Reformer or Power Broker--Hayden Straddles Line : Politics: Still a magnet for criticism from all sides, he throws himself into environmental campaign.

Tom Hayden is fighting his way through traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway, one hand on the wheel of a state-leased Ford Taurus that is layered with grime. Hayden, to save water during the drought, hasn’t washed the car in weeks. He’s talking baseball.

The 1960s radical-turned-legislator plays hardball, his first love, in a league for aging dreamers, and he’s mired deep in a slump. He’s sure it’s not mechanical--a hitch in his swing--but something deeper. Concentration. Each time he steps to the plate, he dwells on all the times he has gone up before and failed.

“It’s a consciousness problem,” Hayden says, pushing his mop of graying hair from his brow. “How do you divorce yourself from your past, your baggage, and concentrate on the present?”

For Tom Hayden at 50, life imitates baseball. Like a ballplayer trying to shake a slump, Hayden has spent half his adulthood moving away from his political past, trying to shed the baggage of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Now, he admits, he doesn’t really know where all that movement is leading him.

The immediate future is clear enough. He has thrown himself into the campaign for “Big Green,” the sweeping environmental initiative he helped write that appears as Proposition 128 on the November ballot. A Democrat, he is running for reelection to his Santa Monica-based Assembly seat.

Beyond that is a question mark punctuating the same query he has faced time and again: Idealists or power brokers--which ones run the world? He seems to have never fully committed himself to be either.

When Hayden went to the Assembly in 1982, the conventional wisdom was that the outsider had become an insider. The lawbreaker became a lawmaker. He supported the death penalty and accepted the idea of outlawing flag burning. Even some of his conservative critics said they were surprised by Hayden’s ability to work the legislative labyrinth.

But just as Hayden the radical always kept one foot in the establishment door, Hayden the legislator has never quite become a part of the system. He has few friends in Sacramento, his attendance is among the worst in the Assembly, and his record of accomplishment under the Capitol dome is meager. Yet if Proposition 128 passes, Hayden will arguably have had as great an effect on public policy as any member of the Assembly.

“It’s a quandary,” Hayden says. “If you’re without power, people say you haven’t been effective. If you get power, the same people will say you’ve been absorbed into the club.” So he straddles both worlds--the reformers and the power brokers--remaining a magnet for criticism from all sides.

Hayden has a way of stepping into public relations fiascoes, perhaps because he barely tries to avoid them. His latest was an appearance at a Santa Monica City Council meeting, where he spoke in opposition to construction of a luxury hotel on the beach.

A Hayden political opponent, City Councilwoman Christine Reed, said Hayden was “drunk as a skunk.” Jack Nichol, a consultant for the hotel developer who differs with Hayden on this issue but has been allied with him since the 60s, said Hayden “was under the influence.” Hayden admitted in a written statement that he had “several drinks” with dinner before the evening meeting, but said the accusation that he was drunk was “exaggerated and politically motivated.”

In fact, a videotape of Hayden’s late-night testimony showed him to be articulate and apparently under control, although at times he raised his voice and argued with council members.

Several of Hayden’s Capitol colleagues said they had never seen him drunk. Hayden refused to discuss the matter except to say: “I feel I perform my governmental duties with a clear mind.”

Although he remains a symbol of the ‘60s and ‘70s--on trial in Chicago for disrupting the 1968 Democratic Convention, visiting Hanoi at the height of the Vietnam War--Hayden was never entirely embraced by the movement he helped begin. As he conceded in his memoir, “Reunion,” his fellow leftists resented Hayden’s attempts to lead what was an anti-leadership movement. He worked with the State Department, which was considered the enemy by many of his friends, to try to gain the release of American prisoners of war. He was tossed out of a Berkeley commune, he wrote, because he was thought to be an “oppressive male chauvinist” and “into manipulating people.”

Hayden is now in the Legislature but not of it. “He’s detached,” said arch-enemy Gil Ferguson, the Newport Beach Republican who tried to oust Hayden from the Assembly on the grounds that he was a traitor. Echoing the sentiment of some of Hayden’s ideological allies who wouldn’t go on the record, Ferguson added: “He’s either physically not there or he’s not there emotionally or mentally.”

Since the beginning of the current session in January, 1989, Hayden has missed 25% of the Assembly’s votes. Only two members have worse records. At times he has told friends that he is bored and frustrated.

Hayden’s personal interests also lie outside the capital. A single father since he split with his former wife--actress and political benefactor Jane Fonda--Hayden flies home almost nightly to be with his teen-age son, Troy. He helps coach a high school baseball team. An avid fisherman, Hayden was casting flies on an Alaska stream in July while his Assembly colleagues were locked in a stalemate over the state budget.

“People aren’t sent here to make friends,” Hayden said during an interview on the Assembly floor. “They’re sent here to represent their districts and their points of view. It’s problematic to make friends with colleagues, where civility is called for and respect is called for but friendship can get you into difficulty. At any time, somebody that you’re friendly with may be fighting you on the floor.”

But there is more to seizing power in Sacramento than showing up and speaking your mind. Sometimes personal ties can be as important as political philosophy. And many of Hayden’s colleagues resent him for appearing to stand above politics even while he practices the art. Said one: “The guy’s an opportunist.”

“He’s never here,” said Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco). “Part of getting your votes is establishing working relationships with individual members. You sell yourself to the members on the quality of what you’re about, and they begin to take your advice and counsel and believe you. They don’t do that if all you are is an infrequent visitor.”

