Baker Reportedly Entered Hospital 3 Days Before Election

Three days before the June 7 election, congressional candidate C. David Baker was hospitalized for depression and exhaustion after being confronted with allegations that he had written an unauthorized $48,000 check on the account of a nonprofit foundation to cover last-minute campaign expenses, sources said this week.

The 35-year-old Baker, an Irvine city councilman, was admitted to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach after the emotional June 3 meeting with three board members of the Irvine Health Foundation, the sources said. Baker was forced to resign as executive director of the foundation after being questioned about the $48,000 check.

Baker, the acknowledged early front-runner in the Republican primary in the 40th Congressional District, one of the most heavily GOP districts in the nation, ultimately lost the nomination by fewer than 1,200 votes to C. Christopher Cox, a former White House lawyer.

Sources have said Baker also transferred $75,000 from an interest-bearing foundation account to the organization’s operating account, against which checks could be written. The chairman of the board of the foundation, Superior Court Judge David G. Sills, has said Baker has admitted that he countersigned the judge’s name on the $48,000 check.

Baker’s attorney, Paul S. Meyer, has said Baker put a stop-payment order on the check before any cash was transferred from the foundation account. Meyer has said Baker ordered payment stopped before he was confronted by foundation board members about the check.

Baker, who reportedly broke down cry ing during the June 3 meeting, entered Hoag under the name of John Doe, sources said. He spent the next three days in the hospital, except for a brief campaign appearance Sunday afternoon at Leisure World in Laguna Hills with conservative TV and radio commentator Bruce Herschensohn.

The district attorney’s office is investigating “some possible improprieties” involving Baker and the Irvine Health Foundation, according to Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi.

Baker’s law firm, Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, also is examining the allegations for possible disciplinary action, Robert Lane, the firm’s managing partner, said Thursday. Baker has been an attorney with the firm since 1980.

Baker has refused to comment, directing all inquiries to attorney Meyer.

Meyer said this week that his client is suffering from “deep emotional wounds” but is “coming through it reasonably well.”

Doy Henley, chief fund-raiser for Baker’s congressional campaign, on Thursday described Baker as a “sensitive individual” who in the campaign’s final days was “concerned that he was letting those of us supporting him down.”

A former UC Irvine basketball star, Baker entered the GOP primary in the 40th District after Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) announced in January that he would not seek a seventh term. Early in the race, Baker was endorsed by Badham, state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) and county Supervisor Thomas F. Riley.

But as the election approached, polls showed Baker trailing Cox, the Newport Beach lawyer and former senior associate White House counsel who eventually won the race.

At the time Baker wrote the $48,000 check, he had refinanced his house in the Woodbridge section of Irvine and apparently was waiting for the money to come through, campaign aides said. A single deed of trust covering the $308,000 Baker now owes on the property was recorded at the county recorder’s office June 3.

Against the backdrop of an intense, often bitter race, Baker’s congressional hopes began to unravel on Thursday, June 2.

That day, sources said, a secretary for the Irvine Health Foundation told foundation chairman Sills that two checks were missing from the organization’s operating account. The secretary had discovered the missing checks late June 1, and she told Sills that she thought Baker, then executive director of the foundation, had fired her when she asked him about them.

Sills went to Baker’s Irvine campaign headquarters late in the afternoon of Thursday, June 2, and confronted Baker. Baker told Sills that he took the checks to cover his foundation salary and expenses, sources said.

Still concerned, Sills and two other members of the foundation’s board, Legacy Cos. Chairman Timothy L. Strader and Irvine Co. Senior Vice President Gary H. Hunt, met late Friday afternoon at Hunt’s Irvine Co. office. Baker joined them later and, according to sources, admitted that he had written the $48,000 check. He also acknowledged that he had signed Sills’ name on the check, which required two signatures, and had transferred the $75,000 from one foundation account to the other, sources said.

An exhausted Baker reportedly broke down as the gravity of the situation settled in.

Weeping, he talked about how he had ruined his family and career, prompting Sills, Strader and Hunt to suggest that Baker be hospitalized, the sources said. Baker reportedly resisted the idea, but early Saturday he was admitted to Hoag. He remained there until Monday night, the sources said, except for several hours Sunday during which he appeared with Herschensohn, who had endorsed Baker in the final days of the campaign.

Baker’s key campaign advisers did not learn of Baker’s hospitalization until nearly eight hours after he entered Hoag.

“It came as a total surprise,” one campaign aide said. The aide said he was told that Baker entered the hospital because he “was very, very remorseful” over the missing checks at the foundation.

On Sunday afternoon, Baker left Hoag to appear at the campaign rally in Leisure World. Also appearing at the event were Badham and local Republican Assemblymen Nolan Frizzelle of Huntington Beach and Gil Ferguson of Newport Beach.

In an interview Thursday, Herschensohn, a candidate in the 1986 Republican U.S. Senate primary, said Baker appeared composed and relatively relaxed during the rally and never mentioned that he had been hospitalized.

“Every candidate is under stress at the close of a campaign,” Herschensohn said. “Dave, I’m sure, was no different. . . . He appeared OK.”

After the two-hour event, sources said, Baker returned to Hoag.

On Tuesday, Baker voted early and then went to campaign headquarters where he spent time phoning supporters, thanking them for their time. He reportedly also phoned several potential contributors in a final scramble for money to cover a series of last-minute mailers.

Baker was not seen publicly for several days after the election. He missed Tuesday night’s Irvine City Council meeting, although he did speak briefly to a Times reporter outside his sister’s El Toro home on Wednesday. His sister said Baker, his wife and two children were back in Irvine.

Times staff writer Michael Flagg contributed to this report.