Minority in County Needs Hand From Majority in Atlanta

Howard Adler, an Orange County delegate from Laguna Hills who is committed to Michael S. Dukakis at this week’s Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, has asked his fellow Orange County delegates to engage in a little larceny while they’re there.

He remembers the June 7 primary in Orange County, when badly needed Dukakis campaign materials ran out, and he remembers other conventions when there were “tons” of campaign buttons, brochures, signs and bumper stickers that ended up being swept out with the garbage. So Adler asked delegates “to scrounge everything they can and get it over to me and I’ll ship it back” to Orange County.

“This is a campaign on the cheap,” Adler explained.

Each convention has its own flavor, said Richard J. O’Neill, former state Democratic Party chairman and a stalwart in Orange County’s Democratic Party.

O’Neill, 65, of San Juan Capistrano, this week will be attending his eighth convention. He remembers the 1956 convention in Chicago, where Adlai Stevenson was nominated, for its “mass drinking, mass speeches and no taxis.”

What about 1960 at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles? It was “pretty exciting” to see John F. Kennedy nominated, O’Neill said, and interesting to note that the downtown bars “took all the stools out . . . so more people could get up to the bar.”

Like many others, O’Neill remembers that at the 1968 Chicago convention, “there were fights all over the place. Police all over the place.” There was even tear gas coming up the elevator shaft. “That was no good, I’ll tell you,” O’Neill said.

Skipping over a couple of conventions, O’Neill rated the 1980 New York and 1984 San Francisco affairs as “the nicest.” In New York, he went as state chairman.

“I had a big suite at the Waldorf Astoria, and we gave a big party at Tavern on the Green in Central Park, when it rained, and there was lightning and everything. We had a real wonderful time.”

Sarah Catz, a Democratic activist in Orange County, makes no bones about it. She’s not a delegate, or even an alternate, but she’s going to the Democratic convention as “a groupie.”

Four years ago, she attended the San Francisco convention.

“It’s wonderful to be part of a group that’s proud to be Democrats,” said Catz, referring to the way Democrats in heavily Republican Orange County sometimes feel, “and even if it takes traveling across the country to get it, it’s worth it.”

Fred Droz, president of a public affairs consulting firm in Irvine, has spent the last two months working advance and logistics for Paul Kirk, chairman of the Democratic National Party, for the convention opening today. While trying to stay cool in the hot and humid Atlanta climate, Droz has been juggling hundreds of demands from party leaders all over the country who want to be at the center of the action.

“There are 35,000 egos coming out here,” Droz said last week by phone.

“This is the Democrats’ party every four years,” he added, and people stake their political reputations on the credentials, floor passes and hotel rooms they are able to negotiate.

“Whole lives in politics are built around that, and it becomes incredibly important to them.”

By last week, however, Droz said the convention “seems like a big train going down the track. Once it happens, you get out of its way, get on board or get run over.”