Decision ’92 : VOTING IN THE VALLEY / AN ELECTION GUIDE : CONGRESS / 24th DISTRICT : Tom McClintock : It’s a classic confrontation: Beilenson, the veteran liberal Democrat faces McClintock, the conservative Republican.

SACRAMENTO —  The way Assemblyman Tom McClintock tells it, he was first drawn to politics by his mother’s tears.

The Thousand Oaks Republican recalls that about 25 years ago he saw his mother crying after she figured the family’s federal income taxes.

“All of her savings essentially were eaten up by an unexpected tax bill,” McClintock says.

“The tears and just utter frustration she felt are something I’ll never forget,” McClintock says. “It was as if everything she had worked for had gone up in smoke.”

It was a defining moment for McClintock, who has turned revulsion to higher taxes and bigger government into the linchpin of his fight for a staunchly conservative agenda.

Now, he seeks to carry his anti-tax crusade to Washington.

In the Nov. 3 general election, the conservative McClintock is battling liberal Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) for the newly drawn 24th Congressional District, which stretches from Sherman Oaks to Malibu and north to Thousand Oaks.

“This is a highly competitive district,” McClintock said. “The outcome will be close . . . and every vote will count.”

The contest is a classic conflict between one of the Assembly’s most conservative lawmakers, a proven vote-getter, and a highly regarded veteran liberal who faces his toughest race in years.

A sampling of McClintock’s positions reflects his philosophy.

McClintock emerged as a vocal critic of a 1991 budget accord, which included tax increases aimed at raising $7 billion. Even before summer’s budget impasse, McClintock said the 1991 agreement was leading to “the worst fiscal disaster in the state’s history.”

As long as environmental safeguards are met, McClintock supports oil drilling off the California coast. He seeks tougher anti-crime penalties but opposes gun controls. He opposes virtually all abortion-rights legislation, especially government funding for abortions.

After a decade in Sacramento, McClintock’s votes and views evoke strong sentiments from friends and foes.

McClintock, 36, is described by colleagues as a bright, likable, thoughtful and independent voice. He displays the fervor of an evangelist as well as a self-deprecating humor. He sprinkles his speeches with quotes from Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. His admiration for the British leader is so great that McClintock listens to tapes of Churchill speeches.

His detractors fault McClintock as an aloof, strident and self-righteous ideologue who in 10 years has failed to learn the art of compromise. They say he is too close to the business community, which has pumped the lion’s share of contributions into his state legislative campaigns.

As a Republican lawmaker in the Democratic-controlled Legislature, McClintock starts off with built-in disadvantages. Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown assigns committee chairmanships, which generally go to fellow Democrats. Along with the chairmanships come larger staffs and control over the flow of legislation.

Even without a chairmanship or big staff, McClintock has managed to turn his back-bench status into an asset.

From his desk in the very back row of the ornate Assembly chamber, McClintock challenges his enemies; introduces legislation, at one point during last summer’s budget deadlock pushing for about 50 budget amendments; and peppers Democrats on points of order. (As a registered parliamentarian, McClintock in 1989 served as a paid consultant to the Society for American Baseball Research).

He has drawn attention to himself by regularly bashing fellow GOP leaders, including two successive governors, especially on fiscal and tax issues. Earlier this year, for example, he asserted that Gov. Pete Wilson’s budget was “based on literally absurd revenue projections.”

McClintock ranks among the Legislature’s top naysayers. For example, in the two-year legislative session that ended last month, McClintock cast more “no” votes on the Assembly floor--1,838--than any other lawmaker, according to Legi-Tech, a computerized information service.

His admirers cite his votes as a demonstration of McClintock’s willingness to break ranks with his party. Rep. John Doolittle (R-Rocklin), a fellow conservative who served in the Legislature with McClintock, says that McClintock stands out because other lawmakers may dislike Wilson “but won’t risk offending him.”

Of McClintock’s combative style, Rep. Doolittle says: “If you get to be a big enough pain in the neck, they eventually try to accommodate you.”

His critics acknowledge that McClintock, a onetime newspaper columnist, knows how to attract publicity by issuing pithy sound bites for the nightly TV news but fault him for failing to find common ground with other lawmakers. Says one GOP legislative staffer: “You may get headlines, but you won’t get things done.”

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) says McClintock’s views are on the ideological fringe but that his colleague is not a knee-jerk reactionary. “He’s a true believer who does his homework and comes to positions based on heart-felt belief and research and a true sense of history from his perspective,” Katz says.

