Carla Johnston last night told a small gathering of the Democratic Club that she is the most experienced of the still-growing field of Democratic candidates vying for the Eighth Congressional District seat.

Johnston, the only woman Democrat in the race thus far, said that she has developed negotiating skills during her 23 years as an organizer and active member of the Democratic Party. She has served as executive director of Somerville's Metropolitan Area Planning Council and as a 1984 Democratic Party convention delegate for Sen. Gary W. Hart (D-Colo.).

Johnston advised voters assessing candidates for Congress to "look at what kind of experience they have working in immense mazes of bureaucracy."

The longtime Cambridge resident said she was confident that Eighth District voters "will be able to distinguish between candidates who have experience and credentials, and the candidates who are using information from polls to make commercials that manipulate voters."

At least 10 people have declared their candidacy for the democratic nomination for the seat being vacated by the retiring Speaker of the House, Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr.

Identifying herself as "a fiscal conservative and a progressive on social issues," Johnston advocated more ambitious U.S. policies on deficit reduction, low-income housing, job training programs, and arms control.

Johnston discussed a variety of ways to reduce the national deficit before the 12 people in attendance at the freshman Union. She singled out tobacco and nuclear industry subsidies as "pork barrels" which should be purged from the national budget.

A former deputy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the first recipient of Radcliffe College's Peace Fellowship, Johnston said that current U.S. defense policy spawns wasteful spending and is also potentially self-destructive.

"It's not strong defense to rely on weapons that risk nuclear suicide," she said. "We need to find ways for the U.S. and the Soviet Union to end this increasing escalation of the arms race."

Johnston said job-training and housing programs should be federally funded but controlled locally so that they can be most responsive to the needs of individuals in communities across the country.

Johnston said she hopes to serve on the House Appropriations Committee if elected. She said she has extensive experience building coalitions which would help her to plan "which day, which hearing" to push through her policy ideas, and how to "give them the right kind of sunshine."