Hayden’s legislative career began with a burst. Republican Gov. George Deukmejian signed 14 of Hayden’s bills in his first term in the Assembly, including several measures of local interest as well as legislation that helped spur research into the effects of the herbicide Agent Orange on American servicemen who served in Vietnam.

Since the end of 1986, however, Hayden’s record has thinned. Although the number of bills enacted is not a foolproof measure of effectiveness, Hayden had only two measures signed in 1988 and none since then. As chairman of an Assembly subcommittee, he has spent much of his time trying to overhaul the state master plan for higher education. But the fate of that legislation, a five-year effort that Hayden had hoped to complete this month, is in doubt.

Since 1988, Hayden has been chairman of the Labor Committee, a position that the Democrats usually hand to a member who is close to organized labor. But Hayden’s anti-nuclear and controlled growth planks are not exactly mainstream labor union stands.

“Hayden has never been known as a friend of the workingman,” said Assemblyman Dick Floyd (D-Gardena), who preceded him as chairman of the panel and has close ties to blue-collar workers. “I don’t think he has an agenda.”

His agenda, Hayden said, is to block “anti-labor” bills and try to improve worker safety. He is pushing legislation to stiffen regulation of construction cranes like the one that collapsed last year in downtown San Francisco, killing five people and injuring 21 others. Hayden also is seeking to improve conditions for sweatshop workers in the garment industry and to implement new standards for video display terminals, which have been blamed for wrist and arm injuries suffered by office workers. But only the crane legislation, which has bipartisan support, is expected to be enacted.

“Even Tom Hayden couldn’t screw that up,” said Bill Meehan, general manager of the Sacramento Building Trades Council, who said there is no love for Hayden among the hard-hat set. “A lot of construction types are veterans of the Vietnam War and they have long memories. Those memories have not cemented any relationships with Mr. Hayden or his attitudes.”

But Hayden has no shortage of admirers. Bob Mulholland, a Vietnam veteran and the director of Campaign California, Hayden’s grass-roots organization, said Hayden always has been “ahead of his time.” Democratic Assemblyman Tom Bates of Berkeley said Hayden has made a “major contribution” by “using his resources to try to educate the citizens of California to be more progressive in their point of view.”

“It has been real hard being here the whole time with George Deukmejian being the governor,” Bates said. “It’s just one door slammed after another. If you can’t pass legislation, what can you do? You can use your office, your title, to educate the constituency. That’s what Tom has done.”

Beyond the handicap of dealing with a Republican governor, Hayden said many of his legislative goals have been thwarted by the industry interests who exert power in the Legislature through their funding of campaigns. He noted that he was stopped cold when he proposed increasing alcohol and cigarette taxes in 1986.

“We couldn’t even get that bill out of committee,” Hayden said. “Guys would say, ‘I agree with you, but it’s going to be killed, so why should I take a hit? Why should I be marked down as a no vote (against the industry) and then they’ll contribute to my opponent. Get smart.’ ”

The Legislature, he said, is “sort of occupied by an alien power. It’s hard to push out the occupiers.”

But it is easier, it turns out, to go around the special interests by appealing directly to the voters with the ballot initiative. That is where Hayden, stymied on the inside, decided to make his mark.

In 1986, Hayden and Campaign California played a key role in the passage of Proposition 65, the anti-toxics initiative responsible for those ubiquitous signs in gas stations, bars and grocery stores warning that cancer-causing chemicals are lurking nearby. Hayden also was instrumental in a Sacramento County initiative to shut down the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant.

Now he is almost completely focused on Proposition 128, the wide-ranging measure that would, among other things, enact stricter controls on water pollution, pesticides, the timber industry, and offshore oil drilling. Hayden, never eager to stray too far from the mainstream, insists that this measure--which supporters say is intended to save the world “for our kids,”--would not inconvenience anyone. No banning of auto air conditioning here.

“We ruled out anything that would cause Draconian lifestyle changes,” he said.

Opponents have dubbed the measure the “Hayden Initiative” in hopes that there is lingering resentment of Hayden’s anti-war radicalism. The tactic probably exaggerates Hayden’s role in the initiative and could backfire if the voters pass the measure anyway. The vote could then be seen as a statewide acceptance of Hayden and his policies.

The measure would create a new elective position to enforce the initiative’s provisions and, if necessary, even sue the state to force compliance with environmental laws. Hayden has said he would consider running for that post in what would be his first foray into statewide politics since he lost a race for the U.S. Senate in 1976.

Another option might be to run for Congress in 1992, if Democratic Rep. Mel Levine leaves his post to run for the Senate. Or, Hayden said, he might want to remain in the Legislature if Democrat Dianne Feinstein is elected governor. He is leaving all his options open.

“When you get to be 50 you want to hold on to your life and not parcel it out without taking everything into account,” he said.

Hayden had to soften his edges a little to run for the Assembly. “I’ve changed,” he told the voters in 1982. More change, more compromising, might be necessary for him to compete for statewide office or even Congress in a heavily contested race for an open seat. Hayden’s not sure how much more compromise he has in him.

Spend time with him and one can’t help sensing that, more than anything else, Tom Hayden would like to be remembered as an idealist who also was relevant.

“I’m trying to understand what is the power of idealism,” he said. “It’s not that idealism is a naive alternative to power politics. (But) one thing you do notice about idealists is that while we achieve great things from time to time, we don’t achieve a change in institutions or in the nature of power. . . . The lasting question is who has the power. Who manages. Who runs things.”