Candidate’s Ties to Est Loom as Issue in Congressional Race

From his headquarters in San Francisco this March, est founder Werner Erhard was beaming one of his Saturday seminars by satellite to 4,000 students gathered in “area centers” from Los Angeles to New York.

The topic was “The Decisive Edge of the Business of Living,” a seminar on leadership, power and achievement. But Erhard, nee Jack Rosenberg, the leader of the “human potential” movement of the ‘70s, diverged from his subject a moment to discuss a personal issue: his brother Nathan Rosenberg’s candidacy for Congress.

“A lot of people have asked me questions about my brother Nathan running for Congress,” a transcript of the address shows Erhard as saying. “ . . . I could not personally be more proud of who my brother is. As a private citizen and as a member of Nathan’s family, he has my support and my best wishes for winning the race that he’s in.

“By the same token, as a public figure, it has always been my policy to stay out of politics, and to keep the organization with which I’m associated out of politics. It will be my policy to do so with regard to Nathan’s candidacy, and if he’s elected with regard to his conduct of the office he holds. . . .”

Address, Phone Number

But for viewers who had “questions” about Rosenberg’s candidacy for the 40th Congressional District, Erhard ended by supplying Rosenberg’s phone number and Newport Beach address.

Like his brother, Nathan Rosenberg insists that the Erhard personal effectiveness movement is apolitical and won’t affect his campaign.

But the television appeal resulted in donations from Erhard followers to the 33-year-old management consultant’s campaign. These contributions, the Los Angeles Times learned, were only some of the connections between Rosenberg’s congressional campaign and Werner Erhard and his organization.

Rosenberg also acknowledged that he has served in several key leadership positions as a volunteer in his brother’s organization.

It was news in Orange County in early March when Rosenberg, a former president of Young Republicans, defied the Republican leadership and took out papers to run against Rep. Robert E. Badham, 56, (R-Newport Beach) a five-term incumbent representing a district that includes Santa Ana and Laguna Beach.

But because of Rosenberg’s apparent links to the Erhard organization, Badham over the last two weeks has claimed that his challenger’s candidacy is news of a stranger sort--that Rosenberg is a “front” for Werner Erhard & Associates and that his campaign is relying on a hidden network of est graduates and those who have taken Erhard’s new program, The Forum, for campaign contributions, precinct walkers and a manager.

Claiming that the est techniques once used by Erhard have included “brainwashing,” Badham calls Rosenberg’s campaign “scary. . . . His ties are terribly close to Erhard.”

The motives for Erhard to promote a candidate are not entirely clear, Badham said, but “I would imagine that would be the outreach for power, the tenets to the est program: to create a different world by mind revolution. And that is ominous in scope.”

Nothing Sinister

Both Rosenberg and spokesmen for Werner Erhard & Associates say there is nothing sinister about the campaign.

And they vociferously deny that Erhard or any organization he helped start are behind it.

Badham’s charges “smack of McCarthyism, Rosenberg said last week. “There is no connection between my brother and his organization and this campaign.”

Far from using “brainwashing techniques,” The Forum, and est before it, use a method of inquiry to enhance personal initiative, sense of responsibility and general effectiveness, Rosenberg said. “It’s really a very middle-class--kind of a mom, apple pie--kind of thing.”

Certainly some of those who watched Erhard on closed-circuit television saw it that way. Philip H. Brooks, a retired psychiatric technician from Riverside, saw the satellite broadcast at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, discussed Rosenberg’s candidacy with a friend and mailed Rosenberg a check for $60.

“I have been impressed with the training, with Werner’s work for a long time. It’s altered the consciousness of not only individual people but also the country,” Brooks said. “I think Congress could use someone who’s been through that type of training. It would be a great asset.”

Wrote $100 Check

In Miami, attorney Bernard Marcus, a friend of Rosenberg’s from seminars they had led together for eight or nine years, also saw the broadcast and wrote Rosenberg a $100 check.

“It was not a solicitation,” Marcus said of Erhard’s announcement. But “I have an idea how these things work. I didn’t wait. I just sent him a check.”

To many of Rosenberg’s contributors, those who met the candidate and were impressed by his leadership ability in seminars over the last few years, the Erhard movement is a means of improving one’s self and community. Begun in 1971, est--for Erhard Seminars Training--was a psychological training course that mixed Scientology, Zen and Erhard’s own ideas to promise a positive personality transformation.

