Wieder Uses Trip to D.C. to Broaden Her Horizons

It was getting close to 9 a.m., and Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Harriett M. Wieder was late in leaving for the Pentagon, where she was scheduled for a private briefing on Nicaragua with a Marine colonel.

The hour with the colonel was to be the first of an all-day, non-stop schedule of briefings on Central America, Angola, crime, drugs and the Strategic Defense Initiative that was put together for Wieder by the head of a conservative grass-roots group based in Washington.

But Wieder had been unable to reach the man who had made the appointments for her. So, except for the Pentagon, she was momentarily unsure where she should be or at what time.

Between frequent phone calls trying to straighten things out, Wieder was a guest at a breakfast for Rep. Ron C. Packard (R-Carlsbad), whom she hoped next year would be her colleague in Congress.

The two politicians chatted about Wieder’s campaign to succeed Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach), who is not seeking reelection. Wieder is considered the front-runner in the race for the GOP nomination in the heavily Republican 42nd District, which straddles the boundary between Orange and Los Angeles counties.

Packard, a former Carlsbad mayor running for a fourth term in Congress, warned Wieder that Washington was not like the local politics with which they were familiar.

“Back at the local level, the politics doesn’t get in the way of what you’re doing,” said Packard. “Here, politics tends to drive things much more than it ought to. That will disappoint you. I know it did me.”

Though steeped in local issues as a Huntington Beach councilwoman and then a member of the Board of

Supervisors for more than a decade, Wieder has had little experience with some of the national and international issues that confront the House of Representatives.

Aware of this, Wieder used the Washington trip to widen her horizons. She took one day out of her four-day trip--in which she testified before a congressional subcommittee on the Santa Ana River flood control project and raised about $25,000 for her campaign--for the briefings.

On a bone-chilling day that stole early spring from the nation’s capital, the 67-year-old Wieder took taxis from the drafty Pentagon to one dingy bureaucratic office after another, hearing many of the views that were brought to Washington by the Reagan Administration.

She particularly wanted to hear about the Nicaraguan Contras. And she was interested in general in what she called the “rebel lobby” in Washington, including the Angolan “freedom fighters.”

The following morning, over decaffeinated coffee and raisin bran in the Jockey Club of The Ritz-Carlton hotel, Wieder said she knew that “this is the tip of the iceberg” on exploring such issues as she runs for Congress. But, she said, the 30- to 90-minute briefings the day before had given her “a broader, in-depth knowledge” of issues.

“Now I have the documentation of facts I didn’t have before, and statistics,” she said, “which I think gives more credibility to the arguments I would use.”

She added, “You can’t just come back here to Washington and settle into an office and hit the floor, so to speak, without an understanding of why you’re there.”

It was a start.