California Elections : Opponents Target Rep. Dymally From Reagan’s Ramparts

Democrat Mervyn M. Dymally would seem to have little to worry about in his campaign for a fourth term in Congress.

Generally considered a shrewd operator who knows how to keep his political ducks in a row, Dymally, at 60, faces a field of political unknowns in this year’s elections. He can, if necessary, flex his muscle as the incumbent and likely winner to nudge local leaders into line and raise whatever cash is needed to swamp his challengers.

The 31st Congressional District, one of the most heavily Democratic in the state, also tends to give a routine nod to party incumbents, and Dymally--who held a string of statewide offices before his first trip to Congress in 1980--can call on any support he needs from fellow Democrats throughout California.

But his opponents say they may have some surprises for the veteran officeholder on his intended romp to another term.

Kevin Zondervan, a Lyndon LaRouche follower and aerospace engineer, said he expects a repeat here of the upset achieved by the Democratic splinter group in Illinois’ March primary.

And if Dymally defeats Zondervan in the June 3 primary, one of three Republican challengers and a Peace and Freedom Party candidate will be lying in wait at the November election.

A key theme among the Republican hopefuls is that Dymally’s steadfast opposition to President Reagan’s policies runs counter to a rising tide of patriotism. The voters, the outnumbered Republicans contend, also have lost faith in Dymally’s efforts to deal with continuing economic and social problems in some areas of the district.

The district covers all or parts of Hawthorne, Gardena, Carson, Compton, Lynwood, Paramount and Bellflower and includes a piece of Los Angeles and a tiny section of North Long Beach. Its diverse population of about 550,000 is 31% black, 21% Latino and 8% Asian.

In an interview, Dymally, who served as California’s lieutenant governor until his defeat for reelection in 1978, said he had heard the fighting calls of his challengers in two previous congressional campaigns and still breezed to victory. He received about 71% of the vote in both general elections.

At the same time, Dymally said he is not taking any chances that LaRouche lightning might strike his constituents.

“We’re doing a lot of aggressive campaigning and I plan to come home every weekend” from Washington, Dymally said. “We’re not taking anything for granted.”

Dymally noted that the MX missile and other military contracts for which he has voted--albeit reluctantly because of his stated philosophical opposition to what he believes is excessive reliance on military force--have brought good times to aerospace industries in Hawthorne and other parts of his district.

But he acknowledged that voters in depressed areas may not be pleased with cutbacks in federal benefits since the last election two years ago.

“Given the limits we face in Congress, I have tried to respond to the needs of the district,” he said. “But President Reagan’s policies have in many ways inhibited the kind of movement I would like to see in economically depressed areas.”

He blamed Reagan for cutting back on federally funded programs for jobs, housing and education.

Under Reagan, said Dymally, who lives in Compton, “the middle class is doing better, but the poor are doing worse. Compton is suffering more. . . . Conditions have actually gotten worse, especially among young people.”

Unemployment in Compton, particularly among teen-agers, runs as high as 40%.

Proposed Remedies

But help is on the way, Dymally said, if several pending bills make it out of a deficit-wary Congress and escape a presidential veto. He mentioned measures to rehabilitate schools and public buildings and to provide funds for high school students to work in private industry.

He took credit for grants or pending aid for the Compton and Southwest community colleges to improve curriculum, and for changes in Postal Department regulations to extend job protection benefits to non-Civil Service employees.

Dymally said he is also working to have the Artesia Freeway designated as an interstate highway so federal funds can be provided to combat noise and pollution. And, he said, he is negotiating with the Navy to bring more federal shipbuilding and maintenance contracts to the Long Beach Harbor.

As for foreign affairs, Dymally noted that his preoccupation with international problems--he is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee--”can be a liability around campaign time. But we are living in a world community, and as long as taxpayer money is being spent overseas, some of us (in Congress) should be watching to see that it is used wisely.”

Opposes Contra Aid

Dymally said he initially supported Reagan’s bombing attacks against military targets in Libya, but later deplored damage in civilian areas. He has adamantly opposed U.S. support for the rebels in Nicaragua, maintaining that the contras “are not credible people.”

Dymally’s voting record wins high marks from liberal groups. They range from 74% by the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental lobby, to 95% by the AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Action.

His ratings from conservative lobbies in 1984, the most recent available, start at 33% from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and then decline to zero from the American Conservative Union.

In the last reporting period ending March 31, Dymally recorded new donations of $103,670 and expenses of $92,200, leaving $12,898 cash on hand.

Zondervan, 33, Dymally’s opponent in the primary, said he wants the voters to know that he is a LaRouche candidate.

“I believe there is a strong protest vote out there, just as there was in Illinois,” said Zondervan, a Hawthorne resident who took a leave of absence from his job with the Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo to work on his campaign. “We’ll give the people a choice and then see where the votes fall.”

Zondervan, who has run unsuccessfully for the Santa Monica City Council and the state Assembly, said LaRouche has fielded about 1,000 candidates nationwide, with about 100 of that number in California.

The candidate said he became active in the LaRouche movement in 1981 after concluding that LaRouche’s ideas “make a lot of sense.” He said he has met LaRouche several times and attended a number of his conferences.

Bizarre statements attributed to LaRouche, he said, are “one-liners taken out of context” by the news media, which he said rely on the “drug lobby” for background information.

Queen a Pusher

For example, he said, the press quotes LaRouche as saying that the Queen of England pushes dope, and then makes no attempt to explain the meaning behind the remark.

What LaRouche means, Zondervan said, is that the queen is the titular head of a society in which drug use is rampant, but the queen does not speak out against such “moral bankruptcy” and against “world banking circles that support drug pushers by laundering their money.”

