In Spotlight After Illinois Victories : LaRouche: Cult Figure or Serious Political Leader?

His name is Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. But his political career has taken so many twists that--depending on whether you ask him or his critics--it could be LaRoosevelt, LaMarx, LaHitler, LaWallace or LaLincoln.

Until recently, hardly anyone recognized his name at all. The balding, bespectacled former Marxist theoretician, supported by a cult-like political organization, had taken three well-financed runs at the presidency but had drawn less than 1% of the vote in the general elections. And although LaRouche-sponsored candidates have run in thousands of elections across the country, they had won only a few minor public offices.

That anonymity ended with a bang last month. In the Illinois primary, LaRouche candidates stunned mainstream politicians by winning the Democratic nominations for the second- and third-highest offices on the ballot--lieutenant governor and secretary of state.

In dismay, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Adlai E. Stevenson III retired from the Democratic ticket last week rather than run with the LaRouche candidates after blasting LaRouche as a “neo-Nazi, a bizarre and dangerous extremist who espouses hate-filled folly.”

In the Illinois campaign, LaRouche’s candidates kept a low profile and apparently benefited from the fact that few voters knew what they stood for. Now, however, with large numbers of his candidates identified on primary ballots across the nation--including 24 in California--LaRouche’s record is under intense scrutiny.

It is a record, critics charge, that includes conducting anti-Semitic smears, harassing his opponents and fraudulent fund-raising.

LaRouche spouts improbable conspiracy theories--that the Queen of England heads “a gang . . . pushing drugs,” for example--and has labeled former Vice President Walter F. Mondale and former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger as “Soviet agents of influence.”

He is the subject of a string of federal and state investigations involving allegations of campaign irregularities, tax law violations and credit card fraud.

Called Anti-Semitic

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith quotes LaRouche as defining Zionism as “the state of collective psychosis through which London manipulates most of the international Jewry” and as labeling the ADL as “Britain’s Zionist Gestapo.” The ADL’s interpretation of these remarks as “anti-Semitic” was confirmed by a New York judge in a libel suit brought against the group by LaRouche.

Some of LaRouche’s views are closer to the mainstream. As he prepares for yet another presidential candidacy in 1988, he boasts that his triumph in Illinois demonstrated that a “forgotten majority” of distressed farmers, unemployed steel workers, disadvantaged blacks, “scientifically oriented professionals” and others will deliver his followers many more victories.

Such voters, he says, “look to me as the guy who’s going to stick it to ‘em in Washington in a manner not much different from the Wallace phenomenon some years ago,” a reference to Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace’s four anti-Establishment campaigns for President.

But LaRouche has a long way to go before he can establish himself in Wallace’s tradition. A University of North Carolina historian, William E. Leuchtenburg, said LaRouche reminds him not so much of Wallace or such earlier populist political leaders as Huey Long and the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin as of Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society.

‘Freaky Circumstance’

“I think all of the others in different ways reflected some kind of folk sentiment,” Leuchtenburg said. “I don’t see that LaRouche has tapped into any mass movement. I think the Illinois results were a kind of freaky circumstance.”

A Harvard historian, Alan Brinkley, arguing that LaRouche has little popular following despite his populist rhetoric, likened him to the Rev. Jim Jones, who led the mass suicide of his cult followers in Guyana in 1978. “The LaRouchies,” Brinkley said, “are looking for a way to submerge themselves in an experience that will take care of them, explain everything for them, give them a sense of purpose and direction.”

LaRouche claims to represent a political lineage far different from Welch or Jones. Insisting that his proposed banking and currency reforms are patterned after a program of Abraham Lincoln, he told a recent Washington press conference: “If Abe Lincoln were alive, he’d probably be standing up here with me today.”

He also frequently invokes the name of Franklin D. Roosevelt. F.D.R.’s war mobilization program, LaRouche says, is the model for his own sweeping plan to rescue distressed farmers, depressed heavy industries and out-of-work blacks.