Katz describes the contest against Beilenson as a clear case of contrasts: “McClintock is much hungrier than Beilenson. He’s younger. He’s got more energy. He works harder. Tony hasn’t had a hard race in a long time.”

But Katz predicts that McClintock will be hurt because voters in the congressional district are mostly pro-choice, while McClintock opposes virtually all abortion-rights legislation.

Along with his high-profile stance for opposing 1991 state tax increases, McClintock’s views on abortion rights, crime and the environment make up four domestic issues that paint a portrait of the lawmaker’s agenda.

In 1991, McClintock published a list of $14 billion in possible savings, ranging from such modest proposals as ending regulation of barber shops and beauty parlors to such sweeping proposals as replacing the system under which education is financed with a $4,000 voucher for all pupils to spend at the public or private school of their choice.

On abortion, McClintock opposes public funding, supports parental consent for teen-agers seeking abortions and opposes the federal Freedom of Choice Act, which would forbid states from imposing restrictions on most abortions and overrule limits set down by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1989 Webster decision.

At times, McClintock employs colorful language to describe his positions. For instance, during a 1989 conversation with four constituents, McClintock compared public-financed abortions for poor women to “providing Scotch for the wino lying in the gutter.”

His comments were printed in a newsletter, which McClintock said took them out of context. He said that he made the comparison to counter the constituents’ argument that if the state fails to provide abortions for the poor, it is denying them a choice.

“I said that there are many things that the poor cannot afford,” McClintock said in a 1990 interview. “You would not suggest that because winos cannot afford quality Scotch, that the government should provide it to them?”

The National Right to Life Committee Inc. said that in 1991 he sided with the group on all seven measures identified as “pro-life.” By the same measure, the California Abortion Rights Action League says that in 1991 McClintock voted against six of seven abortion-rights measures in the Legislature. The one measure he supported was a bill to make it a misdemeanor to intentionally block an individual from entering or leaving a health-care facility by obstructing access.

McClintock says he believes in reasonable restrictions for abortions but would “not put a woman in jail” for having chosen to obtain one. “That’s where I part company with some of the more extreme elements of the pro-life movement,” he said.

But the right to choose is central to one of his major anti-crime accomplishments. He championed legislation, signed into law this year, to give California Death Row inmates the right to select lethal injection instead of the gas chamber. McClintock argued that it is “the only form of execution which from our own life’s experience, we can conclude is entirely devoid of discomfort.”

Opponents say injection is merely intended to make a brutalizing form of punishment more acceptable and the death penalty should be abolished.

On other law-and-order issues, McClintock, who previously was the lead Republican on the Assembly Committee on Public Safety, took strong stands to stiffen penalties for criminals.

Mike Pinkerton, former chief counsel for the committee, says McClintock is “basically interested in putting people away” in prison to bar them from committing any more crimes.

He opposed legislation outlawing assault weapons. His stand helped him draw a perfect rating from the National Rifle Assn. in 1990 and its support this year.

On the environmental front, he believes strongly in property rights and opposes government limiting the use of property for any purpose. Calling himself a free-market conservationist, McClintock supports efforts to acquire parkland through voluntary sales of open space.

But he opposed a bill by his political mentor, Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), to give the Coastal Commission power to immediately stop illegal grading; approved a proposal to force Coastal Commissioners to disclose secret contacts with developers; and voted against a measure to save the state’s dwindling supply of native oak trees. In 1991, he sided with the League of Conservation Voters just 4% of the time, compared to an average of 15% for Assembly Republicans. In the same year, McClintock agreed 78% of the time with the California Chamber of Commerce, which lists environmental legislation on its score card.

Tom McClintock attended his first political event when he was 4 years old: a rally where President Dwight Eisenhower spoke on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon.

As a teen-ager, he organized Ventura County youths for Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign.

A UCLA graduate, McClintock served as chief of staff to Sen. Davis before jumping into a 1982 Assembly contest. McClintock won and has handily won reelection ever since.

McClintock initially became identified with the so-called “caveman” faction of the GOP Assembly Caucus, known for strong conservative views.

He remained caucus whip, the No. 4 spot in the party leadership, but was forced out of the post in late 1989.

McClintock brushes aside criticism, saying he’s been right about the state’s fiscal plight.

“Every warning I gave unfortunately has come to pass, so I feel fairly well-insulated against any hurt feelings among the Republican Party.”