Thus, LaRouche’s claim that the queen pushes drugs is an attempt to hold her--and the governments of all nations--responsible for not taking effective measures to deal with the drug problem.

Zondervan said he supports LaRouche’s call for a crash program to develop President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the so-called Star Wars program. It is, he said, the only “cost-effective and feasible” way to neutralize the threat of nuclear war.

Irrigate Sahara

That effort, along with such grand-scale LaRouche proposals as irrigating the Sahara Desert and enlarging the Panama Canal, would put the world “on the path to growth and prosperity,” he said.

As for Dymally, Zondervan said, “The guy is absurd, basically incompetent. Drug use, unemployment, standards of living--everything is getting worse and he can’t come up with anything to really deal with the problems.”

As for AIDS, Zondervan said, “It makes me angry when people talk about it as a homosexual disease. The fact is, AIDS is spreading to the heterosexual community. It is a national health issue, one of the worst epidemics to hit mankind, and we can’t wait for a cure.”

Zondervan said he is supporting a California petition drive which, if successful, would require that people afflicted by the acquired immune deficiency syndrome be quarantined like “victims of TB or any other dangerously contagious disease.”

He has not filed any campaign finance reports, saying that he began fund-raising only recently. Federal law does not require reports unless a candidate raises or spends more than $500.

Three GOP Candidates

On the Republican side of the primary slate, three candidates are competing for a match with Dymally in the general election.

Gary Boogaard, 26, is a member of a Dutch family well known in the Paramount area. His brother, Case, served eight years on the Paramount City Council and the family operated two furniture stores until the parents, John and Gretta Boogaard, retired. Gary Boogaard and his three brothers now work in real estate.

“My family has a long track record of dealing honestly with people,” Boogaard said, “and I think that’s a good place to start from, in politics or anything else.”

Boogaard declined to criticize Dymally, but expressed political views at odds with those of the liberal incumbent.

“I’m a very strong supporter of President Reagan and his policies,” he said. “He’s doing a lot of the right things for our country.”

Boogaard said a continuing growth of the welfare state should be reversed by requiring able-bodied people supported by taxpayers to enlist in work and training programs.

Terrorism, War

On foreign policy, Boogaard said he supported Reagan’s efforts to deal with terrorism in the Middle East and to stop a “communist takeover” in Nicaragua. But he expressed concern about the reaction of terrorists to the U.S. bombing of Libya and about the country being drawn into a war in Central America.

“We all want to see a more peaceful world, so we have to continue working hard on that,” Boogaard said. “I don’t know that I could make things better, but I would like to make the point that anyone can run for office in America. They might not win, but at least they have the opportunity.”

Boogaard said he has undertaken no fund-raising and has not filed any campaign finance reports.

Jack McMurray, 56, president of a Torrance architectural firm who ran unsuccessfully for the state Senate in 1982, also said he is a strong supporter of the President.

“I would like to get in there and help Mr. Reagan,” he said. “Dymally has a very bad attitude about our country and he needs to be replaced.”

Besides backing Reagan’s defense and foreign policies, McMurray called for heavier penalties for serious crime, more support for senior citizens and wider use of private enterprise zones in economically depressed areas.

McMurray traces his heritage to an Irish immigrant who married a Cherokee Indian. He said his grandfather sailed with Admiral Dewey to Manila during the Spanish-American War, then settled in the Philippines where subsequent generations married native women.

McMurray said that he was conscripted as a teen-ager in the Philippines to fight Japanese occupiers during World War II, then came to the United States in 1967.

“All my life I have been a good soldier, a good patriot and a good citizen,” said McMurray, a father of eight. “I feel it is an honor and a privilege to be an American.”

In his most recent campaign financial report, he said he raised $1,595 and spent $1,143.

Mas Odoi, 64, an electronics technician who lives in Los Angeles, has tried twice before to win the Republican nomination in the 31st District. In 1984, he captured 41% of the primary vote, but lost to retired geophysicist Henry Minturn.

Odoi is well known in the Asian community for his outspoken opposition to proposals to compensate Japanese-Americans who, like Odoi, were moved to relocation camps during World War II.

According to his campaign literature, Odoi “demonstrated his abiding faith in America and the American people” by enlisting in the U.S. Army. He was seriously wounded by mortar fire in Italy.

“Sometimes I wondered what I was doing there,” Odoi recalled in an interview. “But I told myself that if I survived the war, I would spend my life working for America.

“Now, at this time in my life, I feel that my country needs a minority person to speak up for America. I’m running against Mr. Dymally again because he seems opposed to everything that President Reagan is trying to do to bring out the inner greatness of the American people.”

‘Practical Congressman’

Odoi said he would be a “practical congressman, looking for workable solutions and not just throwing money at problems.”

Odoi has not filed any campaign financial reports. Nor has B. Kwaku Duren, 43, of Compton, who is unopposed on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. A paralegal worker employed by the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, Duren said members of Congress should be activists and organizers, working to correct social, economic and political injustices in their districts.

To achieve that end, Duren said, the government should take over “certain industries that are amenable to socialist management,” such as utilities, and augment programs for low-cost housing, better education and more jobs.

Duren, who headed the Black Panther Party in Southern California in the late 1970s, said he opposes Reagan’s “gunboat diplomacy” in Libya and Central America.

The Sandinista government has brought new hope to “poor and oppressed people” in Nicaragua, he said, and Mideast terrorists are “disenfranchised people who are using all means at their disposal to achieve freedom. . . . After all, one man’s terrorism is another man’s freedom fight.”