8 GOP Candidates Off and Running for Badham’s Seat

As the eight men gathered in the sun one day last week for a group photograph, someone joked that they looked like pallbearers.

All in conservative dark gray or blue suits, they made an impressive tableau.

In age, they ranged from 25 to 43. In size, from slight to gigantic. In personality, from folksy to intensely high energy. And on the political spectrum, the men, all Republicans, ranged from moderately conservative to far right.

All share a single goal: They want to be sent to Washington to represent the 40th Congressional District, which stretches from Huntington Beach south to Laguna Beach and 11 miles inland and is one of the most politically conservative areas in the nation.

They had gathered last week for a candidates forum, the second of three within four days. One after the other, they stepped to the lectern at the speaker’s table and earnestly made their cases to about 70 Republican members of the Balboa Bay Republican Women, Federated, in their quest to replace Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach). Badham has announced that he will retire at the end of his seventh term.

“I feel like we’re part of the ‘right stuff’ up here,” Peer Swan, at 43 the oldest of the group, said when it was his turn to talk.

The deadline for filings is not until March 11, but already there is a high pitch of activity in the campaigns of those who have announced that they are running. The competition for endorsements and money is well under way, and the candidates forums that normally would be expected much closer to the June 7 primary are at full steam.

At the third such forum, before Saddleback Valley Business and Professional Women, the candidates’ jokes and stump speeches already had a familiar ring. They had even begun to steal each others’ lines.

Irvine Councilman C. David Baker, 34, and Nathan Rosenberg, 35, a Newport Beach businessman and Badham’s surprise opponent in the 1986 primary, are considered the front-runners in the race. Baker is expected to announce a package of endorsements this week that is intended to preempt support for Rosenberg. Baker has raised more than $70,000 so far.

Rosenberg is far ahead in fund raising. He says he has raised $400,000 already and has a strong network of campaign volunteers. He also had an early start organizing because he already was preparing to challenge Badham.

But because he was willing to run against a Republican incumbent--something that is frowned upon in the GOP establishment--Rosenberg is viewed as an outsider by party leaders.

The candidates forums make it clear that, in style, Baker and Rosenberg could hardly be more different. The intense Rosenberg takes an intellectual approach, standing ramrod straight. He usually forgoes the use of a microphone.

At one forum, Rosenberg said he was not using the microphone because he did not want to hide from the group. At a later forum, he said it was because of his booming voice. The brother of est founder Werner Erhard, Rosenberg is confident to the point of appearing arrogant at times.

By contrast, Baker, aware that his husky 6-foot-9 frame is intimidating enough, tries to put people at ease. As a result, he comes off as a friendly giant.

“My size makes some people feel real uncomfortable,” said Baker, a lawyer. “Nathan’s style may work for him, but it wouldn’t work for me at all.”

While Rosenberg takes a broader sweep on the issues, emphasizing the time he spent as a Navy officer and his work in Washington on the Senate staff of Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), Baker stresses his local roots and experience in Irvine and the county.

Besides Baker and Rosenberg, other candidates appearing at the forums were:

- C. Christopher Cox, 35, former senior assistant White House counsel, who in a soft voice told how his loyalty to President Reagan took him away from Orange County to the Capitol for two years before he was drawn back to run in the 40th District. Cox has the endorsement of former U.S. Court of Appeals Justice Robert H. Bork, Reagan’s defeated choice for the U.S. Supreme Court. Bork will appear at a fund-raiser for Cox on March 9. Cox said he has raised $100,000 so far.

- Costa Mesa City Councilman Peter Buffa, 39, who said he wants to go to Washington to help stop the country’s slide into mediocrity. His main issues will be education and the economy, he said. An affable man, Buffa is comfortable before groups. He has just begun his fund-raising effort.

- Irvine Ranch Water District director Swan, whose more moderate views on abortion and other subjects often conflicted with the conservatism of most of the rest of the field. Swan, who is worried that Rosenberg and Baker will sew up the endorsements and the money and thus preempt meaningful debate, is viewed as a long shot.

