WEEK IN REVIEW : MAJOR EVENT, IMAGES AND POEPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS. : Democrats Counter Bid by LaRouche Follower

The 40th Congressional District along Orange County’s southern coast, home of five-term Republican incumbent Robert E. Badham, is considered one of the safest Republican districts around. For Democratic candidates, it has been more burial ground than launching pad.

But no less than the chairman of the county Democratic Party, former Assemblyman and former Superior Court Judge Bruce W. Sumner, is eager to run there--so eager that he has launched a low-percentage write-in campaign.

“A week ago I had no idea I would be sitting here today doing what I am about to do,” he told a news conference.

What made up his mind was the realization by him and other party leaders that in the 40th District the only Democrat on the primary ballot is Art Hoffmann, 29, a follower of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche.

LaRouche, a writer in Virginia, has espoused quarantining AIDS victims and has insisted that certain leaders in the West are conspiring to betray the free world. Local politicians considered La-Rouche and the candidates he supported to be insignificant--until LaRouche candidates won Democratic nominations for lieutenant governor and secretary of state in Illinois earlier this month.

“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, referring to some La-Rouche writings.

He said he was running “to give the Democrats of the district a standard bearer who is not an extremist representing an absurd but dangerous philosophy.”