Orange County Revival New Ideas Lure ‘Yuppies’ Into Ranks of Democrats

Second of two parts on how Republicans and Democrats are wooing Orange County’s young voters.

Allan Affeldt, 26, listens to a different drumbeat and the Democratic Party in Orange County couldn’t be happier.

Breaking with his family’s and the county’s Republican Party tradition, Affeldt became an active Democrat last fall when he helped organize a Mondale for President rally at UC Irvine that featured an appearance by Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.).

“Until Ronald Reagan, there wasn’t anybody around who scared me enough to motivate me,” said Affeldt, a Ph.D. candidate in cognitive brain research at UCI who’s now a paid member of Pro-Peace, a volunteer organization that advocates reordering national priorities to favor hunger relief and educational programs instead of military spending.

“I went down to see what was going on at the Mondale-Ferraro headquarters in Santa Ana, and I saw that it was a disaster . . . . There was no staff. The Democratic Party itself was not supporting the (UCI) effort much,” Affeldt said.

Following the November election, Affeldt was manning an information table on campus for the hunger-relief organization Oxfam America when Laguna Beach developer and Democratic financier David Stein drove up.

Stein, who has emerged as the bon vivant of the Democratic party, raised more than $250,000 for Hart’s unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination last year. Stein is now a member of the Democratic National Committee and on the “must-see” list for Democratic candidates from around the nation.

Stein had seen Affeldt in a television newscast about the Oxfam effort and was impressed. Stein soon helped raise thousands of dollars for both Pro-Peace and Oxfam. At the urging of Stein and Chris Townsend, Stein’s 24-year-old assistant and political Wunderkind , Affeldt joined the Democratic Associates.

Born in the aftermath of the Gary Hart campaign, the Associates has grown from a core of two dozen people to 250 in nine months, largely by inviting would-be members to receptions that have featured well-known national political figures such as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Ind.).

The group is now considered the major hope for rejuvenating the Democratic Party in Orange County.

The brainchild of Stein and Townsend, the group charges members $50 per year and is a subdivision of the 50-member, $1,000-per-year Democratic Foundation, which Stein chairs.

Former Hart campaign field director John Whitehurst, 23, was hired to be executive director of the two groups last week after a nationwide search. Although Whitehurst is young for the job, his hiring is seen as evidence that the Foundation and the Associates are serious about trying to revamp the Democratic Party in Orange County.

“Whitehurst believes that the rebirth of the Democratic Party is going to occur in places like Orange County,” Stein said.

Whitehurst was not specific about his strategy for the Associates, but he said he would have a plan ready in about six weeks for increasing membership and raising money.

According to Townsend, Whitehurst will be paid $2,000 a month, plus a 10% commission on all funds he raises.

The Associates was formed, Stein explained, “because we felt that the Foundation was perhaps being perceived as another Lincoln Club (a GOP volunteer group dominated by wealthy businessmen such as restaurateur Carl Karcher). “The Lincoln Club is a very exclusive group. It doesn’t go out of its way to bring you in. We wanted something that would be inclusive, not exclusive.”

“The Associates is a brain trust, a group that attracts people with ideas, not just money,” Stein added.

Even so, the Associates is dominated by “yuppies”--young, urban, upwardly mobile and highly materialistic professionals in their 30s. There are few students like UCI’s Affeldt. There are no blue-collar assembly line workers, although a few members are union officials. Minorities are also scarce.

“Our hope is that the membership will broaden out and embrace all types of people,” said Santa Ana Councilman Dan Young, 34, one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars and a director of the Associates.

“Probably the current membership is white collar, but that’s not necessarily the intent of the organization,” Young said. “This is not an organization where you go to take stands on specific issues that can divide people. It’s a place where, whatever your particular political interest might be, your more general interest in the Democratic Party will be pursued through the Associates.”

Mike Stockstill, Ron Cole, Sarah Catz and Miguel Pulido are members who illustrate Young’s point.

Stockstill, corporate affairs director of the Irvine Co., said he joined the Associates because “I’m interested, and I know a lot of the people there, such as Townsend.”

Cole, who works for the Orange County Transportation Commission, and Catz, a lawyer and entrepreneur, were active in the Hart campaign. Catz was also involved in Carol Ann Bradford’s unsuccessful bid to unseat Rep. Robert Badham (R-Newport Beach). They said they joined the Associates for social reasons and because they were looking for intellectual stimulation.

Pulido, 29, is the son of Miguel Pulido Sr., who attracted media attention recently for successfully resisting Santa Ana’s attempts to relocate the Ace Muffler Shop he owns to make way for a new shopping center.

The younger Pulido is interested in countering the GOP’s recent recruitment successes among Latinos. He is working with the Associates to bring San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros to Orange County in August.

“I’m worried about maintaining a diversity of opinion in Orange County,” Pulido said. “Among my Republican friends, it always seems there’s only one point of view about everything.”

Pulido hopes that he can draw 300 Latinos to a Cisneros event, including some who have recently defected to the Republican Party.

Indeed, John Hanna, chairman of the Associates, boasts that the county Democratic Central Committee, of which he is a member, recently refused to charter the Associates as an official party organization because Republicans and independents are allowed to join.

“This is an organization of problem solvers, of people not necessarily interested in waving the Democratic banner,” Hanna said.

Hanna, however, recognizes that the group must attract an even broader base of support. He worries about what he calls the “Springsteeners.” The term, which refers to pop star Bruce Springsteen, is being used increasingly by political activists to describe some 18- to 39-year-olds who, Hanna said, would “rather jump into some blue jeans, drink a can of beer and go off to the desert in a pickup truck to party than go to a political event.”

“Springsteeners are not likely to be as politically active as a yuppie,” Hanna said.

Moreover, college youths are mostly untapped by the Associates. An exception is Jeff Su, 22, a political science student at UCI whose mother is a member of the Los Angeles County Republican Central Committee but who chose to register as a Democrat and join the Associates.

“With me, it was a personal decision based on issues,” Su said. “I find that on campus it’s very difficult to talk to people about the Democratic Party because now the Republicans have got students thinking that it’s a sign of success to be a Republican.”

In an effort to counteract this trend, Associates member Charles Drees, 19, recently reactivated the county’s Young Democrats, whose charter had lapsed 18 months ago.

“When we present ourselves under the Democratic name, the reaction among young people is ‘No, we’re not interested.’ But when we present issues, we find a lot of agreement,” Drees said.

“I felt I needed to do something, that apathy within the younger generation was really getting bad.”

Drees said he encounters hostility in some quarters. He said some young people see former President Carter as a “wimp” and President Reagan as a strong leader of the free world.

“If you’re 18, Ronald Reagan is a hero,” said Democratic financier Stein. “You don’t know anything other than that because you’ve never been exposed to other political heroes. All you know is Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

“Hopefully, when they’re 25,” said Stein, “they’ll see beyond that.”