- Charles S. Devore, 25, of Laguna Hills, who resigned from his job as a Pentagon liaison to Congress to run in the 40th District. The youngest of the candidates and one of the most conservative, Devore views his youth as both his biggest drawback and his biggest asset in the race. Richard Perle, former assistant secretary of defense, will speak at a $50-a-person fund-raiser for Devore on Wednesday. Devore said he had raised about $5,000 as of last week.

- John Hylton, 42, of Newport Beach, an airline pilot who is tailoring his campaign around traditional family and moral values. Hylton refused to say how much money he had raised.

- Tustin Councilman John F. Kelly, 26, who calls himself a “humble man” who wants to promote “old-fashioned ideas with a new zip and new enthusiasm.” Kelly is relying on his parents and 11 brothers and sisters for the core of his campaign organization. He said he has raised about $4,500 so far for his campaign.

Attending the first of the three candidates forums last week, before the Tustin chapter of the California Republican Assembly, was a ninth possible GOP candidate, Orange County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton. Stanton, who has not yet decided whether to run, said he was merely a “spectator” at the event.

Although some say it hardly matters in this most Republican of congressional districts, there also is a Democrat in the race: Laguna Beach City Councilwoman Lida Lenney, 55.

Lenney said at the third candidates forum of last week that she figured she would have to get nearly every Democratic vote, a large percentage of voters who declined to state a party or listed themselves as independents, plus a quarter of the Republican voter turnout in the election to win in November.

The Laguna Beach councilwoman unwittingly provided one of the more entertaining moments in last week’s forums. Although she had already left the Saddleback Valley Business and Professional Women’s meeting for another engagement, Kelly, who had chatted with her at dinner, used part of his allotted time to attack her views.

“It isn’t so tragic to sit here with the candidates that I’ve been with for the last few days wearing the same suits, telling the same jokes, (talking about) the same issues over and over again--I’d really be supportive of any of them over that Democrat,” he said, referring to Lenney, “with those fruit-loop twisted ideas.”

Lenney, he said, has the support of “all kinds of fruitcake liberals in the city of Laguna Beach who are for alternate life styles and abortion and all those things that fly in the face of old-time American principles.”

Kelly was very serious when he delivered this diatribe, but his audience found the characterization of Laguna Beach’s population amusing and began to laugh.

He added to the amusement when, miscalculating the sentiments of the crowd--a group of about 70 women and a few men that included both Democrats and Republicans--he added, “I hope she can’t persuade you just because she’s a woman that you would change your party registration and vote for her.”

Among the issues that were addressed at last week’s candidates forums was abortion, which Kelly labeled “out-and-out murder.”

All of the Republican candidates except Swan and Rosenberg oppose legalized abortion. Rosenberg said it should be a matter of personal choice but that he opposes federal funding for abortions.

Referring to the time before the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, Swan said: “I’m old enough to remember in an era when abortions were illegal. I saw those people sent into dark alleys in Tijuana and other countries. I saw physicians who were made criminals because they were trying to help these people. I could never go back to that.”

Offshore drilling was another issue that came up at the forums.

Baker, Rosenberg, Hylton, Kelly, Buffa and Cox oppose it.

Devore said he believes it is “absolutely irresponsible to completely foreclose even the possibility of drilling off our coast,” given the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. Swan said offshore oil drilling “shouldn’t be precluded.”

All eight candidates favor nuclear energy plants with adequate safeguards.

When asked what they would do to bring the federal deficit under control, Baker and Devore said they favor a line-item veto for the President to cut down on pork barrel projects; Rosenberg said he would cut waste in federal procurement programs; Hylton favored tax reform; Kelly suggested more controls on those who cheat on food stamps and other federal programs; Buffa and Swan would cut back or eliminate some federal programs, and Cox would “eliminate a lot of federal subsidies.”