Claims Badham ‘Doesn’t Care’ : Sumner on Offensive in Talk at Irvine Plant

Calling five-term Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) a congressman “who doesn’t care,” Democrat Bruce Sumner told aircraft workers in Irvine on Thursday that Badham had missed votes or voted against the Reagan Administration’s positions recently on such key issues as the tax bill, immigration, the budget and defense spending.

The 40th Congressional District candidate also charged that Badham missed the vote when the House overrode President Reagan’s veto of sanctions against South Africa on Sept. 29 because “he flew home at your expense to be at the opening of the Performing Arts Center in Orange County.

“The justification for supporting Badham is a party-line vote, that he supports the President--and he doesn’t,” Sumner told aircraft assemblers and their supervisors in a lunch-hour visit to the Hughes Aircraft plant. “He’s either not there, or he votes against the President.”

Badham, reached by phone in his Washington office, said Sumner’s claim that he doesn’t support Reagan was “nonsense, and Bruce knows it.”

When it appears he will miss a vote, Badham said, he ascertains first whether the vote will be close and whether his vote will be needed. Often when he isn’t present for a vote he inserts a statement explaining his position in the Congressional Record, Badham said.

Looked Forward to Opening

Badham said he missed the override vote on the South African sanctions because, as an arts center contributor, “I had looked forward for years” to the center’s opening. “And I checked and I found out there would not be any crucial votes that would be anywhere at all close. I made a statement in the Congressional Record about the sanctions override. I would have voted to sustain the President’s veto.”

Badham said he determined his vote was “not necessary, even though I could have made what we refer to as a throwaway vote. I chose not to do that.” The House voted to override President Reagan’s veto by 313 to 83.

Badham offered differing reasons for missing votes on defense spending and immigration reform Wednesday and for voting against the administration-supported tax reform bill on Sept. 25 and against an omnibus $576-billion spending bill passed Wednesday.

About the $576-billion spending measure, which includes $100 million in aid to Nicaraguan rebels that Reagan has sought for several years, Badham said he voted against it because the measure was “over the President’s budget. And I consider it supportive of the President, whether he signs it or not. This continuing resolution was loaded down like a Christmas tree with everything imaginable. . . . It was too big.”

Bill Fell Short

On the tax-reform bill, Badham said he voted no because “I felt that the bill fell short of the President’s aims and goals and, despite the fact that he was going to sign the bill, my correct position was to vote against that.” Along with many conservatives and investors, Badham said, he believes that the bill in its present form will be bad for the economy.

Badham said he missed the votes on immigration and defense spending because he was appearing at a campaign fund-raiser in his district Wednesday with Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole. Although he left the event early, “they took the (bills) up before I got back,” he said.

Badham said his position on both bills was well-known, and he would have voted for them. Also, Badham said, “I had a great part in hammering out the compromises” in the defense-spending bill. “It also was not a crucial vote,” he said. “If it is a crucial, critical vote, I will be here voting.”

Responded Sumner: “I don’t call that being a congressman.”

Sumner told his audience at Hughes Aircraft, where he had been invited to the lunchroom to speak, that on each of those bills, “if I’m chosen by you to be your representative, I’ll be there.”

Anti-Drug Votes

Sumner also criticized Badham for missing one vote on a 1985 drug-trafficking measure and for voting against another 1985 anti-drug bill. Badham said he could not recall the specifics of his negative vote, but “there were probably things over the budget in it.”

Badham said he had worked for other anti-drug bills. “I supported and helped pass the death penalty--ask Sumner how he likes that one--for international drug traffickers on the second offense . . . and I’ve never heard from Bruce Sumner on the situation until he got involved in the campaign.”