Costly, Volatile Dornan-Robinson Contest Doesn’t Faze Voters

The 38th Congressional District, whose voters will choose Tuesday between incumbent Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove), is the urban core of Orange County.

Within its 90 square miles, stretching from Santa Ana to Cerritos in southeast Los Angeles County, there are more than 18,300 businesses, three shopping malls and 12 Catholic parishes. More than 526,000 people live in its seven communities--all of Garden Grove and parts of Santa Ana, Stanton, Buena Park, Anaheim, Midway City, Westminster and Cerritos.

The district encompasses the heart of county government--the courts and the county administration building in Santa Ana--as well as Knott’s Berry Farm, Disneyland, Anaheim Stadium and Movieland Wax Museum. Buena Clinton, a Garden Grove neighborhood that is the county’s worst slum, is in the 38th District. So is Little Saigon, a community of 60,500 along Bolsa Avenue that is one of the largest concentrations of Southeast Asian immigrants in the nation.

With its bowling alleys, fast-food restaurants and modest stucco homes, the 38th District is the site of one of the most expensive congressional races in the nation this year. So far, more than $1 million has been poured into the Dornan-Robinson race, and with only days to go before the election, the spending frenzy appears to be far from over.

Confident Democrats

Democratic strategists speak confidently of the 38th as a Democratic district. The median income is $22,993 a year, and the population is 75.3% white, 27.6% Hispanic, 7% Asian and 2.5% black, according to 1980 Census figures supplied by Claremont College’s Rose Institute Of the district’s 199,683 registered voters, 48.4% are Democrats and 41.8% are Republicans.

“If Orange County has a place you can vote for a Democrat, this is it,” said Michael Berman, a partner in the Democratic political consulting firm of Berman & D’Agostino Campaigns.

But these are conservative Democrats.

This is the same district that gave President Reagan 62.1% of its vote in 1980 and 69.4% in 1984. It is also the same district where, in 1984, the voters ousted a five-term Democratic congressman, Jerry Patterson, for Dornan, a conservative Republican, by a vote of 53% to 45%.

It is a district where the majority party, says Brian O’Leary Bennett, Dornan’s chief of staff, is made up of “the Democrats the national party left behind.”

Here are a few of the faces of the 38th District.

Until last August, when a jet airliner and a small plane collided in the sky above his city, “most people didn’t know where Cerritos was,” Mayor Don Knabe said. And that was just fine with him.

When anyone asked, Knabe would explain that his city--sometimes called the Irvine of Los Angeles County--was a nice little suburban community with 25 parks, 56,000 residents and “total freeway access” that was “just 10 minutes from Knott’s Berry Farm.”

On Aug. 31, tragedy put Cerritos on the map. An Aeromexico jet collided with a private plane above Cerritos, killing 82 people, 15 of them on the ground.

Scars from the crash remain. In the pleasant residential tract where the airplane hit, barricades are still up to keep the gawkers out. But the twisted metal and rubble from homes that burned have been hauled away, and some homeowners at the crash site are rebuilding, Knabe said.

Incorporated in 1956 on farmland once known as Dairy Valley, Cerritos receives $11.9 million a year in sales-tax revenue from its shopping mall and an arch-windowed Auto Square. Its residents have the second highest median income in the nation, $32,097 a year. And Cerritos boasts 25 parks, including a public swimming center that looks like a private spa.

Few Problems in Cerritos

Knabe, 43, is proud of his city’s prosperity.

“We don’t have a lot of problems,” he said, as, feet out, he stretched beside a large oak desk in his office at the modern City Hall.

Because the city has few problems, its residents don’t seem to care much who their next congressman will be, Knabe said, though, as a Republican, he is actively supporting Dornan’s reelection.

Dornan has done a good job for the city, he said. After the Aeromexico crash, Dornan helped Cerritos get in touch with the right federal agencies. Before that, when architectural plans for a new post office were stalled last year, Dornan cut the red tape.

Not everyone in Cerritos appreciates Dornan’s temperament, Knabe said: “He’s too flamboyant for some of the Democrats. He’s even too flamboyant for some of the Republicans.”

Still, Knabe said, many residents have “a sense of comfortability” with Dornan.

In all, he said, the congressional race has not caused much of a stir so far.

At least partly because of the Aeromexico tragedy, “this community is having a hard time getting excited about anything right now,” said Knabe, who lost a friend in the crash. “You think, ‘Gee whiz. But for the grace of God, go I.’ ”

The corner lot is called Statueland. It is an island of marble lions, Venus de Milos, dolphin heads and small nymphs bearing fish, nestled among the fast-food restaurants and used car lots of Harbor Boulevard.

“We do major fountains,” said Woody Butterfield, 67, the friendly bear of a man with white hair and a bushy gray mustache who owns the place. Once a sculptor for MGM studios, Butterfield began this business 39 years ago when land in Garden Grove was selling for $2,000 an acre and across the way there was nothing but orange groves. As a suburb grew up around him, Butterfield stayed on, sculpting and casting forms from rubber molds to make the garden ornaments, fountains and balustrades that decorate homes all over Southern California.

Scuffing through the marble dust, Butterfield takes a visitor through a shop cluttered with statues. Among the pieces is an oversize bronze bust of President Reagan. Butterfield made his first Reagan bust in 1982 on special order from John Gavin, who was then the U. S. ambassador to Mexico. Since then he has been making copies for the Republican Central Committee.

Years ago, he turned out similar busts of President John F. Kennedy for local Democratic clubs. Made of terrazzo--a mix of marble and Riverside white cement--they sold for $7.50 apiece. “I sold 9,700 of them,” Butterfield said. “But after he died, I gave up doing them.”

