Sumner to Campaign in 40th as Write-in

Hoping to prevent a follower of Lyndon LaRouche from winning his party’s nomination for Congress by default, Bruce W. Sumner, chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party, announced Tuesday that he will be a write-in candidate for the 40th Congressional District seat.

Flanked by U.S. and California flags, the former state assemblyman and retired judge told reporters at the party’s Santa Ana headquarters that he wanted “to give the Democrats of the district a standard bearer who is not an extremist representing an absurd but dangerous philosophy.”

“To espouse seriously that the Queen of England, Henry Kissinger and Walter Mondale are involved in some sort of conspiracy to turn the free world over to the Communists borders on lunacy,” Sumner said in reference to LaRouche theories.

“But when this view is coupled with a well-financed national campaign, all Americans should be concerned,” he said.

In announcing the write-in campaign, Sumner, 61, challenged LaRouche, the Leesburg, Va., writer who is said to have backed several thousand political candidates around the country, to debate him on whether LaRouche followers belong in the Democratic Party. Sumner also denounced LaRouche’s “attempt to take over the Democratic Party which is the antithesis of the beliefs that he (LaRouche) espouses.”

In addition to advancing conspiracy theories about politics, LaRouche candidates have urged the quarantine of AIDS victims, a “laser-beam” defense system and the abolition of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act that was passed to eliminate the federal deficit.

Ted J. Andromidas, a LaRouche spokesman in Los Angeles, said the Orange County Democratic Party was operating “in Disneyland” and understood neither LaRouche’s views nor the voters. Andromidas said he would ask LaRouche about a debate.

County Democrats learned to their embarrassment last week that the only Democrat to file in the 40th Congressional District race against five-term incumbent Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) was Art Hoffmann, 29, a Santa Ana technical writer and LaRouche follower.

If Hoffmann had remained unopposed, he would have become the party’s nominee after the June 3 primary and would have automatically received a seat on the party central committee.

Over the last six years, LaRouche followers have sometimes won seats on the Orange County central committee, but they usually failed to attend meetings and caused few problems.

However, after March 18, when two LaRouche followers scored upset victories for secretary of state and lieutenant governor in the Illinois Democratic primary, Orange County Democrats’ nonchalance about the LaRouche candidates turned to alarm.

Other LaRouche Followers

Three other LaRouche followers are seeking state Assembly seats in Orange County and 10 are running for the party’s central committee. All but Hoffmann have Democratic opponents. (According to Andromidas, from 100 to 150 LaRouche followers will be on the ballot in Southern California this June.)

In failing to get a mainstream Democrat to file for the 40th seat, “the whole district was asleep at the wheel,” John Hanna, a Democrat activist, said Tuesday.

At a county Democratic convention last weekend, such old-line activists as rancher Richard J. O’Neill and consultant Howard Adler drafted Sumner as the party’s alternative to Hoffmann.

Five other Democrats also volunteered to run, Sumner said. But with 24 years in public service and 30 years living in a district that stretches from San Juan Capistrano to Newport Beach, Sumner was the best-known candidate. Besides, Sumner said, “I feel a real responsibility to run for the job, especially as chairman of the Democratic Party.”

Meanwhile Tuesday, Hoffmann called the write-in effort another case of mainstream Democrats “shooting themselves in the foot.”

Lost the Race

Two years ago when Democrats ran a write-in candidate against a LaRouche Democrat in Ohio, they lost the race to a Republican, Hoffmann said.

Hoffmann denied that his campaign would be generously funded by the LaRouche organization and estimated that he would spend only about $5,000. He said he will rely on support from friends and his own visits to “defense plants” such as the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station to “shake hands with the Democrats.”

Sumner said he will spend between $25,000 and $50,000 and will use mailers, some paid ads and volunteers.

Write-in campaigns like the one Sumner envisions are notoriously difficult. A candidate has to educate voters first to write his name in on the ballot and then to vote for that name, Sumner said.

But aside from wanting to beat Hoffmann in the primary, Sumner made it clear he would want to see the race through to November. In a district that is 57% Republican, 31% Democrat, five-term incumbent Badham has been invincible for years.

Challenge to Badham

But two weeks ago, Badham got a “very credible” challenge by an Air Force Academy graduate and a past president of Young Republicans, Sumner said, and “that can’t do anything but help my contest in November.”

A Newport Beach resident, Sumner is a partner in the law firm of Wyman, Bautzer, Rothman, Kuchel & Silbert. From 1957 to 1964, he served as a state assemblyman from Laguna Beach but dropped out of politics for a time after he was defeated in 1964 in a bitter Republican primary for the state Senate by John Birch Society member John G. Schmitz.

Sumner also served 18 years as a Superior Court judge, retiring from the bench in 1984. Originally a moderate Republican from Minnesota, Sumner in 1971 became a moderate Democrat, in part because of his brutal contest with Schmitz.

Sumner continues an active law practice as an arbitrator and pension trustee, serves on the board of KOCE-TV in Huntington Beach and competes in masters’ swimming meets.

The suddenness of his candidacy for Congress appeared to surprise even Sumner on Tuesday. “A week ago I had no idea I would be sitting here today doing what I am about to do,” the retired judge said as his news conference began.

But he said he felt he should run against Hoffmann because Hoffmann’s candidacy represents a “fundamental problem (for the Democratic Party). This is not someone who bought the election. It’s someone whose philosophy is totally alien to the party.”