Since then, Werner Erhard & Associates claims that 550,000 people have taken est training or The Forum, Erhard’s new self-improvement inquiry that replaced est in January, 1985. The original training became controversial in part as Erhard developed a reputation as a cult figure. Also, some psychiatrists claimed that the rigorous est sessions, in which participants were often subjected to verbal taunts, made a small number of est graduates psychotic.

Not as Harsh

Erhard’s new program is not as harsh as est, said executive vice president Dr. Jack Mantos, a spokesman for Erhard.

But any claims that est used “brainwashing” or caused psychoses are “absurd,” Mantos said Friday. He said that est dealt with a high volume of people, about 1,000 a week, so occasional problems might be expected. “People flip out in grocery stores, (too),” Mantos said.

There was no need for concern that many est or Forum graduates were contributing to Rosenberg’s campaign, Mantos and Rosenberg said. Rosenberg has taken the courses or been a volunteer seminar director for those contributors, and so has “a lot of friends,” they said.

Sharon Spaulding, Erhard’s public information director, said Erhard would not be available to comment on Rosenberg’s campaign.

But speaking in his stead, Mantos said Erhard “may be thrilled privately (about Rosenberg’s candidacy) but publicly he has not taken any stand on the matter and will not allow those (corporate) resources to be used” for the campaign. The satellite broadcast was made to clear up confusion about Erhard’s stance, Mantos said, not to solicit money. And if former est or Forum graduates are contributing to Rosenberg, “I don’t see anything nefarious about it.”

“If it becomes clear that at any point Nathan or any political candidate is subverting or using those kinds of resources, then maybe we’ll put a stop to it,” Mantos said. “But at this point, it’s purely coincidental that a lot of Nathan’s friends have also done our programs. I am very clear that there is no corporate thrust, no corporate intent to support Nathan or any other candidate.”

Off to Fast Start

For a novice campaigner, Rosenberg has gotten off to a fast start. Just a few weeks after he filed for Congress on March 7, his campaign included a nationally known polling firm in Texas, an attractive headquarters in Corona del Mar and more than 200 volunteers.

Said one Badham supporter, a member of the Republican Party’s influential Lincoln Club and an avowed Rosenberg foe, “He’s like a skyrocket. He comes out of nowhere and bang-o, all of a sudden he’s highly organized.”

But other leading Republicans have signed on to Rosenberg’s campaign--among them builder William Lyon, Knott’s Berry Farm’s Marion Knott Montapert and another Lincoln Club member and early Rosenberg supporter, Gus Owen. The county needs an alternative to Badham, Owen said, and any est connection is “a little thing,” compared to what he described as Badham’s record of doing nothing, missing votes and taking junkets.

However, Rosenberg’s campaign is linked in a number of ways to the Erhard organization:

- Another Erhard brother, Harry Rosenberg, 36, is on leave from Werner Erhard & Associates, where he is in charge of Erhard’s national seminar program, to serve as Nathan Rosenberg’s campaign manager. Harry Rosenberg is receiving vacation pay but will not receive his salary while working for the campaign, Mantos said.

- “About 25%” of the 200 volunteers in Rosenberg’s campaign come from est or Forum programs where they met the candidate, Harry Rosenberg acknowledged.

- Almost 43% of the $39,551 that Nathan Rosenberg received in campaign contributions by March 31 came from executives of the Erhard association or people Rosenberg met through Erhard-related seminars or projects. The information came first from the campaign report filed with the Federal Elections Commission, and was explained by Harry Rosenberg.

Of the total, $8,583 came from 32 employees of Warner Erhard & Associates, including $1,000 each from Erhard, chief executive officer A. Stewart Esposito and three other executives of the organization, according to the FEC report. Another $8,355 came from 32 volunteer seminar directors, seminar participants and one manager of The Hunger Project, a worldwide organization Erhard helped found to end hunger, Harry Rosenberg said.

Letter from Graduate

One $100 contributor, Judy Land, president of a Carlsbad development firm called the Land Co., explained why she and other friends had contributed to a political candidate outside their district. Land said she knew Rosenberg from a 1979 program they attended together and had heard about his campaign in a letter from an Erhard graduate.