Massive Tax Breaks

LaRouche, who calls himself “the leading economist” and “one of the most voluminous writers” of the 20th Century, advocates funneling massive tax breaks and low-interest loans to needy industries such as steel. Heavy government spending--and a resurrected Civilian Conservation Corps--would repair deteriorating waterways, roads and utilities.

Some of this resembles the economic revitalization programs of Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) and Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee A. Iacocca. And LaRouche’s call for linking national currencies to gold is echoed by another presidential prospect, Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.).

LaRouche’s ability to establish himself as a credible political figure will be put to the test in the next five weeks, when large slates of his candidates face the voters in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and California. All told, LaRouche’s cleverly named National Democratic Policy Committee--which has no connection with the Democratic National Committee--is fielding 750 candidates for federal and state offices. To the distress of the Democratic Party, most of them have filed as Democrats.

‘A Kind of Fluke’

Most observers would be surprised if LaRouche can repeat his Illinois triumph anywhere else. “Maybe some people in Illinois were fooled by the vaguely populist rhetoric,” Harvard’s Brinkley said. “My guess is that Illinois was a kind of fluke that will not be repeated.”

Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr. was born into a dissident Quaker family in Rochester, N.H., 64 years ago. A graduate of Northeastern University, he was initially a conscientious objector during World War II but changed his mind and served in the Army in a noncombatant role.

In 1949, he joined the Socialist Workers Party and adopted the name “Lyn Marcus,” from Lenin and Marx, according to the Heritage Foundation. He left the party in 1957 but remained active in communist circles while working as a management consultant and systems analyst. In the 1960s he was a faculty member at several Marxist “alternative schools” and organized a faction of the Students for a Democratic Society that helped lead the Columbia University student strike.

Spreading onto campuses nationwide, this violence-prone faction, known as the National Caucus of Labor Committees, made a sharp swing in 1974 and established ties with the Ku Klux Klan and the Liberty Lobby, an ultraconservative Washington-based group. The National Caucus of Labor Committees now supports such causes as nuclear power and President Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense plan.

Conservatives Bristled

But traditional political conservatives bristled when some news reports after LaRouche’s triumph in Illinois described him as a conservative.

“This is an outrage,” said Paul Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation. “These anti-Semites, these people whose real platform is in my view anti-American, have no place in American politics.”

The conservative Heritage Foundation assailed LaRouche as “a self-proclaimed communist who once called himself ‘the American Lenin,’ who helped found the violence-prone U.S. Labor Party and who leads what may well be one of the strangest political groups in American history.”

Both the Anti-Defamation League and Heritage Foundation reports suggested that the LaRouche group maintains pro-Soviet positions that are cloaked in conservative rhetoric. For example, the ADL said LaRouche was “basically opposed” to the Solidarity union’s struggle against the Soviet-dominated Polish government.

‘Public Enemy No. 1’

But LaRouche, saying that the Soviets have targeted him for assassination, calls himself their “international public enemy No. 1.”

The Anti-Defamation League, in a 1982 report soon to be updated, also said that “the LaRouche operation has been characterized since 1978 by continuous emanations of anti-Semitism. Its publications single out prominent Jews, Jewish families and Jewish organizations for special abuse.

“He has written,” the ADL said of LaRouche, “that prominent Jewish families were instrumental in bringing Hitler to power and that ‘the “Holocaust” thesis’ is one of the ‘hoaxes’ produced by ‘the Zionist demagogue.’ ”

LaRouche, who contends that he is anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic, once sued the ADL over such charges. A New York state Supreme Court justice dismissed the suit, ruling that the facts in the case “reasonably give rise” to the ADL’s characterization of the LaRouche group.

Attacks on Blacks

A New York free-lance journalist, Dennis King, who has written extensively on LaRouche, has documented verbal attacks on blacks, Chinese, Britons and Jews. Citing articles authored by LaRouche, King wrote:

“The LaRouchians, carrying their doctrine to wilder limits even than traditional Hitlerism, claim that the ‘British’ have evolved through moral depravity and inbreeding into a separate species outside the human race (‘the Zionist-British organism’).

