Tigers in the Tree

Followers of right-wing troublemaker Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. are giving a serious twist to a favorite in children’s puzzle books. The old challenge was to sort out the lines in drawings that are branches and leaves from those that are legs and ears and find the tiger in the tree. The twist is finding LaRouche candidates on a ballot.

Illinois Democrats failed the challenge in March, nominating two LaRouche followers to run on the same ticket with former Sen. Adlai E. Stevenson III, the Democratic candidate for governor.

The tigers in the tree on Tuesday’s Los Angeles County ballot are affiliated with LaRouche’s National Democratic Policy Committee, which has no connection with the Democratic Party. Anyone who can afford a filing fee is entitled to run for office. But because LaRouche himself embraces so many bizarre beliefs--that Henry A. Kissinger, former U.S. secretary of state, is a Soviet agent, for example, and that the Queen of England is a drug trafficker--it is hard to imagine that his associates are as interested in enhancing the democratic process as in disrupting it.

For that reason The Times has found as many tigers in the tree as it can, and presents their names as a guide to voters who want to avoid disruption and extremism in the political process.

In congressional primary races there are seven candidates whose association with the LaRouche group has been confirmed by LaRouche’s Northern California coordinator, Brian Lantz. Lantz himself appears on the ballot as a challenger to Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.)

The seven are Dorothy Andromidas (25th District), Joe Alcoset (28th), George Trivich (30th), Kevin Zondervan (31st), Margaret E. Thrasher (32nd), and Paul Jeffrey (33rd), running as Democrats, and Alvin Froelich (27th), running as a Republican.

State Assembly candidates identified by Lantz as associates of LaRouche are Lou Steeg (43rd District) and Henry Gamboa (56th), running as Republicans, and Ruth Stephenson (63rd), running as a Democrat.

According to a document introduced in a Los Angeles Superior Court case May 30, nearly one-third of the candidates for the county Democratic Central Committee are LaRouche associates. In Assembly District 41 they are John H. Brown Jr., Edward M. Corpus, James M. Duree, June Grussendorf, Helen Morgan, Maureen G. Pike, Tom Pike, Daniel Platt, Carol M. Ruckert and Patrick L. Ruckert. In the 43rd District they are Don E. Marquis and John B. Weber. In the 45th District they are Bruce M. Khouri, Michael R. Hodgkiss, Judy L. Huffman, Mary Louise Khouri and Margaret R. Levinson.

Two candidates are listed in District 46, Mary F. Lyans and James D. Wyrick. Joe Alcoset is a candidate in District 49. In District 55 the candidates are Ted Andromidas and Khushro Ghandi. In District 57 they are Mary C. Knorpp, David D. Schweitzer and Margaret Thrasher. Paul Jeffrey is a candidate in District 62. And in District 63 the candidate identified as a LaRouche associate is Ruth Stephenson.