Staffers of the Losers Try to Keep Chins Up

Receptionist Molly Bien has answered telephones for the state Department of Justice in Los Angeles for 18 years, and nothing at work has upset her as much as the Tuesday election that made her boss a loser.

“Isn’t it awful?” Bien asked Wednesday between phone calls, referring to Atty Gen. John K. Van de Kamp’s loss to Dianne Feinstein in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. “People just can’t understand why they would choose her over him.”

Saddened and a bit angry, Bien did what any good employee would do the day after defeat: She telephoned the boss’s office and offered her condolences. “I would only see him in the elevator, and he always was with a body guard, but I felt so badly,” she said.

Bien wasn’t alone in her disappointment. While television cameras and newspaper reporters buzzed around the victors in the Tuesday election, the rank-and-file bureaucrats and secretaries who toil in the offices of the losers quietly and, in some cases, awkwardly attempted to return to routines. In the workaday environs of Van de Kamp, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, City Councilman Robert Farrell, state Sen. John Seymour and other incumbents seeking higher office, the day after was one of treading lightly, keeping the chin up and the nose to the grindstone.

“This morning was obviously rough,” said Craig Wilson, a worker for Seymour (R-Anaheim) who who lost his bid to become the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. “Everybody had to deal with their parents’ phone call. . . . That’s always kind of tough to deal with.”

There were even tears at some work stations. Mike Botula, Reiner’s news secretary, wept early Wednesday morning as he comforted Reiner after he lost the Democratic nomination for attorney general.

“I said, ‘Boss, we were here for you yesterday, and we are going to be here for you tomorrow,’ ” said Botula, who choked up again when telling the story.

Some employees made special trips down the hall or across the office just to check in on the boss. Others sent flowers. But for most, post-election protocol dictated laying low and avoiding a fuss.

“It is awkward,” said Regina Birdsell, Van de Kamp’s press secretary, who was surprised when he showed up for work. “ . . . All of us thought, ‘Gee, he must feel bad.”’

Carolyn Weigand, a 50-year-old part-time college art teacher, kept her eyes downcast because she was afraid she would cry if she watched as her candidate in the 72nd Assembly District Democratic primary, Jerry Yudelsen, gave his concession speech Tuesday night. But Weigand was up bright and early Wednesday morning, eager to read the paper.

Weigand, a longtime Garden Grove resident, said she and her husband, a police officer for the city, had spent almost all of their free time in the waning weeks of the campaign working for their candidate.

“This morning I went out to get the paper first thing even before coffee,” she said. “I was just hoping I’d open it up and it would say ‘Yudelsen Wins’ in great big print and a smiling picture.”

Despite the grim returns on election night, she said, “I kept thinking the good precincts are yet to come.”

Kaifa Tulay, Farrell’s legislative assistant, arrived early Wednesday at city hall to pull together a speech for the councilman on banking services in low-income sectors of the city, including parts of Farrell’s South-Central Los Angeles district. Farrell failed in his bid for the Democratic nomination for the 48th Assembly District, but he showed up Wednesday for a City Council meeting eager to speak about banking problems.

“We had to get right back into the routine,” Tulay said. “Emotionally everyone is down, but he was in a fighting mood this morning. He said this is just the first time, that he will be back again. That helped people.”

Around the corner, Hannu Yu, who had toyed with the idea of moving to Sacramento if Farrell won a seat in the Legislature, pecked away at her computer in Farrell’s third floor office as another deputy talked nearby with some constituents.

“It is something that he really wanted,” Yu said. “That is what you think about.”

On the 18th floor of the Los Angeles County Criminal Courts Building, Reiner arrived for work half an hour early. He met with several of his closest advisers, assuring them that he was ready “to go to work.”

The mood in the office, however, was decidedly flat.

“I am still trying to readjust,” said Gregory Thompson, Reiner’s chief deputy. “I have to get the focus right. It is like changing glasses. The first couple of days you have them you aren’t sure you are seeing quite right.”

Jack B. White, chief of the office’s bureau of investigation, said most everyone was still in shock.

“People are just astonished that he was beaten,” White said. “I had looked forward to perhaps joining Mr. Reiner in Sacramento. He hadn’t been elected and I hadn’t been invited, but I guess we took some things for granted.”

On the elevators at the Criminal Courts Building, deputy district attorneys gossiped about the results, some wondering aloud what it would mean for them, while others delighted in seeing their boss--unpopular with many--take an embarrassing fall.

Gallows humor could be heard. “Yesterday, we were all trying to figure out who would be next in line,” one Reiner underling wisecracked for colleagues. “Now we know. His name is Ira.”

At Farrell’s office, receptionist Nellie Nelson was a little put off by the commotion the election had created.

“You win some and you lose some,” Nelson said. “A lot of people are calling and want to have a long conversation, but I just don’t have the time being on the switchboard and all.”

For Seymour, Tuesday had the sickening feeling of deja vu.

His confidence boosted by polls showing that he was beating Orange County colleague state Sen. Marian Bergeson in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor, Seymour agreed to a short television interview at the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel about 8:30 p.m. But when he squared around to face the camera, the reporter lowered the boom.

“He said, ‘Well, senator, I just checked with my office and exit polls show you’ve lost,’ ” Seymour recounted on Wednesday. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s 1972 all over again.’ I was shocked.”

In 1972, Seymour received the same kind of shock when he walked into what was supposed to be a victory party at the Disneyland Hotel after his first race for the Anaheim City Council. “I was bragging to to my supporters that it was not a question of winning but how much we’re going to win by,” Seymour said. “Gee, I was cocky as hell.”

At the victory party, however, he got a rude awakening. The first man at the door was a good friend with bad news.

“He said, ‘John, it’s over. You lost.’ ” The losing trend was first obvious in the absentee ballots and held all night, he said.

Some of that stomach-wrenching feeling came back on Tuesday night, in the glare of the television lights, Seymour said. “It’s not that I was overconfident, but I was just emotional,” he said.

Times staff writers Ralph Frammolino and Rose Ellen O’Connor contributed to this report.