COLUMN ONE : A Savvy ‘Free Agent for God’ : The Rev. Louis Sheldon is part fiery preacher, part cool-headed lobbyist. Opponents question his religious support but don’t deny his political clout.

At stake was the way public schoolchildren would be taught the origins of life, and lobbyist Louis P. Sheldon was playing the game of secular politics at the furious pace that has made him both feared and revered.

With a dogged diligence, he grabbed a front-row seat at a recent State Board of Education meeting and set out to work the crowd. State educators on a first-name basis with “Reverend Lou” got a quick lesson on the “danger” of teaching evolution as dogma. Newcomers to the debate got his Anaheim business card. Media crews got quick and quotable “sound bites.”

God got nary a mention.

But a few hours later, fresh off a chartered flight to Ventura, Sheldon the lobbyist became Sheldon the visiting preacher. Gone was the cool Capitol tone as Sheldon quoted the Book of Chronicles in fiery indignation, urging churchgoers to stand up and shout against homosexuality, abortion and other modern-day “evils.”

At once preacher and political player, the scrappy, 55-year-old Anaheim resident has parlayed this ability to adapt his message to fit his varying audiences--to temper tone and style at a hallelujah’s notice--into a growing visibility around the state as a self-proclaimed spokesman for the religious right.

Today, riding a crest of national publicity from three startling election victories by opponents of gay rights in California, Sheldon is basking in a new prominence that seems to assure that he can no longer be dismissed by his detractors as merely an Orange County religious gadfly.

Sheldon’s roles have been many over the last three decades: small-town Midwest pastor; alienated rabble-rouser in the mainline Presbyterian church; North Dakota congressional aide and Delaware gubernatorial campaign worker; Christian educator and aide to televangelist Pat Robertson; would-be businessman, and failed investor.

But Sheldon now seems to have found his most influential niche, much to the chagrin of a growing chorus of critics who say that his power may be more illusion than reality.

Sheldon’s assertion of “representing” about 6,500 churches and thousands of other individuals in the state’s religious community may well be exaggerated, according to interviews with both religious allies and opponents.

So, too, may be the role he contends he played in conservative-religious victories, such as those over gay rights advocates at the polls on Nov. 7 in Irvine, San Francisco and Concord.

Yet even his staunchest critics acknowledge that, if success as a lobbyist means staking out a spot in the public eye, gaining access to people with power and creating at least the appearance of influence, Sheldon is nothing if not successful.

“This is a man who does a tremendous job of spreading hatred and fear to further his own career,” said Leonard Graff of the San Francisco-based National Gay Rights Advocates. “He’s very dangerous.”

Sheldon says he has no aspirations to seeking elected office or even a formal position in the religious Establishment, saying that such a career route would be too stifling for the opinionated minister.

“It’s not me, I don’t think,” Sheldon says. “I’d have to become more cautious, more diplomatic.” No, the role of free-agent lobbyist for God is “my calling,” says the bespectacled man in the oft-rumpled suit who rushes through Sacramento crosswalks with a loaded briefcase caddy in tow.

Among the targets of Sheldon’s wrath are homosexuals, whom he contends are attacking the “heterosexual ethic” by imposing their “chosen life style” on others; “anti-religious” public educators, who he says corrupt young people, contradict the Bible and promote promiscuity; pro-choice “murderers,” and “sleaze” pornographers and immoral gamblers who he says tear away at the fiber of society.

Sporadic Success

In city halls and election campaigns from San Francisco to Santa Ana and from Riverside to Irvine, Sheldon has lashed out with sporadic success against these perceived threats and others, all in the name of God and in his own small, 7-year-old nonprofit organization.

But myriad critics, fearing the potential statewide clout of Sheldon and his Traditional Values Coalition of Anaheim, question whether Sheldon represents anything but himself.

“A media creation,” some say of the man who just last week was described in a USA Today profile as “a prophet” and a “California Falwell.”

A savvy strategist, others suggest, with a sharp sense of timing and a mastery of the media, but with no real constituency or broad financial backing.

Indeed, as the evangelist has reached new heights of exposure, opponents have in turn stepped up their charges of deception, misrepresentation and bigotry against him.

Said state school Supt. Bill Honig: “He takes the most volatile and extreme issues and uses them to arouse people’s emotions. And until very recently, I think he’s pulled the wool over a lot of people’s eyes.”

It is the public persona of Lou Sheldon that grates on critics such as Honig and Graff, the singular and unwavering image of a fervent Bible-thumper, a modern-day Billy Sunday.

But the private Sheldon offers a more enigmatic portrait.

He was born in 1934 in Washington, D.C., to a Protestant father and an Orthodox Jewish mother. But he shunned religion until age 16, he says, when he became a “born-again” Christian, persuaded to go to church by a local wino who told him: “ ‘What you need is some old-fashioned religion.’ ”

He is an ordained minister trained at Princeton Theological Seminary. But he has intermittently moved in and out of politics over the last three decades and now, by his own choosing, has no congregation of his own.

