Changing of the Guard for Orange County GOP : Party Grew in Numbers and Power Under Lois Lundberg’s Leadership : ORANGE COUNTY NEWSMAKER

For Lois Lundberg, it was probably the greatest moment of her life. Not her career. Not the past few years. Her life. It was 1977, and Richard Nixon had agreed to attend an Orange County Republican Party benefit as his first post-Watergate appearance.

It was a private event, by telephone invitation only, and only for those who didn’t show the “slightest hint of anything negative (toward the ex-President),” recalls Lundberg, who as party chairman was organizing the event. The pool at socialite Athalie Clark’s home in Corona del Mar was dotted with flowers. Seventy-five guests had paid dearly to get in the door.

“I’ll tell you the truth. . . . They’d radioed and said the limousine had left San Clemente, and I said, I know it’s going to turn around and go back, I know, I just know it’s going to turn around and go back. This was a trip--this was something to do out of loyalty. Of course, he was coming to Athalie Clark’s house, and he loved Athalie Clark, but you still said to yourself, maybe he’s not ready, maybe this won’t be the night.

‘That Was It’

“So many things have happened, but that night, you know, when the car circled, and he got out of the car --that was it. Talk about a Cinderella story!”

Later, Nixon would host two party fund-raisers at Casa Pacifica in San Clemente, and a large, open-to-the-public event at the Disneyland Hotel, but that night marked more than a turning point for Nixon. It was, under Lundberg’s leadership, a turning point for the Orange County Republican Party.

At $500 a person, the event netted more than $20,000, far more than the amount usually raised at party-sponsored events at that time.

But that was part of the style that Lundberg, who is retiring as chairman tonight after eight years, brought to a party that was struggling to hold its own with the Democrats when she took the reins in 1977.

Then, Democrats held a majority of the county’s legislative and congressional seats. A year later, they surpassed the Republicans in registration in the county.

Lundberg was convinced that part of the problem was image. The party didn’t think big enough. It wasn’t something people wanted to belong to.

‘Image of Success’

“I wanted to make the party match the county,” she said. “There was an image of success that I wanted to create. I wanted to create the image of success, and then get the success to back it up. People love to join winners. People love to abandon losers. If you got a county like this one was--this is a beautiful county, this is a romantic county, this is an incredible county --so if your party’s going to be the No. 1 party in the county, you don’t put out any image of it but absolutely the top.”

Accordingly, she convinced the central committee to move its headquarters from an old warehouse in Santa Ana to a fashionable location at the Town and Country Center in Orange. “My enemies criticize me for being so expensive,” she says, “you know, for having such an address, because I could be down on Main Street. If I was down on Main Street, the party would be down on Main Street, too.”

Instead, the party now has a registration edge over the Democrats of more than 157,000. It holds all of the county’s Assembly seats but one, all of the county’s congressional seats and every state Senate seat but one. And it delivered an overwhelming 412,000-vote margin to Ronald Reagan in November.

Election Day Marathon

“Hot diggity dog! I got my 400 thou!” exclaimed Lundberg, 53, the queen of Orange County politics, after an Election Day marathon effort commanding 2,500 volunteers in the field. But that sort of effort, the commanding of the troops, the engineering of the registration drives, the organization of the phone banks, has been her own peculiar kind of art form.

Lundberg began political work as a precinct chairman, then left a job as a telephone company executive and went on to direct George Murphy’s 1970 U.S. Senate campaign, served as Nixon’s Orange County precinct director in 1972 and was state volunteer chairman for Robert Finch’s U.S. Senate candidacy in 1976.

Because she has worked nearly full-time at party headquarters in what she calls a “hands-on” approach, for the first time in years the party has not had an executive director.

Nixon has called her the Golda Meir of Orange County.

“I think she has a very astute understanding of the organizational skills that it takes to put together a successful election,” said state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), “particularly in the areas of volunteers, precinct organization, registration and that sort of thing.”

Said Supervisor Bruce Nestande, a longtime friend of Lundberg (who helped run his first successful campaign for the state Assembly): “To find a person like Lois Lundberg is very, very difficult. The answer is there by results: the extraordinary job that’s occurred in registration. She has such a strong grass-roots orientation.”

“I’m tremendously goal oriented, sometimes to a fault,” Lundberg says. “I set goals. Let’s take the first year, as an example. We had short-range, three-month goals, six-month goals, year goals and two-year goals. The first goal was, survive the first six months. We found out we were $20,000 in debt.

“My favorite line used to be, you know, I’m an expert in precinct (organizing). I’m unmatched. And I know a lot about telephones. But I can’t raise money, I’m scared to death of fund raising, I am not a fund-raiser. Well, I soon found out that I was a very good fund-raiser, because I had to be.”

Lundberg said she learned the best way to raise money was to tell people what it was going to be used for. At first, when the new party headquarters needed furniture, she asked people to donate $25 to buy a chair with their name on it for the office. Then she formed the Silver Circle, a $500-a-member organization, by telling new members she needed to build a precinct organization.

“People started to realize we were serious,” she said.

When it came time to register voters, she said, “It was planned, calculated, step-by-step registration. For fear that in one area one thing wouldn’t work, we used lots of things. . . . You name it, we were there. We were at street parades, we were at fairs, we were at malls, just, you know, everywhere.”

Lundberg also insisted on limiting the party’s efforts to two targeted races each election. “People used to get mad at me. A candidate would come and say, why can’t you make it three targets, why can’t you make it four, why can’t you make it six? You can’t--’cause you can’t divert your energies and your troops. It’s like a war.

“We always selected our targets, and not only that, we always gave them notice that we were after them. It made them absolutely nervous. Wouldn’t you be? Wouldn’t you, if you knew that somebody with my track record was after you? And in addition to that, you’d love to sit there and say, ‘Well, she can’t raise the money,’ but then the little small voice in the background says, ‘Yes she can.’ And then the other thing is, ‘Well, they can’t find a candidate,’ and the voice says, ‘Oh, yes they can.’ Most of the Patterson-Dornan campaign was a war of nerves.”

Party Triumph

Lundberg was referring to one of the party’s greatest triumphs, Republican Robert Dornan’s ousting in November of five-term incumbent Congressman Jerry Patterson, despite a campaign against Dornan that focused heavily on his residence in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills before moving to Orange County to run.

“A year ago December, I had lunch with Bob Dornan at the Villa Fontana, and we were discussing would it be a good idea for Bob Dornan to come to Orange County and run. And I said, it would be a very good idea. Because number one, you’re a heck of a candidate, but you’re going to be backed up by a party with such strength, that I said you can’t lose. This combination can’t lose.”

When Thomas Fuentes takes over the chairmanship tonight, she said, “He’s taking over an empire, no question about it.”

With this, she gets a bit nostalgic and pulls out her photographs of the night at Athalie Clark’s house and of Nixon’s last appearance at Casa Pacifica. “He told the press that he came (because of) me, and that he wouldn’t be back. And he won’t. He isn’t coming back to do a party for the county committee ever again, because the ties aren’t there anymore, because my ties are to his people. Tom’s aren’t. Tom’s never gotten up that ladder. With all due respect to Tom, who has some ties of his own, but--they’re different. . . . Tom didn’t come from those days. Tom’s, well--it’s going to be different! Anyway . . . .”

Lundberg, going on now to her own political-consulting business with Nason-Lundberg in Anaheim and a possible try for the U.S. Congress if William Dannemeyer decides not to run again, said it was time to retire from the party.

“I felt it was time. I’d been in the county job long enough,” she said. “Besides, what would I achieve? I’m not a maintenance person. I don’t maintain well at all. I want to achieve. I want to build.”