Assault on Hayden Bathes Ferguson in Political Limelight

“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 Newport Beach fund-raiser.

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

Then he strode to the dais and repeated what he has said over and over since a teary-eyed, emotional speech on the Assembly floor May 2 in which he called the Democratic assemblyman from Santa Monica a “traitor.”

Ferguson said he does not want to be known as the man who attacked Hayden for his Vietnam-era anti-war activism. Ferguson, 62, who was known for espousing conservative, free-enterprise views for more than a decade before he was elected to office, said he does not want to be put “into a bag” or identified with a single issue.

The speech was Ferguson’s first major recitation in the Assembly.

Before it, he was an obscure freshman who had introduced 27 pieces of legislation since taking office in January. Only eight members of the 80-seat Assembly, not counting the two party leaders, have introduced fewer.

It was in closing remarks in the debate over his 27th piece of legislation, a resolution honoring Vietnam War veterans, that Ferguson turned toward Hayden and said:

“We can close ranks. We can even forgive cowards. But we will never forgive traitors.”

Afterward, in remarks to reporters, Ferguson erased any doubt that the term “traitor” was, indeed, aimed at Hayden, who openly met with North Vietnamese officials in Hanoi during the mid-1960s.

Now, Ferguson says he wants to launch a constitutional challenge on whether Hayden can hold the Assembly seat to which he has twice been elected.

The incident, which Ferguson insists was unrehearsed and unplanned, has undoubtedly affected Ferguson’s political star, making him a hero in some circles while giving him notoriety even among those who found his action distasteful.

National press accounts that followed, according to Ferguson, brought thousands of letters and personal contacts, almost all favorable.

Strategists for GOP conservatives say that Ferguson, who represents one of the state’s richest and most solidly Republican areas, could be a major statewide money raiser for the party this year and next.

By February, when Assembly candidates must declare their intention to run for office, Ferguson probably will have raised enough money to frighten off any opposition. That will put him in a position to funnel some of his campaign funds to other candidates around the state, Assembly GOP leader Pat Nolan (R-Glendale) and others say.

U.S. Rep. Jack F. Kemp (R-N.Y.), widely regarded as a serious presidential contender for 1988, appeared earlier this month at a Newport Beach fund-raiser for Ferguson that grossed more than $47,000. Columnist-television personality William F. Buckley is scheduled for another in Irvine in October.

So far, Ferguson has wiped out a $55,000 debt from his expensive Republican primary battle last year.

Public campaign disclosure documents show that nearly $15,000 was contributed to Ferguson in the weeks immediately following the Hayden speech.

Ferguson said he also has raised about $150,000 this year for FreePAC, the conservative political action committee he chairs.

Before his Hayden speech, Ferguson was known mainly as an outspoken, tight-fisted conservative in the Assembly committees on Human Services, Transportation, Health and Housing. His major legislative endeavor had been an attempt to pass a law that would have forced most California counties to separate the offices of sheriff and coroner.

The Assembly Local Government Committee overwhelmingly rejected the proposal. Ferguson, however, said the effort provided a valuable lesson in how the legislative process works.

Before the committee hearing last April, sheriff-coroners from around the state and others opposed to the measure had lobbied intensely to defeat it. But Ferguson had done little other than introduce it.

He did not even know until the day of the hearing that the American Civil Liberties Union supported the separation.

Even after learning he had allies, Ferguson did not allow the ACLU spokeswoman and other civil liberties advocates to address the Democrat-controlled committee except to say that they supported the bill. Meanwhile, his own argument--that it is “a simple issue of justice”--left some committee members mystified and angry.

Immediately after the 7-2 vote against the measure, Ferguson seemed surprised when a reporter suggested that he had antagonized the committee and perhaps damaged chances for the bill’s approval. Moments later, Ferguson argued in a Capitol corridor with Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates, who said Ferguson’s bill was a personal attack to repay him for endorsing one of Ferguson’s opponents in the 1984 primary election.

In contrast two months later, Ferguson again was holding court in the Capitol. But instead of a hallway with a handful of reporters, he was holding a press conference in the same large room Gov. George Deukmejian uses for his press conferences.

Virtually every seat in the audience was full as Ferguson, surrounded by representatives of veterans groups from around the state, charged that thousands of petitions--each with one signature--demanding that Hayden be removed from the Assembly seat he won in 1982 had mysteriously disappeared.

Ferguson charged that veterans groups and others had sent in 103,000 petitions after former war protester Hayden was elected, petitions calling for Hayden’s removal from office. But Ferguson said that Assemblyman Johan Klehs (D-San Leandro), chairman of the Elections and Reapportionment Committee, could account for only about 43,000, fewer than half.

