Self-Described Hustler : Carpenter--a Taker of Risks Who Aims to Win

Peering across an imposing desk, his eyes darting between a computer screen and a lobbyist seeking his vote, Paul Carpenter makes it clear that he has been keeping a close watch on political contributions.

“My charts show that your clients have given more money to my opponents,” Carpenter notes as the lobbyist shifts uncomfortably in his seat. The advocate, fearing a loss of clout if he balks, is sure to buy a ticket to Carpenter’s next fund-raiser.

Many Capitol lobbyists tell of having similar experiences. They credit Carpenter as one of the first to merge the science of computers with the fine art of political fund-raising.

But what the lobbyists never knew was that Carpenter was often bluffing. He had no list of contributors. The computer screen was blank. Sometimes, it wasn’t even turned on.

“Paul could just as easily have been playing Pac Man,” said a former top aide. “I think what Paul did was scare them (the lobbyists) into thinking he knew.”

Paul Bruce Carpenter, 60, has long been considered a hustler in Capitol circles.

That’s how he described himself 24 years ago as an unsuccessful candidate for Congress. After one term in the Assembly, a decade in the state Senate and two years at the State Board of Equalization, the moniker fits the Downey Democrat as well as ever, say legislators, Capitol aides and lobbyists who have dealt with him.

Whether moving a bill through the Legislature, directing a political campaign or playing poker with fellow lawmakers, Carpenter aims to win. Schooled in psychology and trained as an industrial engineer, he is a quiet man with nerves of steel. With a few carefully chosen words, he can slice a friend or foe in two.

Target of Capitol Sting

Now Carpenter may need all the guile he can summon to elude the grasp of federal prosecutors. As a state senator in 1986, he was one of the first targets of the FBI’s Capitol sting, in which federal agents established phony companies that paid campaign money to lawmakers while seeking legislative favors in return. Four legislators also are under investigation. So far there have been no indictments.

Carpenter accepted $20,000 in contributions from Gulf Shrimp Fisheries, a bogus firm set up by the FBI. His former chief aide was implicated in the sting as he helped steer Gulf Shrimp’s bill through the Senate and later became an FBI informant, recording Capitol conversations on a hidden microphone. But many friends of Carpenter insist he will be cleared.

“I think Paul is too smart,” said Lynda Pope, a Long Beach political consultant who has known Carpenter for many years. “He knows what the laws are. He’s too bright to be enticed into stepping over those lines.”

The FBI probe has focused attention on Carpenter, a public official who has long preferred to operate in the political shadows. Though he held a Senate leadership post for five years before moving to the Board of Equalization, few of those who have served with Carpenter know much about him. He does not like to socialize, disdains small talk and distrusts reporters.

A Risk Taker

Interviews with friends and associates and an examination of public records reveal that Carpenter is a risk taker. He plays cards for high stakes and the stock market for big money. He invests in repossessed property, new technology and racehorses. He climbs mountains in his spare time.

Though he is described as deadly serious, Carpenter can be a political stunt man. He announced a long-shot run for the U.S. Senate by flying supporters on a seven-hour chartered jet ride around the state. During his campaign for the Board of Equalization, Carpenter dramatized the untaxed fortune of former Philippines President Ferdinand E. Marcos by holding a news conference outside the home of a woman said to be his mistress. In 1979, shortly after the onset of the Iranian hostage crisis, Carpenter hosted a rally at the Los Angeles Coliseum where the Ayatollah Khomeini was burned in effigy.

Carpenter long ago mastered the skill of turning a blunt political phrase.

Campaigning as a dark horse against then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. for the U.S. Senate nomination in 1982, Carpenter sought to minimize the disadvantage of his lack of statewide stature. “Jerry does have 100% name identification,” Carpenter said of the governor. “So does Charles Manson.”

Once, an aide questioned Carpenter’s decision not to try to defeat an incumbent Republican senator. His retort: “The Virgin Mary herself couldn’t win in that district if she was a Democrat.”

His appraisal of the political reformation of Vietnam War protester-turned-Assemblyman Tom Hayden: “A revolutionary who washed his hair and put on a three-piece suit.”

An Unsettling Manner

Some consider such comments illustrative of a mean streak in Carpenter. Others describe him as a contemplative man who chooses his words for maximum effect. When he listens, he has the unnerving habit of pressing his fingers together and staring intently into the eyes of the speaker, then responding in a slow, methodical voice. One assemblyman said Carpenter gave him an unsettling feeling that he described as the “heebie-jeebies.”

“He is one of a kind,” said Norman J. Meyer, a retired physicist who has been friends with Carpenter for 25 years. “He is a very bright guy, very well disciplined. I don’t know anybody I could compare him with. And I think that causes a lot of misunderstanding. I know people who think very poorly of Paul.

“The small number of us who know him can hear the wheels spinning, because we’re familiar with his thought processes and his behavior patterns. If you’re not, it’s off-putting, and you wonder whether you’re being set up, lied to or something else. It’s just not natural. It’s not what you normally walk into when you walk into a politician’s office.”

A native of Sioux City, Iowa, Carpenter graduated from the University of Iowa, the University of Missouri and Florida State University, where he received a Ph.D in experimental psychology and wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled “The Effects of Sensory Deprivation on Behavior in the White Rat.”

He soon began studying the behavior of California voters, a subject on which he is now considered expert. Carpenter moved to Orange County in 1960, where both he and his wife worked as engineers at Hughes Aircraft. By 1964, Carpenter had become active in Democratic Party politics and was running for Congress.

