the Republican majority.
He added that if the budget isn't balanced in seven years, the needs of aging baby boomers will make it nearly impossible to balance after that.
But Campbell wants to be set apart from the Congress to which Estruth is trying to tie him in other ways as well.
His No. 2 and 3 issues, Campbell said, are preservation and enhancement of the environment, and education.
Campbell said he would bolster the environmental wing of his party alongside moderates like Sherwood Boehlert (R-New York), who has already asked him to serve as his deputy in the environmental caucus.
He said that, as an educator himself, he has an abiding interest in making sure money is spent in the classroom rather than outside it by scaling back federal reporting regulations and mandates.
Campbell addresses concerns about wavering environmentalism by saying he is "the No. 1 Republican in the state Senate on environmental matters" and that his movement from a 32 percent League of Conservation Voters rating last year to 53 percent this year shows he is improving.
Campbell added that in the state Senate he is not setting national policy and has to think about the impact policy decisions will have on California's business competitiveness against other states.
"I had always to decide whether the increment in environmental benefit was justified given the potential that jobs would move to New Mexico, Texas and so forth," he said.
Campbell insisted that everyone is entitled to be judged on his own record and positions. He is quick to rattle off points of disagreement with the national Republican Party and Newt Gingrich.
Among other things, Campbell said he disagreed with national park funding cuts and the denial of funding to "poor women exercising their right to abortion." He called two recent statements by Gingrich linking sensational murder cases to social policy "errors."
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, Wed., December 6, 1995.
©1995 Metro Publishing Inc. All rights reserved.