Has Dornan’s Bluster Lost Its Luster?

Politics has long been performance art for Robert Dornan. During his 18 years representing districts in Los Angeles and Orange counties, the House of Representatives was his stage.

It was there that the former television talk-show host and B-movie actor became “B-1 Bob” for his fervent support of military spending. He once grabbed a colleague by the necktie and accused him of being a “draft-dodging wimp,” and hectored another for being gay.

To Dornan, President Clinton was a “degenerate” who wore “girlie-girlie” jogging shorts. Political opponents became “lesbian spear-chuckers,” or criminals. “Utterly, catatonically gutless” is how Dornan referred to certain members of his own party. Democrats loathed him. Many Republicans, it turns out, didn’t think much of him either.

“He’d go into this bombastic affectation, and he could go for an hour or two nonstop, a stream-of-consciousness railing against whoever he was railing against. He was like a carny on a stump,” said Mike Schroeder, former head of the California GOP. “It was his act for years. But you know how your mother said that if you make a face long enough, it’ll stick? That’s what happened to Bob.... At some point, it just stuck.”

Now, eight years out of office and with a stint as a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host under his belt, the 70-year-old Dornan attempts a return to the political stage by seeking the GOP nomination in next week’s primary for the 46th Congressional District, which stretches from Palos Verdes Estates to Newport Beach.

His opponent: veteran incumbent Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), a former friend whose views on defense, the economy and social issues are very similar to his own.

This has left many political observers asking: Why?

“I thought he had lost his political mind,” said Robert Naylor, a former Assembly minority leader and state GOP chairman who now works as a lobbyist. “Years ago he found a constituency that could warm to his type of bravado. But times have changed. And he didn’t keep up.”

Dornan lost his seat to Democrat Loretta Sanchez in a bitterly disputed 1996 election in which Sanchez got 47,964 votes to Dornan’s 46,980, a difference of only 984. His district -- once heavily white and Republican -- had gradually turned Latino and Democratic. He said the GOP leadership, in trying to woo Latinos, turned its back on him.

“I’ve been slimed,” he said, “and my own party did it to me.”

Now he’s back, Dornan says, because America needs him to fight the war on terrorism. And he sees his current opponent as part of the problem, citing campaign contributions Rohrabacher has received from several Arab Americans and Arab American organizations.

In 1994 and 1996, Rohrabacher received $800 in campaign contributions from Abdurahman M. Alamoudi, a prominent U.S. Islamic activist who was indicted last year on charges that he illegally tried to funnel Libyan money into the United States. Authorities allege that Alamoudi, who’s awaiting trial, was involved with groups that had financial ties to terrorist organizations.

The congressman also has been a frequent visitor to Islamic countries, including Afghanistan and Qatar. Many of the trips were sponsored by Islamic American groups.

Dornan links those facts and other allegations with Rohrabacher’s past criticism of Israel to conclude that Rohrabacher has stood on the wrong side of the war on terror.

Rohrabacher dismisses Dornan’s charges as irresponsible. He said Alamoudi’s contributions were negligible and given years before the cleric came under suspicion. Before being arrested last year, Alamoudi gave money to a number of candidates over several years, including President George W. Bush and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in 2000, according to FEC records. Clinton and Bush returned the money.

“If he walked into a room, I wouldn’t know who he was,” Rohrabacher said of Alamoudi.

He said that he had met with many Arab leaders abroad and in the United States and that Dornan’s attempt to paint the meetings as something sinister smacked of racism. And although he has been critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians at times, Rohrabacher defends Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

Whether Dornan’s focus on Middle East policy will attract voters to him remains to be seen. But some GOP leaders say his message isn’t resonating with Republicans this time around.

“The Republican Party does not need Bob Dornan as a candidate,” said Schroeder, an attorney who represented Dornan in an attempt to prove election fraud after he lost his seat to Sanchez in 1996. “That kind of bombastic, hating politics doesn’t fit in the state anymore, especially in a coastal district.”

The challenge to Rohrabacher, which took many Republicans by surprise, “is about Bob Dornan being Bob Dornan,” said Tracy Price, president of the Orange County Lincoln Club, an influential GOP organization that has endorsed Rohrabacher. “This is not about Dana or his voting record or his stances.”

Other influential Republicans, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, also have backed Rohrabacher, and most observers expect the 56-year-old incumbent, who’s serving his eighth term, to win easily. Though the two had similar campaign war chests as of December, according to Federal Election Commission filings, most of Dornan’s money came out of his pocket, while Rohrabacher drew on a wide range of donors and reportedly raised another $300,000 last month at a fundraiser featuring Schwarzenegger.

The rivalry has deep roots.

After congressional districts were redrawn, Dornan told Rohrabacher in 1991 to cede his seat to him or face a primary challenge. GOP leaders were stunned; Dornan eventually backed down after talks with, among others, Rohrabacher’s mother.

The move mirrored run-ins Dornan was increasingly having with other Republicans, both locally and nationally, including a public spat with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

In 1996, he ran for president and Congress at the same time, a move observers say underscored both Dornan’s outsized ambitions and how out of touch he had become with his own demographically changing district.

“He was always tilting at windmills and was doing things for publicity only,” said Naylor, who believes Dornan’s defeat later that year was due to more than the diversification of his district.

“He didn’t do the roll-up-your-sleeves sort of things with his constituency.... He kind of blew it with his behavior and the way he treated people.”

In 1998, Dornan angrily criticized Rohrabacher and other Republicans for not helping him enough in his rematch against Sanchez.

“What did the party do? They said, ‘Dornan, you are on your own -- we are going to distance ourselves from you,’ ” said Mark Dornan, his son and current campaign manager. “They sacrificed my dad on the altar of political correctness for the sake of outreach in the Latino community.”

Dornan’s target now is Rohrabacher, a man who once said, “There is nothing that Bob Dornan could do for the rest of his life where I won’t be his friend.”

Turns out there was.

“His method of operation is slash and burn and destroy,” Rohrabacher said recently. “It is not a nice feeling being a target of Bob Dornan.”