First Political Failure

“The people in this district are looking for a young hustler,” Carpenter said as he began a 210-mile walk from La Habra to the Mexican border and back. But the district’s voters decided to stick with the incumbent, and Carpenter had recorded his first political failure.

Two years later he was back, this time in a Democratic primary for a state Assembly seat. Carpenter lost to Ken Cory and then broke ranks to support Cory’s Republican opponent in the general election. Cory won anyway, and he went on to become state controller.

Carpenter returned to the political trenches, working for a candidate in a musicians’ union election and some City Council races. He got a job as director of a health planning organization and developed an alliance with Dr. Louis J. Cella, an Orange County physician who was then trying to position himself as a major political financier in California.

Cella poured huge amounts of money and resources into races to elect Cory to statewide office and Carpenter to the Assembly seat vacated by Cory. Cella was later convicted of tax evasion and Medi-Care fraud, but neither candidate was implicated in the wrongdoing.

Carpenter’s election to the Assembly in 1974 followed a bitter Democratic primary fight with then-Cypress City Councilman Otto Lacayo. Carpenter had helped elect Lacayo to the City Council a few years before, and he did not soon forget Lacayo’s lack of loyalty.

“From that point on, I was no longer a recognized person,” said Lacayo, whom Carpenter later tried to oust from the council. “Paul is very intelligent, very well spoken, but he has a kind of stone-faced look and a dry sense of humor. If you use that against your enemy, it’s a look that can kill. I was the enemy.”

A conservative Democrat, Carpenter has often seized hot political issues well before his peers. In 1966, 12 years before California’s Proposition 13 sent the tax revolt nationwide, Carpenter called for a freeze on property taxes. The same year, Carpenter advocated boosting mass transit efforts in Orange County, and he proposed toll roads for the county many years before that idea caught on with other politicians.

Toxic Waste Legislation

He authored legislation creating the state’s toxic waste clean-up fund and wrote the law prohibiting politicians from using surplus campaign money for personal purposes. Carpenter tried and failed in 1981 to ban the transfer of campaign funds among politicians--an idea implemented by the voters last June when they passed Proposition 73.

Carpenter also has a knack for reaching voters in a personal way. For many years he answered constituent mail himself, working well into the night to write out each response. One year, Carpenter sent a birthday card to every voter in his district, requiring his staff to address every envelope by hand. Thank-you notes from pleased constituents soon covered a wall in his district office.

Carpenter, who makes $85,000 annually as a state tax board member, also manages campaigns for fun and profit. Candidate Bob Epple paid him $25,000 this fall to direct his successful effort for the state Assembly. In another Assembly race earlier this year, Carpenter volunteered to drive a truck laden with sacks of campaign mailers.

In 1986, Carpenter, managing Cecil Green’s successful Senate campaign, rose at a public forum and accused Green’s opponent of sexually harassing a young female aide. Though the allegation was never proven, it made the newspaper headlines the next morning, and Carpenter used those clippings in a negative mailer later in the campaign.

When he is not running campaigns, Carpenter likes to try his hand at other games of chance. His reputation as a card player is almost legend at the Capitol. While in the Senate, he was among a small group of legislators who played poker about once a month for several years. One player said the stakes were “low--you could win or lose a couple hundred dollars in a night.” Others say more was at risk.

Carpenter is also an expert backgammon player, and years ago he played in tournaments at a Los Angeles club with Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner, film producer John Huston and other celebrities. Once, he tried to gain an extra edge by calculating the possible chances of every backgammon move.

Carpenter takes a similar approach to building his financial portfolio, studying the Wall Street Journal daily at his desk while actively playing the stock market. His financial disclosure forms show that Carpenter speculates on the highly volatile market in stock index options. He rarely holds stock for more than a few months and, more often than not, earns a handsome profit.

Astute Investments

He bought Walt Disney Co. stock options in September, 1986, and sold them four months later at nearly five times the purchase price. Carpenter bought stock in GTECH Corp. in the fall of 1985 and doubled his money in six months, selling the stock after the Rhode Island firm obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the fledgling California lottery. Carpenter sold the stock in February, 1986, just before the stock peaked and began a steep decline that continues to this day.

Carpenter has also invested heavily in real estate. In 1985, he reported receiving a no-interest, unsecured loan for “more than $10,000” from Insured Developers Co. of Los Angeles, a construction firm in which he had invested. The next year he sold his investment for a profit of at least $10,000 and repaid the loan. Carpenter bought shares last year in two construction partnerships managed by an affiliate of Insured Developers.

Shared Holdings

Many of Carpenter’s financial holdings are shared with Janeth Carpenter, his wife of 32 years, under the name Janaco Investments Inc. Carpenter legally separated from his wife in 1986 and now is living in Downey with Doris T. Morrow, his former Senate aide.

While Carpenter and Morrow worked together in the Capitol, they jointly bought four repossessed Sacramento properties from the federal Housing and Urban Development Department. Morrow loaned Carpenter more than $10,000 in 1985 to finance one of the purchases.

Morrow joined his district office in 1981 as a messenger and was transferred to his Sacramento staff in 1984 at an annual salary of $13,932. Two years later, Carpenter named Morrow his administrative assistant and raised her salary to $31,008.

A year ago, Carpenter and Morrow climbed 18,000 feet up the base of Mt. Everest, and earlier this year they hiked up 14,000-foot Mt. Shasta in Northern California.

Friends say the determination that Carpenter showed in mountaineering typified his intense, self-reliant demeanor. They describe Carpenter as a loner who has an instinctive skepticism about others.

“He used to tell me I was a terrible judge of character because I believed everybody,” one said.