Non-Candidate Endorsed by Democrats Waffles : Politics: Barbara Jackson plays coy about her ambitions despite having dropped out of the race for Rep. Robert K. Dornan’s seat and getting the backing of a party worried about a LaRouche challenger.

Barbara Jackson, who is on the June ballot for the Democratic Party’s nomination in the 38th Congressional District, says she hopes that her opponents lose--but she won’t go so far as to say that she would like to win.

Jackson, an abortion-rights activist from Buena Park, was a last-minute entry in the race for the seat held by conservative Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) after Ron Kovic, the inspiration for the movie “Born on the Fourth of July,” ended weeks of speculation by announcing that he would not run. Dornan’s largely conservative district stretches from Santa Ana through Garden Grove, Buena Park and Westminster into Cerritos in Los Angeles County.

But last week, Jackson withdrew from the race to protect Planned Parenthood, the organization she works for as a public affairs director. Although Jackson was taking great pains to keep her campaign activities separate from her work for the organization so as not tojeopardize its nonprofit status, she and Planned Parenthood directors felt that the campaign and the organization were becoming inextricably linked in the public eye.

“I was either being directly referred to as ‘the Planned Parenthood candidate’ or every article would include Planned Parenthood in it,” Jackson said Tuesday. While such characterizations were not blatantly unfair or inaccurate, she said, they might “somehow perpetuate the image that . . . Planned Parenthood is involved in electoral politics.”

Jackson’s decision to withdraw from the race came too late to keep her name off the June 5 ballot, leaving Lyndon R. LaRouche Jr. follower Art Hoffmann as the only other candidate in the Democratic primary. Orange County Democratic Party activists endorsed Jackson last weekend in the hope of preventing a November election with Hoffmann as the Democratic candidate against Dornan.

Were Hoffmann to win the nomination, he would also become a member of the Democratic Party’s county and state central committees.

“I have to honestly say that I hope both Bob Dornan and Art Hoffmann are rejected,” said Jackson, who did not attend the weekend endorsement caucus. “To say that I want to win would be talking out of both sides of my mouth.”

Hoffmann, who did not actively seek the county Democratic endorsement, said the party’s concerns about his candidacy are “silly.”

“It’s just a continuation of the ‘get LaRouche’ operation,” said Hoffmann, a technical writer from Santa Ana. “Two years ago, Don Marquis, a LaRouche candidate, ran unopposed in the 39th District for the seat held by Rep. William E. Dannemeyer) and . . . the integrity of the party--that’s an oxymoron--was not harmed.”

Had she continued with her campaign, Jackson said, it would have been strictly a weekend and nighttime affair, at least until the last few weeks before the election, when she would have considered a leave of absence.

Taking a more extended leave from her job to campaign was out of the question, Jackson said, both for her own financial reasons and because of Planned Parenthood’s need for an experienced public affairs director at a time when abortion rights are in question.

And while she said that she felt the potential harm her candidacy might cause to Planned Parenthood was “manageable,” others clearly did not.

“I took consultation from a wide variety of people,” she said. “I am not so conceited to think that I am right and everyone else was wrong.”

Jackson insisted that no one told her she had to withdraw, or that she might lose her job if she continued in the race.

“Planned Parenthood . . . couldn’t have even entertained the notion to fire me,” she said. “That’s not the way it works.”

Margie Fites Seigle, executive director of Planned Parenthood in Orange and San Bernardino counties, said that neither she nor board members told Jackson to get out of the race.

“What we could talk about were our concerns . . . about potential damage” to the organization, she said. “I think it could be perceived in the community that we were supporting a candidate, and we cannot do that, and we will not do that.”

Jeanette Reese, president of Orange County Planned Parenthood’s Board of Directors, said she had mixed feelings about Jackson’s candidacy.

“There was confusion (among the public) over Barbara as our public affairs director and Barbara the candidate, and I was certainly concerned about those issues,” Reese said. “But at the same time it’s sad that we don’t have more pro-family and pro-choice legislators in Orange County. She asked me my personal impression and I shared with her those feelings almost verbatim.”

Reese also said that neither she nor any other Planned Parenthood board member told Jackson to stay out of the race.

Democratic Party officials, however, were angry at what they felt was undue and unwise pressure exerted by Planned Parenthood to persuade Jackson to leave the race.

“There is no way it (her candidacy) could have hurt Planned Parenthood,” said Mark Rosen, state Democratic Party regional director for Orange County. “It would have helped the pro-choice movement . . . where you have someone who is professionally a pro-choice advocate running in a year when abortion is a top issue.”