“The Chinese, LaRouche says, are a ‘paranoid’ people who share, with ‘lower forms of animal life,’ a ‘fundamental distinction from actual human personalities.’ American blacks who insist on equal rights, he says, are obsessed with ‘zoological specifications of micro-constituencies’ self-interests’ and with ‘distinctions . . . which would be proper to the classification of varieties of monkeys and baboons.’ ”

A LaRouche spokesman, Dana Scanlon, said LaRouche would talk with a Times reporter about these views only on condition that the interview be published in its entirety. But when queried recently on CBS-TV’s “Nightwatch” about some of his previous comments, LaRouche asserted that they were taken out of context.

“I have been fighting anti-Semitism and any other kind of racism all my life,” he said.

LaRouche Adherents

Although LaRouche claims “tens of thousands” of adherents, former associates said hard-core supporters, operating out of offices both in the United States and abroad, number fewer than 1,000.

LaRouche and his associates have developed issues aimed at capturing large chunks of the Democratic Party’s traditional base. They are going after the dispossessed and the disenchanted, analysts say, and are likely to achieve their best results by running in low-visibility races in economically precarious areas.

“The first thing that most people know about the LaRouche candidates,” said Michael McKeon, a pollster based in Joliet, Ill., “is that they want to execute drug dealers, quarantine AIDS victims and give farmers back their land. Some of it may sound goofy. But put an M-16 on (Illinois secretary of state nominee) Janice Hart’s shoulder and give her a headband and she’s Rambo. There’s a culture out there that’s saying that stuff.”

LaRouche moved his organization’s headquarters and several hundred supporters last year from New York to Leesburg, Va., 27 miles west of Washington. Located there are not only the $1.3-million, heavily guarded estate where LaRouche lives but also a newspaper office, a radio station, a printing plant and a typesetting firm.

Considerable Sway

LaRouche has considerable sway over the lives of the members of his organization, according to Washington Post interviews with former members. They described the group as more of a political cult than a political party, a view LaRouche has dismissed as “garbage.”

Many critics, including those who have written about LaRouche, contend that they have been harassed by his followers. In 1984, NBC-TV was awarded $200,000 in a suit alleging that LaRouche followers tried to sabotage a scheduled interview with a senator by impersonating network reporters and a Senate aide.

The same jury rejected a $150-million suit against NBC in which LaRouche said the network had libeled him in broadcasts charging his associates had tried to intimidate reporters. LaRouche, claiming that he has no income and is unable to pay the judgment, last week called the judge in the case “a liar” and “a crook.”

Much about the organization’s funding is a mystery. Based on interviews with former associates, King, the free-lance journalist, estimated that more than $30 million drops into the organization’s coffers each year. Sales of the group’s literature and intelligence-gathering for corporations and individuals apparently produce large sums.

Federal Matching Funds

Three political committees raised about $717,000 from contributors last year but reported nearly $1.8 million in outstanding debts, mostly in the form of loans from contributors. LaRouche’s 1984 presidential campaign received $494,000 in federal matching funds.

Despite federal and state investigations of alleged campaign irregularities, tax law violations and credit card fraud, no criminal charges have been filed to date against LaRouche organizations, and LaRouche has assailed the probes as “all politics . . . a fraud.” But numerous contempt citations have been issued against LaRouche organizations for failure to answer subpoenas and pay millions of dollars in fines.

A federal grand jury in Boston is investigating what prosecutors call “a massive pattern of credit card fraud.” Prosecutors said they received hundreds of complaints that the LaRouche organization made unauthorized use of the credit cards of persons who had contributed to various LaRouche-related concerns. They said the complaints totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Condition Not Met

Federal Election Commission files from 1985 show complaints from numerous people who agreed to use their credit cards to lend money to LaRouche’s campaign on the condition--later left unfulfilled--that they would be repaid in three months. Other charges held that the LaRouche organization unilaterally increased the amounts of some loans and that it converted $15 to $25 charges for magazine subscriptions into $500 or $1,000.