“Half a million people have done the est training--successful, healthy people,” she said. “It’s like we all have a network of people.”

Because Rosenberg was a committed leader in the Erhard network, “even his running is a treat,” she said. But the Erhard-trained candidate should not be viewed with alarm, she said. The goal was simply “better politicians. . . . This is the goal, the network bringing a world that works for everyone.”

Rosenberg initially downplayed his involvement with his brother’s personal effectiveness organization.

At an early campaign press conference on March 25, Rosenberg acknowledged that Erhard was his brother, that he expected to be receiving about $5,000 in contributions from Erhard executives and that Harry Rosenberg would take a leave of absence to be campaign manager.

When asked at that time about his own involvement with Werner Erhard & Associates, Rosenberg said only that he “did the est training and The Forum. I did The Forum one year ago.”

Ties Not Mentioned

The resume he handed out that day details his church membership (Episcopal) his membership in Republican and real estate organizations, his service in the Navy as an aviator and on the support staff for the secretary of Defense. Nowhere does the resume mention any participation in Werner Erhard & Associates.

But after interviews with officials from Erhard-related projects, Rosenberg’s campaign contributors and Rosenberg business associates, Rosenberg confirmed the following list of volunteer roles in Erhard’s organization:

- National chairman for some 300 Erhard “seminar directors” from about September, 1984, to September, 1985. During this time, Rosenberg inspected the quality of seminars around the country, traveling once to New York, Florida and Texas, he said.

- Volunteer “seminar director” for at least six years, first with est and now with The Forum. About one week ago, Rosenberg finished leading a “seminar on excellence” before 250 enrollees at Erhard’s Newport Beach Area Center.

- Volunteer fund-raiser for The Hunger Project.

Rosenberg said he has raised about $1 million over several years for the Hunger Project. He also led contribution meetings and weekend training sessions on the facts of hunger, said Lynn Twist, managing director of The Hunger Project in the U.S., and his wife has traveled to Costa Rica with the project as a volunteer.

As “a very high-level volunteer” and “major contributor” to The Hunger Project, Rosenberg also has personally contributed about $10,000 to the project, Twist said.

Rosenberg met Fernando Flores, consultant general for Costa Rica and now based in Los Angeles, through The Hunger Project, Flores said, in Costa Rica in 1981. Rosenberg used his connection with Flores to help arrange a three-day “fact-finding trip” April 10 to 12 in Costa Rica and Nicaragua to discuss the issue of aiding the contras .

- Volunteer fund-raiser for the Breakthrough Foundation, a San Francisco project founded by Erhard, aimed at helping juvenile delinquents.

Asked why he did not disclose the extent of his activity with Erhard groups at the outset of the campaign, Rosenberg argued that it was not relevant.

On his resume, “I didn’t list involvement with the Episcopal Church either. And I also didn’t say I was an acolyte . . . or in naval justice school or decorated twice,” he said angrily.

‘Tarred’ With Politics

“Rather than trying to downplay it or up-play it, when I decided to run, I realized I would be subjecting my family to a certain amount of scrutiny. I’ve got a brother who is a controversial figure,” Rosenberg said. But just as he did not expect his brother to be “tarred” with his politics, he did not expect his campaign to be harmed by misconceptions about his brother’s seminars, he said.

Rosenberg, who took his first Erhard seminar in 1974 out of curiosity, said the training helps one be “more excited” about life and more cognizant of “what kind of a person is a human being, what kind of being (he) is.”

But it is essentially apolitical, he said. “My political philosophy has not changed at all,” because of the Erhard training, Rosenberg said, except perhaps that he is more confident and “looks more deeply into things” than he would otherwise. Rosenberg said he had recently begun a self-improvement program for himself that meant reading the documents on which democracy was based including Plato’s “Republic” and the writings of the Founding Fathers.

Any claim by Badham that his campaign was an Erhard campaign was “insane and crazy,” Rosenberg said. “People got a lot of weird notions about what the est training was,” Rosenberg said. . . . “It’s now kind of middle-class, ordinary.” Rosenberg said he was only running because “this is my home, and my county is not being served.”

‘People got a lot of weird notions about what the est training was. . . . It’s now kind of middle-class, ordinary.’

--Nathan Rosenberg