Since then, there have been other changes. Butterfield said his once small business now grosses more than $1 million a year. And his politics are different. A lifelong Democrat who has worked in local campaigns, beginning with former Assemblyman Dick Hanna’s, he plans to vote for Robinson Nov. 4.

But he said he won’t mind if Dornan is reelected. That’s ironic, Butterfield said, stopping a moment to savor the memory: “You know, I tried to put him in jail.”

Question of Residency

During the 1984 campaign, Butterfield, then an active supporter of incumbent Rep. Patterson of Garden Grove, learned that Dornan had registered to vote using his campaign office as his address. He called the district attorney’s office. He also called the newspapers.

If Dornan’s office was being used as a residence, Dornan had violated zoning codes, Butterfield said; if it was empty, “he had committed perjury.” Either way, “we did want some bad press for him.” Butterfield’s complaint led to a public apology by Dornan but no official charges.

After the controversy died down, Dornan visited Butterfield.

“I made him stand off 20 feet,” Butterfield recalled. “I made sure he wasn’t armed. But he just wanted to talk to me. He said, ‘I may be your congressman.’ ”

Butterfield says now that Dornan’s performance in Congress hasn’t been the disaster he had feared. When it comes to constituents’ problems, Dornan has worked for him, Butterfield said, helping recently when he needed to know if an employee needed a visa for a buying trip abroad.

And on the issues, Butterfield said, he usually agrees with Dornan.

From the outside, school Supt. Cynthia Grennan’s offices don’t look like much--a low cinder-block structure that used to be a Fedmart store.

But from this building on industrial land near the Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim, Grennan runs the Anaheim Union High School District, with 22,500 students, 2,000 employees and more than 20 schools.

Grennan, a former English teacher and school psychologist, is in charge of the district’s budget, personnel and facilities. “I am an educator and a teacher and a student advocate,” she said. “I’m concerned about all children learning.”

Her district has undergone considerable change in recent years. In 1974, 11% of its students were members of minority groups; that figure is 37% today. Many of the district’s students don’t speak English. In 1978, the district counted 225 students speaking 12 other languages; by October, 1985, there were 3,000 non-English-speaking students speaking Russian, Hmong, Vietnamese, Korean, Iranian and 56 other languages.

Three-Year Battle

Grennan fought a three-year battle with the federal government, beginning in 1982, over a $500,000 grant for teacher’s aides to work with non-English-speaking students. The government wanted to give the district the money only if it would hire new employees and let them go when the funds ran out. Grennan wanted to train her own staff to do the work.

Eventually, she said, she won--though not without several trips to Washington and “a serious raising of voices.” Throughout the fight, Grennan said, she never thought to ask for the help of either of the two congressmen who represent different parts of the school district.

But then, Grennan said, she doesn’t see a congressman very often. Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) has attended board meetings and held several forums for educators. Dornan has been to a school board meeting and “has been active in terms of the students,” she said, sending letters of congratulation when they won awards.

In the 38th District congressional campaign, Grennan has heard nothing about education. For that matter, she said, she has heard little or nothing about “the economy, defense, the quality of life.” What she has heard, she said, is “mudslinging.”

As for her own vote: “I have not made up my mind whether to vote for either candidate,” said Grennan, a registered independent. “I have been known to leave the space blank.”

“Politicians are so vain.”

Those are the words of Rueben Martinez, and he is in a position to know.

Working in a small shop in Santa Ana, the 46-year-old hairdresser has been cutting politicians’ hair for 13 years. Assemblyman Richard Robinson, Santa Ana Mayor Dan Griset, former Rep. Patterson--all know the touch of his scissors.

Formerly of East Los Angeles, Martinez saw promise in Santa Ana, moving there from West Covina in 1973. When redevelopment came, Martinez applauded.

“The city was ready for change,” he said. “Now, downtown businessmen are very happy with their business, and it is a growing city. But now, people don’t want it to grow as fast.”

Martinez is a member of the county Democratic Central Committee and the Latino Democratic Club.

Sees Little Difference

“I happen to be a Democrat who will vote for a Democrat,” Martinez said.

So of course he will vote for Robinson, he said.

But he sees little difference in temperament between Robinson and Dornan. Both are fighters, he said. “It will be the battle of the two bullheads out there.”

Party differences aside, Martinez said, he would never vote for Dornan. He doesn’t like his style.

“I would like to be proud of my congressman,” Martinez said, “But no, I’m not proud of him at all.”

Danh Quach’s pharmacy in Westminster is the Vietnamese equivalent of a country store. Along with the cough syrup and codeine, Quach sells ginseng tea, bolts of cloth, Singer sewing machines and TV sets.

Quach calls it his “one-stop store.” It was one of the first Vietnamese businesses to open in the area along Bolsa Avenue known as Little Saigon.

Like many of Orange County’s Vietnamese merchants, Quach came here eight years ago by a circuitous route. Formerly a government pharmacist in charge of supplies for 16 hospitals in Vietnam, Quach left that country in 1975 with his sister, his wife and their two children.

In the space of three years, Quach and his family moved from an Arkansas refugee camp to a relative’s home in Connecticut to Nebraska, where he and his wife attended pharmacy school at the University of Nebraska before coming to Orange County.

“Because of the weather,” Quach said, and because he and his wife had visited Orange County on a vacation, “and we see a lot of Vietnamese here.”

Politics of Vietnam War

Quach is a member of several civic organizations: the Westminster Chamber of Commerce, the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce and the Vietnamese-American Republican Club.

A registered Republican who thinks Dornan is doing a good job, Quach said he never considered becoming a Democrat. Like many Vietnamese refugees, Quach has political convictions that are tied to the history of the Vietnam War.

“We do not want to say anything bad to the Democrats,” he said, “but we’ve had a bad experience. We feel the Republicans are strong against the communists.”