Outsiders Analyze the County

There are outsiders who dismiss Orange County as a bastion of Republican conservatism--the land of fringe politicians, right-wing extremists and wealthy residents who are overly stingy with their taxes.

Orange County residents hate it when that happens.

They say it’s not fair to generalize about Orange County, that today it has a rich ethnic diversity and a cornucopia of ideas, and it is struggling with all the problems of a major metropolis.

Well, the bible that political insiders often use for such shorthand analysis is the National Journal’s political almanac, which contains descriptions and score cards for every member of Congress. The descriptions include a lengthy narrative about each representative’s home district. In the almanac, Orange County residents concerned about their image nationwide will find both good news and bad.

There are three congressional districts--all represented by Republicans--that are wholly contained in Orange County: Robert K. Dornan’s 38th District in the north, William E. Dannemeyer’s 39th District near the center of the county and C. Christopher Cox’s 40th District in the south. Here are some excerpts from the national experts’ view of the county as presented in the Almanac of American Politics 1990:

The 38th District: “A new America has been created within the Orange County grid in the most rapid metropolitan growth of the post-World War II era. . . . (But) to its critics, Orange County came to be synonymous with the white middle class and its values, among which were assumed to be racism and callousness toward the poor, a mindless nationalism and hawkishness, and a lamentable taste for middlebrow kitsch, symbolized by Disneyland in Anaheim and Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral with its drive-in annex in Garden Grove.

“There was some basis to these characterizations as Orange County was growing. . . . But as time went on, Orange County turned out to be less homogeneous and more open to change than its critics supposed.

” . . . As Vietnamese refugees began arriving in large numbers after the fall of Saigon, many headed for the county which had always staunchly supported fighting for their freedom from Communism. The refugees have proved themselves hard workers, with every family member pitching in. . . . The largest concentration of Vietnamese in America today can be found along the Garden Grove and San Diego freeways in Orange County.”

The 39th District: “What kinds of suburbs are these? It’s a mistake to think of Orange County as just a collection of suburbs. . . . In their grid patterns and square moral outlooks, in their comfortable but far from showy affluence and their industriousness, in their apparent ethnic homogeneity and their adherence to traditional family patterns, they resemble those Midwestern towns 40 and 60 miles away from Chicago, which are classified as part of the Chicago metropolitan area by the Census Bureau but in their own residents’ minds are places apart.

“These places also share a strong allegiance to the Republican Party and a conviction that they represent the typical American community.”

The 40th District: “Near Newport Beach are the 1,000 acres the Irvine developers donated for a local branch of the University of California; at the edge of the property a once-small airstrip has become John Wayne Orange County Airport; just to the east is Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza, the highest-volume, upscale shopping center in Southern California. . . .

” . . . This is almost uniformly an affluent area. The subdivisions are walled off from the surrounding roads and freeways. . . . The underlying street patterns, however, are geometrical, as if people were trying to impose a predictable order on the lush and unpredictable landscape of mountain, coast and desert. . . . But Reagan’s themes of traditional values and technological progress remain highly popular. . . .”

Certainly any quick description that tries to grasp the essence of a community may be less than satisfying to the subjects. But at least they didn’t dismiss Southern California culture as “laid back.”

I hate it when that happens.