Consultant Rebuffs GOP Regulars, Plans ‘Fun’ Race Against Badham

Contending that he would not let the bosses and “stuffed shirts” of the Republican Party talk him out of the race, a management consultant said Thursday that he is still planning a “fun” campaign to defeat five-term Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) this June.

At a press conference in the living room of his Newport Beach home, Nathan Rosenberg, 33, talked about his 11-day-old campaign, which so far involves $25,000 in contributions, a list of 200 volunteers, a newly leased headquarters in Corona del Mar and a lot of help from his family.

“I’m not looking to the bosses to provide support for this,” Rosenberg said. Indeed, after party regulars learned he had filed against Badham, Rosenberg said he received phone calls “every 10 minutes” from Republican central committee members and several legislators asking him to quit the race. County GOP Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes also pleaded with Rosenberg not to waste party money by creating a contested primary.

Putting Job on Hold

But after consulting 150 friends, Rosenberg said Thursday that he was resigning as president of the Young Republicans and putting his $200-an-hour management consulting job on hold. He was staying in the race, Rosenberg said, and if that meant criticizing a fellow Republican, so be it.

“I think this ‘11th Commandment’ stuff is for stuffed shirts,” Rosenberg said, referring to the Republican credo “Thou shall not speak ill of thy fellow Republican.”

The challenger said he shared Badham’s conservative philosophy, liked Badham’s voting record and thought Badham was “a nice guy.” Other than that, Badham was a tired politician who was simply being carried along “in the river of politics” and should be replaced, Rosenberg said.

“Let’s get the guy out of there. He is done,” Rosenberg said.

“Mr. Badham’s out of touch with the people in the district. He’s not listening to them. He’s more in touch with the people in Tahiti or in Paris than the people in Irvine, Tustin, Laguna Beach, the cities that make up the district.”

(Last month, Badham was named the House of Representatives’ second-ranked “frequent flier” for making eight trips to 17 countries at taxpayer expense in a 21-month period ending last September, according to the public interest group Congress Watch.)

Attendance Record Attacked

Rosenberg also attacked Badham’s attendance on the floor of the House. Although he could cite no specifics about Badham’s attendance record, “we know that it’s bad,” Rosenberg said.

Badham late Thursday said he had voted at 85% of all roll-call votes last year. His record would have been better if his wife had not had surgery during the session, Badham said. As for travel, the 40th District congressman has repeatedly defended his trips abroad as a necessary part of his work as a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the North Atlantic Assembly, a division of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Badham said he was taking Rosenberg’s challenge seriously, but that “we’ve had this kind of thing before--and we’ve had a pretty good batting record.” Badham has been reelected by substantial margins since he was first elected to the House in 1976.

For this campaign, Badham said he has received personal letters of support from President Reagan and Vice President George Bush. He also cited financial pledges from Reagan’s political action committee, from Bush’s political action committee, from the Republican Congressional Committee and from the California Congressional Delegation.

‘Costly and Wasteful’

If Badham was taking Rosenberg’s candidacy in stride, party Chairman Fuentes was not. “All our reasoning appears to have fallen on deaf ears,” he said Thursday. “This is a costly and wasteful expenditure of Republican dollars. We have another agenda: election of more Republicans, not battles in the primary.”

Rosenberg offered a different perspective. The Air Force Academy graduate, who said the last post he ran for was high school class president, admitted that his campaign would be “up hill all the way.” Last week, Rosenberg said he would need about $500,000 to wage a primary battle against Badham, but on Thursday he said he has raised just $25,000 and has another $40,000 in pledges.

Still, he said, “this thing is going to be fun. Look, when you have a party, you don’t invite people to come and be somber. You have a party where everybody wants to play. We’re going to have a lot of fun.”

He plans to walk the entire congressional district and send mailers. His staff will coordinate campaign fund-raising parties, but volunteers are encouraged to create events on their own, Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg emphasized that this would not be a professional campaign. His campaign manager is his brother Harry, 36, an executive on leave of absence from Werner Erhard and Associates, a San Francisco firm that runs “personal effectiveness” seminars. (Erhard, originator of est training, is the Rosenbergs’ oldest brother and he and several of his firm’s executives contributed $5,000 to Rosenberg. Erhard will not be involved in the campaign in any other way, Nathan Rosenberg said.)

Asked about his campaign experience, Harry Rosenberg said that it was “zero, nothing.”

As the press conference ended, Nathan Rosenberg’s wife, Claire, told a story that, she said, conveyed an image of her husband’s campaign. Two weeks ago, as she gathered signatures on Nathan’s nominating papers at the supermarket, she said she frequently had to explain to people how to register to vote.

“I said, you know, this is going to be razzle-dazzle all the way through.”