Mel Klenetsky, LaRouche’s director of political operations, attributed the charges to disgruntled spouses.

“Often someone’s wife found out” about a loan “and gave them a hard time,” Klenetsky said. “Anybody who wanted a charge back on their credit card, we met it to the fullest.”

Times staff writers Robert L. Jackson and Ronald J. Ostrow also contributed to this story.

LaROUCHE CANDIDATES IN CALIFORNIA

Twenty-four candidates affiliated with the LaRouche organization are running for federal and state offices in the California primary elections June 3. Nineteen are running as Democrats, five as Republicans. The list was provided by state Democratic chairman Betty Smith and confirmed by Brian Lantz, LaRouche’s Northern California coordinator.

Larouche Candidate (District) Running as U.S. SENATE 1.Brian Lantz Democrat U.S. HOUSE 2.Andrew Klein (5) Democrat 3.Jim Legare (6) Democrat 4.Ruth Williams (8) Democrat 5.Evelyn Lantz (9) Democrat 6.Arthur Dunn (16) Democrat 7.Dorothy Andromidas (25) Democrat 8.Alvin Froehlich (27) Republican 9.Joe Alcoset (28) Democrat 10.George Trivich (30) Democrat 11.Kevin Zondervan (31) Democrat 12.Margaret Thrasher (32) Democrat 13.Paul Jeffrey (33) Democrat 14.Maureen Pike (39) Democrat 15.Art Hoffman (40) Democrat 16.Alex Maruniak (41) Democrat 17.George Hollis (45) Democrat CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY 18.David Bain (6) Republican 19.Mary Emily Linter (12) Democrat 20.Wayne Lorentz (24) Republican 21.Lou Steeg (43) Republican 22.Henry Gamboa (56) Republican 23.Ruth Stephenson (63) Democrat 24. Marion Hundley (67) Democrat

Larouche Candidate (District) Incumbent U.S. SENATE 1.Brian Lantz Alan Cranston, D U.S. HOUSE 2.Andrew Klein (5) Sala Burton, D-San Francisco 3.Jim Legare (6) Barbara Boxer, D-Greenbrae 4.Ruth Williams (8) Ron Dellums, D-Oakland 5.Evelyn Lantz (9) Fortney H. (Pete) Stark, D-Oakland 6.Arthur Dunn (16) Leon E. Panetta, D-Monterey 7.Dorothy Andromidas (25) Edward R. Roybal, D-Los Angeles 8.Alvin Froehlich (27) Mel Levine, D-Santa Monica 9.Joe Alcoset (28) Julian C. Dixon, D-Culver City 10.George Trivich (30) Matthew G. Martinez, D-Monterey Park 11.Kevin Zondervan (31) Mervyn Dymally, D-Compton 12.Margaret Thrasher (32) Glenn M. Anderson, D-Hawthorne 13.Paul Jeffrey (33) David Dreier, R-LaVerne 14.Maureen Pike (39) William E. Dannemeyer, R-Fullerton 15.Art Hoffman (40) Robert E. Badham, R-Newport Beach 16.Alex Maruniak (41) Bill Lowery, R-San Diego 17.George Hollis (45) Duncan Hunter, R-Coronado CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY 18.David Bain (6) Lloyd G. Connelly, D-Sacramento 19.Mary Emily Linter (12) Tom Bates, D-Oakland 20.Wayne Lorentz (24) Dominic L. Cortese, D-San Jose 21.Lou Steeg (43) Open seat, Los Angeles 22.Henry Gamboa (56) Gloria Molina, D-Los Angeles 23.Ruth Stephenson (63) Wayne Grisham, R-Norwalk 24. Marion Hundley (67) John R. Lewis, R-Orange