Lives Modestly

He appears to wield power and prestige in Sacramento. But, in an age when some high-profile religious figures have struck it rich and staked out empires, he has a staff of just 10 paid and volunteer employees, including his 99-year-old mother-in-law, his wife, Beverly, and one of his four children. And he lives modestly in an older, two-story Anaheim house on a reported $21,000 annual income, driving a 1984 Pontiac and staying with friends or relatives during his frequent lobbying trips to the capital.

He professes “no interest in wins and losses.” But he nonetheless claims credit that even some allies say he doesn’t fully deserve, and he readily lists his “coalition’s accomplishments” in his literature.

Among the legislation he says he has influenced: a measure clarifying child abuse laws to say that parents can spank a child as a means of discipline; another encouraging that sexual abstinence be included in school curricula; one strengthening the criminal definitions of obscenity and pornography, and Gov. Deukmejian’s veto of a bill that would have provided school-based pregnancy testing, abortion referrals and contraceptives to students.

Sheldon’s scorn has been vented most fiercely of late against homosexuality, an issue that he says will soon surpass abortion as the most pressing moral battle for the religious community.

Declaring “open warfare,” he says homosexuality is an immoral but chosen and curable illness, like alcoholism or drug abuse. He accuses gays of trying to subvert the “heterosexual ethic” by flaunting their “promiscuity,” by promoting homosexuality in the schools through gay counseling programs, and by seeking “special rights” under the law. And he suggests that AIDS victims be segregated in “cities of refuge” for the good of themselves and others.

“I’m not a gay basher,” Sheldon insists. “I’m not homophobic. I feel sorry for a guy who can’t lay with a woman.” And he answers the mocking charges from gay activists who say his seeming obsession with their lives must mean that he is a latent homosexual: “I know what gets my juices going. I know what turns me on. I know my sexual identity.”

Public Tactics

The public tactics Sheldon uses to make his points are often explosive.

He demanded that the city of Santa Ana withdraw permits for this fall’s Gay Pride Festival at a public park and, when they refused, published their home addresses and helped mount an ongoing recall campaign against City Council members who defied him.

And through his emotional newsletters, he has been able on occasion to muster hundreds of outraged protesters at public meetings and avalanches of letters to government officials--enough a few years ago, for example, to help bury a proposal by the state Fair Employment and Housing Commission making religious institutions subject to certain anti-discrimination hiring measures.

“He made the commission very aware, very quickly, that a large number of people were against (the proposal), and that certainly had something to do with it being killed,” recalled Steven Owyang, an aide to the commission.

The response from critics has been swift and similarly forceful.

Sheldon’s Anaheim home has been picketed. He has been spat at, encircled by a chain of counterprotesters at the Gay Pride Festival in Santa Ana, and burned in effigy. He is Public Enemy No. 1 in California among a host of civil rights and liberal-oriented interest groups that accuse him of religious hysteria.

But Sheldon appears unfazed, saying that even negative exposure is better than none at all.

“I just make sure they spell my name right,” he said. “I don’t care what other people say. I’m no paper tiger. . . . I am representing people who want to save the Judeo-Christian ethic. It’s a way of life that’s at stake here.”

Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), an ally, says that “Lou Sheldon is in the forefront of a political struggle to say that the First Amendment does not guarantee freedom from religion, but freedom of religion.”

Sheldon’s organization is small by Sacramento lobbying standards, but its financial course parallels his recent growth in exposure: Donations to his Anaheim coalition and his other nonprofit creation, the American Liberties Institute, are up 154% since 1985 to about $286,000 last year, state records show.

Early Support

Sheldon credits retired food company executive Herbert B. Leo, an Orange County civic booster sometimes called “Mr. Anaheim,” with early organizational and financial support. Over the last five years, Leo has given Sheldon more than $250,000.

Leo serves as chairman of the board of both the Traditional Values Coalition and the American Liberties Institute, and says he stays in almost daily contact with Sheldon.

“I stand upon the shoulders of Herb Leo,” Sheldon said.

“If it wasn’t for Herb Leo,” Beverly Sheldon agrees, “God might have done it another way.”

Sheldon and Leo also sought to use their mutual interest in religious issues to turn a profit in 1983, but that proved a flop. Both men invested in a a “Christian” financial institution called the New City Bank of Orange, set up to give loans to churches. But after some non-church loans went bad, the bank failed. Leo says he lost about $750,000 and Sheldon lost $25,000.

Only a few years earlier, Sheldon had lost more than $40,000 on a failed housing redevelopment and resale project in Watts.

His coalition, however, shows no signs of ill health. Beyond the recent financial growth of his organization, further testimony to Sheldon’s appearance of influence is that several Southland politicians contacted for this article declined to talk about him for fear of a political backlash.

“I’ve already survived this guy,” said one elected official in Orange County who tangled with Sheldon recently. “He’s gone for now.”

Said state Sen. Newton Russell (R-Glendale), a Sheldon ally who has worked with him to pass a law encouraging student abstinence: “Sure, he’s written off by some people as a preachy, goody-two-shoes person, and he ruffles a lot of feathers.