“I want to know what happened to those petitions. I feel the people who signed those petitions, the Vietnam veterans and the public, ought to know first that thousands now are missing,” Ferguson said. “And second, what happened to the documents and who is responsible.” Weeks later, Klehs said another 60,000 petitions were discovered in a Sacramento warehouse. But like the earlier batch, Klehs said, more than 95% of the petitions had no addresses, half of those with addresses were from out of state and almost all of them were mailed from Washington, D.C.

Klehs, who became chairman of the committee after most of the petitions arrived, said he is going to throw them all away at the end of the year unless someone introduces legislation to remove Hayden.

Ferguson said he will try to force the first-ever vote on whether Hayden should be allowed to serve in the Legislature because he is convinced that many Democrats in the Assembly are “patriotic Americans just like I am.”

Given the choice of voting “yes or no” on whether Hayden had supported the enemy during a national conflict--and thus is ineligible under the state constitution to hold state “office or employment”--many will side with him, Ferguson predicted.

Even if an attempt to unseat Hayden fails, Ferguson said, legislators who support Hayden “will have to answer to the people back home.”

“They don’t need to argue with me,” added Ferguson, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who saw action in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. “They can answer to the voters.”

Ferguson, who speaks excitedly when he recalls his war experiences, denies he is using Hayden to heighten his popularity in his conservative district, which stretches along the coast from Dana Point to Newport Beach and also includes Costa Mesa, El Toro, Laguna Hills and some inland canyon areas.

Ferguson said he hadn’t intended to attack Hayden verbally at the time Ferguson introduced the resolution. Just like practically everything else in his life, Ferguson said, his attack on Hayden was a result of his “being at the right place at the right time.”

Hayden has been popular enough to handily win election twice in his west Los Angeles County district, though he is as well known elsewhere as the husband of actress Jane Fonda. But Hayden’s name evokes bitter reactions among many in Orange County.

Hayden said he is a “favorite scapegoat” with some right-wing groups and “pseudo-patriots.”

“Ferguson has fallen into a far-right orbit, and it may play well in certain parts of Orange County,” said Hayden. “But I think most people believe that the purpose of this country and the purpose for which wars are fought is to preserve democracy, including the right of people to serve in office if a majority of people elect them.

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

Hayden said he is confident he will survive Ferguson’s attack, which he called legally groundless. The suggestion that he was a traitor during the Vietnam War is “totally outrageous,” he said.

If Ferguson’s attempt to unseat him gives him new opportunity to debate the merits of the Vietnam War, Hayden, 45, said he welcomes it.

Although he has shed his image as a radical war protester, Hayden remains just as convinced today as ever that the Vietnam War was “an illegal, immoral, irrational waste of our country’s resources.”

Hayden said he could have easily supported a resolution honoring Vietnam War veterans had it not been worded to contend that the war itself was just and noble.

“(Ferguson) tried to sneak through a resolution defining Vietnam as a noble war,” said Hayden. “That’s a buzz word for all the retired Rambos . . . who want to rewrite history.”

Hayden said his differences in the 1960s were with policy makers, not soldiers. And as an assemblyman, he said, he has been more of a supporter of veterans than Ferguson, who this year voted against waiving community college fees for dependents of veterans, against a study on how to increase federal funding for veterans programs in California, against creating programs to assist homeless veterans in urban areas and against an appropriation for a Health Department counseling program for Vietnam veterans.

Ferguson’s resolution, 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.

Hayden was among a handful of Democrats who spoke against it because of the wording. Earlier, some Democratic members of the Rules Committee had tried to delete references in the resolution that they considered objectionable.

Nolan, the Assembly GOP leader, said the caucus has not yet discussed a position in the event that Ferguson goes ahead with his attempt to unseat Hayden. But he said other Assembly Republicans are generally supportive of Ferguson.

“All those issues . . . surfaced when Hayden decided to attack Ferguson’s resolution,” Nolan added.

Most Orange County political observers agree, however, that the battle with Hayden has been a political godsend for Ferguson.

Although he never ran for office before last year, Ferguson got involved in politics and community affairs in Orange County shortly after he retired from the Marine Corps in 1969.

In 1973, he founded CEEED--Californians for an Environment of Excellence, full Employment and a strong Economy through Development.

“It’s a silly acronym for an important movement,” said Ferguson, a former spokesman for the Irvine Co. and a company vice president.

CEEED is based on a belief that government’s zeal to control growth and protect the environment is driving home-ownership out of reach of more and more Americans. Left alone, builders in the free enterprise system would do a much better job of delivering “the American dream,” Ferguson said.