Feinstein, Huffington Trade Jabs in TV Debate : Politics: Senate candidates exchange bitter charges about public, personal issues on Larry King show.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Republican challenger Mike Huffington carried the animosity and tension of their heated U.S. Senate race into Larry King’s television studio Thursday night during a live national broadcast of their first face-to-face debate.

The exchange between the two candidates, who are nearly even in opinion polls on the race, was so acrimonious at times that their feuding was only interrupted by commercial breaks.

The candidates--and even the call-in questioners--focused mostly on accusations that many Californians have seen on the 30-second television commercials dominating this race. But the debate also touched on some issues such as crime and immigration, as well some extraordinarily personal exchanges about religion and Huffington’s wife’s miscarriage.

In one of the most heated confrontations, Huffington charged that Feinstein and her supporters have orchestrated a recent series of negative stories about his wife, Arianna, and her background in a controversial religious group.

“I am sick and tired of people jumping my wife,” Huffington said. “. . . Are you going to make my wife’s personal religious beliefs an issue? Yes or no?”

“I am trying, . . .” Feinstein said.

“Yes or no?” Huffington interrupted.

“Your wife is not the issue,” Feinstein said. “I will answer the question as I want to answer it. You have said there is not much you can’t buy, but you can’t buy a record.”

The debate offered many voters their first live glimpse of the two candidates because both have spent little time this year in major public forums. They sat uncomfortably side by side at a table across from King, who moderated the discussion without any traditional debate rules such as opening remarks or timed responses.

In news conferences after the broadcast, both candidates appeared with their spouses to present themes likely to be heard frequently in the month remaining before the election.

Rep. Huffington (R-Santa Barbara) cast the race as one between a fighter for smaller government and the failed political leadership of the past. “Feinstein is part of the old guard,” he said. “This is a new generation coming on. We’re not government people.”

Feinstein suggested voters closely examine her opponent.

“What it comes down to is, ‘Who can you trust?’ ” she said. “When you get to the Senate, it isn’t rhetoric. You go before committees, you testify, you get out there and fight.”

The exposure was particularly important for Huffington, who still remains an enigma in the polls for many California voters less than two years after he won his first election to Congress. But for both candidates, the debate was a major event, coming at a time when the polls have showed a close race and time is growing short.

Both candidates took turns on the offense and defense during the program.

Huffington was forced to defend his decision not to release his personal income tax records even though he’s spent more than $10 million of his own money on the race and is likely to double that amount. He was also asked to explain his move from Texas to California in 1991.

But Huffington also kept a rapid-fire pressure on Feinstein, charging that she has been hypocritical in her claims to support tougher immigration policies because she supported a sanctuary resolution in San Francisco for Salvadorans when she was mayor. And he cast her election as a referendum on President Clinton.

“If you like what Bill Clinton has done for the country, then you will like what Dianne Feinstein will do over the next six years,” Huffington said.

King also prompted a discussion of one of the major themes in Huffington’s campaign, a plan to abolish the welfare system by turning it over to states and then, eventually, to private charities. Huffington boasted about legislation he has proposed to make it easier for middle- and lower-income Americans to deduct their charitable contributions.

But King, host of the internationally broadcast talk show, questioned the effect of the legislation, saying that poor people don’t give money to charity.

“Oh yes they do,” Huffington responded. “. . . In fact, I’ve had some black people come up to me who live in the cities and say ‘We need to help ourselves, give us the same tax deduction that wealthy people have.’ ”

Feinstein said she supported welfare reform, describing serious problems with the current system. But Huffington shot back that reform falls short of what is needed.

“This is typical of most of the people in Washington, they’re tinkering with a ship that’s going down,” he said. “We have spent $5 trillion on welfare. . . . It has been a bust. . . . Let’s go back to where it worked before, and that’s at the local level.”

One of the major contrasts that has developed in the race between Huffington and Feinstein is their philosophical difference about government’s responsibility and the duties of a senator.

Huffington has pointed to his welfare program as a way to shrink government. And he has defended his lack of a legislative record in Washington by saying that his job is to keep government in check, not to add more laws.

But Feinstein sharply challenged Huffington’s Washington record during the debate, citing his votes against key funding programs without offering alternatives. When Huffington complained about Feinstein’s vote for the defense appropriations bill, saying that it cut too much from the military, the incumbent Democrat shot back.

“I thought, maybe he really believes” the defense budget is underfunded, Feinstein said. “So I called the committee chairman. He has never submitted an amendment, never made a statement that defense should be higher. There was never a record.”

Huffington said he is unable to get legislation approved because Congress is controlled by the Democratic Party. But Feinstein said she has worked with Republicans many times.

“I’ve worked with Republicans on border control and we got it, I worked with Republicans on legislation on assault weapons; I’ve worked with them on the desert bill,” she said. “He could have made a fight. He could have at least opened his mouth. He could have had a press conference, he could have made a speech. Nothing.”

Huffington protested when one caller from Los Angeles asked him to explain why he continued to live in Texas until 1991 when his wife and children were living at the couple’s home in Santa Barbara. After accusing Feinstein of planting the question, the Republican candidate offered an inconclusive answer that involved his wife’s miscarriage in 1986. After the miscarriage, Huffington said, he did not want his wife to fly back and forth between California and Houston, so she moved into the couple’s Santa Barbara home with her mother and sister.

He did not say, however, why his wife did not live with him in Houston while he was working there at the family’s oil and gas company.

When King noted that Huffington has been called a carpetbagger by his opponent, the Republican angrily responded: “It was an awful tragedy, my wife having lost a baby. Which is horrific. I can’t believe you’re challenging that,” he said to Feinstein. “Have you ever lost a child?”

“Oh, Michael, please,” Feinstein said. “Here is somebody who has not had any record in California . . . he buys a big house, his family is here, his children are here and he’s not here, why?”

* RECORD DISCLOSURE: Feinstein’s property papers also contain a racial clause. A3