“But I think he represents a legitimate constituency. And he’s a tireless worker and gets the job done probably more effectively than anyone else on our side of these traditional issues.”

One key to Sheldon’s success has been his mastery of a bit of advice given to him in his days as a self-described political “greenhorn.”

The year was 1985, the forum a state Assembly committee hearing on an ultimately unsuccessful bill that would have outlawed workplace bias against gays.

Sheldon had just finished testifying against the bill--railing in fiery rhetoric on the sin of homosexuality and the scourge of AIDS--when he was cornered by liberal panel member Rep. Dick Floyd (D-Carson).

“Don’t tell us what the Bible says--we don’t want to hear about that,” the Democratic assemblyman told Sheldon sternly. “Tell us about public policy.”

A Lesson Learned

The message hit home. By his own acknowledgement, Sheldon can still be as abrasive and outspoken as ever--the same person who caused a stir back in high school when he tried to start a Bible class; who did the same in North Dakota in the 1960s when he started a governor’s prayer breakfast, and who left the mainline United Presbyterian Church in 1980 over disagreement about his outspoken style.

“I’m not the kind of person who can go into a room and sit quietly,” Sheldon said.

But increasingly over the years, Sheldon has learned to shape his pitch to fit the audience, offering more subdued political input to legislators, quotable commentary to the media and old-time preaching to his religious audiences.

“What makes him effective,” suggests state Board of Education member Joe Stein, a frequent target of Sheldon’s lobbying, “is what makes any salesperson effective--he’s keeping at you aggressively with a definite message, he seems to have some backing, and he’s very visible.”

Opponents, however, assert that Sheldon’s effectiveness is largely an illusion.

The criticism comes not just from such traditional opponents as pro-choice and gay rights activists, but also from conservative religious figures.

Dwight Burchett, a Sacramento pastor and a leader of the California branch of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, said: “You have to honor the guy for his energy, but he just doesn’t have the bona fide organization or the support that he claims. He’s ego-motivated--it’s a hype approach that he puts in high gear.”

Sheldon refuses to identify the 6,500 churches that he says his coalition represents. But he acknowledged that many of those he counts as supporters may only be receiving his newsletter free of cost, without giving money or taking an active role in the Traditional Values Coalition.

“He makes it sound like he’s speaking for all of us (on the conservative-religious right),” said Leslie Dutton, head of the Santa Monica-based California Pro-Family Coalition, a Santa Monica group that opposes homosexuality and pornography, “and that’s simply erroneous.”

“The way he does business is to wait for a movement to get started, run along with it and pop up and take credit,” Dutton charged. “He’s out for the headlines.”

Indeed, Sheldon’s high visibility in part got him headlines around the country earlier this month for having led pressure from the religious right against the state Board of Education, prompting the board to tone down language in a curriculum statement that was seen as hostile to the teaching of creationism.

“Censorship.” “First Amendment rights.” “Freedom and flexibility.” Sheldon pushed the phrases over and over before the television cameras, in lobbying sessions and instant mailers during several days of debate over the state’s position on the teaching of evolution.

And he again demonstrated his media know-how when it came time to assess the impact of this month’s three electoral defeats of gay rights causes around California.

After Irvine residents voted in November to repeal the city’s 15-month-old ban on discrimination against gays, Sheldon--despite having no official role in the campaign, moved quickly. He wanted to set up a press conference to hail the victory over “special rights” for a “chosen life style.” But local organizers of the Irvine campaign wanted to wait a few days and and savor the win, annoying Sheldon.

Sheldon met the press the day after the vote anyway--without the Irvine campaigners. And when his remarks showed up prominently in newspapers around the state and country, it was the Irvine organizers’ turn to be annoyed.

The gay rights vote came just two days before the Board of Education debate on evolution, swamping Sheldon with more than two dozen phone calls from reporters nationwide who wanted to know about both issues. Even the usually exuberant Sheldon seemed dazed. “This is too much,” he said at one point, shaking his head between phone calls.

Yet, he says he has no interest in slowing down.

Sheldon says he wants to expand his lobbying and step up his attacks on the “homosexual agenda,” in part by organizing a national conference on homosexuality next year in Washington.

He is also working on his first book, a look at the “ungagging” of churches through political activism. His long-term goal is to expand his coalition to half a million supporters and launch a statewide initiative to dramatically reorganize the public schools, giving local districts more power to put into practice their own educational values.

Such a campaign would likely put to the test Sheldon’s assertion of deep support among the religious right, a claim that Orange County political consultant Harvey Englander likens to a poker game.

“He’s been playing like he’s got a strong hand,” Englander said. “But at some point, someone’s going to call him, and he’s either going to produce thousands of people to walk the precincts and fill the voting booths, or he’s going to have to fold and walk away from the table. It’ll be interesting to see.”

Times staff writers Mark Pinsky, John Dart and Victor Zonana contributed to this story. Staffer Dan Crump provided research.