Conservatives Love Ferguson’s Attacks on Fellow Assemblyman : ‘The Man Tom Hayden Fears Most’?

“He’s the man Tom Hayden fears most,” the speaker bellowed, ending a short introduction and eliciting a burst of applause from the partisan crowd at a recent Newport Beach Republican fund-raiser.

Smiling and standing at attention, Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) acknowledged the cheers with a nod and a quick wave.

Then Orange County’s newest legislator strode to the dais and repeated what he has said over and over since a teary-eyed speech on the Assembly floor May 2 in which he called Hayden, the Democratic assemblyman from Santa Monica, a traitor.

That speech catapulted Ferguson, a dapper, 62-year-old retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who saw service in three wars, to sudden notoriety as a conservative hero.

GOP Sees Dividends

Strategists for GOP conservatives, including Assembly Republican Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale, say that Ferguson, a freshman lawmaker who represents one of the state’s richest and most solidly Republican areas, could be a major statewide money-raiser for them.

Already, the speech has clearly paid dividends for Ferguson. Rep. Jack F. Kemp (R-N.Y.), regarded as a potential presidential contender in 1988, appeared at the Newport Beach fund-raiser for Ferguson, which grossed more than $47,000. Columnist-television personality William F. Buckley is scheduled for another in Irvine in October.

Ferguson has wiped out a $55,000 debt from his expensive primary battle last year, aided by nearly $15,000 contributed to him in the weeks immediately after the Hayden speech. And he said that he has also raised about $150,000 this year for FreePAC, a political action committee that he chairs.

Ferguson, who has carried only 27 bills since taking office in January--three of which became law--says he now wants to challenge whether Hayden can legally hold the Assembly seat to which he has twice been elected.

Ferguson said he intends to introduce a resolution that would invoke an obscure provision of the state Constitution that prohibits a person who “advocates the support of a foreign government” during hostilities from holding state office. The Constitution also empowers each house of the Legislature to have the final say on the qualifications of its members to hold office.

Hayden is a former radical who opposed the Vietnam War and traveled to Hanoi during it.

The genesis of the war of words between the two legislators was a resolution carried by Ferguson honoring Vietnam War veterans.

The measure, which declared that the war was “waged upon an honorable premise and for a noble purpose,” was adopted on a bipartisan 52-0 vote, with several Democrats abstaining, including Hayden. Hayden, as adamant now as ever that the Vietnam War was “an illegal, immoral, irrational waste of our country’s resources,” was among a handful of Democrats who spoke against it.

Hayden said that Ferguson “tried to sneak through a resolution defining Vietnam as a noble war. That’s a buzz word for all the retired Rambos . . . who want to rewrite history.” (The character Rambo is a veteran who rescues servicemen imprisoned in Vietnam in the popular movie “Rambo: First Blood Part II.”)

Sees Democratic Allies

Although few observers give Ferguson much of a chance in the Democratic-controlled Assembly of ousting Hayden, Ferguson said he is convinced that many Assembly Democrats are “patriotic Americans just like I am.”

Ferguson predicted that members of both parties might vote to remove Hayden given the choice of voting “yes or no.”

But Hayden, who previously has easily survived petition campaigns calling for his removal, seems nonplussed. Hayden said he sees himself as a “favorite scapegoat” of right-wing groups and “pseudo-patriots.”

“Maybe he is having a mid-life crisis and wants to find a new war to fight,” Hayden said of Ferguson. “But I think he will definitely lose this one.”