Blending Into the Scenery

The names of a number of followers of right-wing troublemaker Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. will appear on Orange County’s primary ballot Tuesday. All are running as Democrats, and one, Art Hoffmann in the 40th Congressional District, could become the Democratic Party’s candidate in the general election unless Bruce W. Sumner, the county’s Democratic Party chairman, gets enough write-in votes to put a genuine Democrat into the November election.

As happened last March in Illinois, where two unknown LaRouche candidates were nominated as Democrats for lieutenant governor and state treasurer, the Hoffman candidacy took Orange County Democrats by surprise.

Hoffmann filed on the last day, and became the only Democratic candidate when two real Democrats decided not to file. Candidates representing LaRouche’s National Democratic Policy Committee, which has not even a remote connection with the Democratic Party, now turn up all over the Orange County ballot, with three running for Assembly seats and 10 for posts on the county’s Democratic Central Committee.

The LaRouche group took Illinois by surprise. That is not entirely the case in Orange County, where voters have had more exposure to the group’s outrageous positions--among which are claims that Walter F. Mondale and Henry A. Kissinger are Soviet agents, that the wives of some U.S. senators are KGB operatives and that the Queen of England runs a drug-peddling ring. To make their far-fetched philosophy heard, LaRouche followers have resorted to harassment, intimidation, threats of violence and, in the case of candidates, the deceptive practice of smuggling themselves onto ballots with a label that reads much like Democrat.

The LaRouche strategy generally is to flood local races with candidates and then lie low so that they are difficult to identify. When they do take public positions, LaRouche candidates generally tone down the group’s most extreme positions to blend into the political scenery.

Although we do not ordinarily support candidates in primary election campaigns, we make an exception in the case of Sumner’s write-in candidacy in the 40th Congressional District, where the only listed candidate is LaRouche follower Hoffmann.

To avoid extremism in politics, voters also should avoid, in addition to Hoffmann, candidates on the June ballot who confirmed to The Times that they are LaRouche followers: Peter Dimopoulos, 64th Assembly District; Marion E. Hundley, 67th Assembly District, and central committee candidates Kathleen Arguello and George A. Hanna (58th District) and Elizabeth J. Meredith and Peter Wase (72nd District). Hoffman and Dimopoulos also filed for the Central Committee.

Some candidates could not be reached for comment, but in filing candidacy papers with the registrar four gave as their telephone number the number for the LaRouche office in Los Angeles. They are Maureen G. Pike in the 39th Congressional District and central committee candidates Dina C. Bakshoian (58th District), Joyce M. Char (69th) and Roberta J. Hundley (67th).