Bates Ponders ‘What If’s’ After 4 Terms in Congress : Politics: Loss to Cunningham in 44th District race leaves him pondering future as he leaves Washington.

To be told, at age 49, to find a new job, that your services are no longer needed in the business where you have worked for 20 years, would be, for anyone, a traumatic experience.

When that humbling message is delivered in the most public way imaginable, as happens to an incumbent politician who loses an election, the resulting shock, depression and bitterness are magnified.

For outgoing Rep. Jim Bates, his upset loss in November’s 44th Congressional District race has forced him to confront that turbulent mixture of emotions. While his opponent prepares to be sworn in today in Washington, Bates is struggling to “close this door and move ahead” as he soberly ponders life after Congress--a formidable challenge made more so because of its very public nature.

“Having something like this on Page 1 doesn’t make it any easier to handle,” Bates said, smiling wryly during an interview in his now-closed district office. “It’s humiliating, embarrassing. When you fail in this business, the world knows it. You want to get on with life and look ahead. But when you feel like everybody’s watching, it adds to the pressure.”

Nearly eight weeks after losing his supposedly “safe” congressional seat, the San Diego Democrat says that the initial despair has yielded to sporadic pangs, usually when he reads a newspaper or watches television and comes across a story relating to Congress.

“You see a story about some issue you’ve worked on or something you’d be involved with, and then it hits you--you’re no longer a United States congressman,” Bates said. “Those are the toughest times--the moments when you realize you’re no longer who you were, that you no longer can make things happen.”

Having savored the headiness of serving in Congress--a political Mt. Everest whose peak has been scaled by only about 5,000 people in the nation’s history--Bates has found that the fall from that summit is as devastating as the ascent was exhilarating.

“You’re a congressman one day and a loser the next,” Bates said, sitting amid some of the clutter and moving boxes that marked the end of his eight-year congressional career. “That’s the reality, and it doesn’t take long to sink in. This is the No. 1 disappointment in my life--no doubt about it.”

Even while exploring new job opportunities in areas ranging from investment banking to lobbying, Bates has spent the weeks since his Nov. 6 loss wistfully recalling the highlights of a 20-year political career that took him from San Diego City Hall to Congress, as well as rethinking the what-ifs of his narrow upset loss to Republican Randall (Duke) Cunningham.

Amid the kind of sympathetic swell that often follows an electoral loss, Bates’ allies, too, have burnished his record, which even some skeptics have come to view in a newly charitable light, albeit grudgingly. If they agree on little else, both sides acknowledge that the departure of the only congressional Democrat south of Los Angeles could hurt San Diego by removing its prime contact with the Democratic leadership that dominates Congress.

“Jim was the point man for the city on a lot of things,” said San Diego City Councilman John Hartley, a fellow Democrat who has encouraged Bates to try to recapture the seat in 1992. “His loss is San Diego’s loss.”

Lionel Van Deerlin, the last San Diego congressman to be defeated--a Democratic victim of the 1980 Reagan landslide--perhaps understands better than anyone else Bates’ shaken psyche.

“It’s a real jolt to your ego, of course, and can raise some self-doubts,” said Van Deerlin, whose nine-term career was ended by Republican Duncan Hunter. “It’s especially tough for Bates, because this hits him mid-career at a fairly early age.”

Though any political loss is unsettling for its victim, Bates believes that he perhaps feels the blow to his self-esteem more acutely because of his personal background.

Born in a taxi outside a Denver hospital, Bates endured a difficult childhood in which he was shuffled between orphanages and foster homes, with little contact with his natural parents.

His father, a roustabout who worked odd jobs in oil fields and as a truck driver, left the family when Bates, then only 6 months old, was suffering from rickets and pneumonia. The only time that Bates remembers seeing his father was when he visited his 7-year-old son--and died soon after of lung cancer.

“He just stood there and looked at me, but never held me,” Bates recalled. “I never forgot that.” Bates’ mother still lives in Colorado, but the two have never been close.

On his own in a boarding home by age 15, Bates entered the Marine Corps when he was 17. After his discharge, he spent the next decade attending night school at San Diego State University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1974, and working jobs ranging from a bank loan officer to a marketing analyst for a doughnut company.

“With that kind of beginning--a poor background, a broken home--I always wanted to prove something to myself and make a name for myself,” Bates said. “Self-image has always been important. So to be (rejected by voters) is probably the worst thing that could happen.”

Elected to the City Council and later to the County Board of Supervisors in the early 1970s, Bates quickly displayed the aggressive, dogged style that typified his career, blending a heavy emphasis on constituent service with advocacy of programs that reflected his fiscal conservatism and moderate to liberal stance on social issues.

As a councilman and supervisor, he authored no-smoking ordinances that, at the time, were among the most stringent in the nation. He also played a key role in development of the San Diego Trolley and in the passage of the county’s landmark workfare program, which required able-bodied welfare recipients to work for their benefits.

When San Diego’s growth produced a new congressional seat in 1982, the Democratic controlled Legislature designed a heavily Democratic district that, from the outset, was widely referred to within political circles as the “Bates district.” Blessed with the kind of demographic advantage that effectively discourages serious opposition, then-Supervisor Bates handily captured the seat and had no difficulty holding onto it--until last month.

Upon his arrival in Congress, Bates showed little regard for former House Speaker Sam Rayburn’s admonition that freshmen congressmen should “go along to get along.” Bates beat out other members of the California delegation for a coveted seat on the House Energy Committee, and later infuriated Democratic leaders by spearheading a drive for a party caucus that ultimately led to the leadership’s decision to abandon support for the MX missile.

Throughout his four two-year terms, Bates compiled a strong record on environmental and health issues, sponsoring key clean-air, ozone-protection and trauma care legislation. In addition to playing a much-publicized role in exposing military procurement excesses, Bates also helped to secure funding to expand the trolley, address the border sewage problem and for other local programs.

“Among the local delegation, Jim Bates clearly was the top environmentalist,” said Barbara Bamberger, conservation coordinator of the local Sierra Club. “He was always there for us, very dependable and very responsive.”

As the sole Democrat in a San Diego delegation rounded out by three Republicans, Bates also played a valuable role in insuring that local legislative priorities, in the words of one city administrator, “got in the majority loop” in the Democratic controlled Congress.

“Jim was effective in making sure that San Diego’s case was presented to the (Democratic) leadership,” said John O’Donnell, one of the city’s Washington lobbyists. “He was a very hard driver and very tenacious. His energy is definitely something that will be missed.”

Bates’ occasionally abrasive, bull-in-a-china-shop style, however, at times also undermined his effectiveness. In a profession whose practitioners have long memories, his scrapes with House leaders and frequent caustic remarks, inside and outside Congress, minimized his accumulation of the political IOUs that are the prime currency in any legislative body.

“ ‘Smooth’ is not a word I’d used to describe him,” said one Midwestern congressman who served with Bates on the Energy Committee. Another Capitol Hill observer added that Bates “didn’t know how complicated his job was at times just because of his style.”

Bates, however, insists he did know that, but preferred to regard his rough-and-tumble manner not as something that needed to be moderated, but rather as a mark of distinction. A street fighter by nature, Bates argues that his brash style separated him from politicians “who are always trying to play it down the middle.”

“At times, I was obnoxious and irritating, which aren’t typical political traits,” Bates acknowledged. “I like to think I did that in the interest of my constituents, but a lot of it was just my personality. At least I know that I never acted or voted against my conscience, never traded my vote and never sold my vote.”

Even more than his legislative accomplishments, however, Bates took immense pride in his office’s constituent casework, which he saw as a logical extension of his persistent efforts to speak for the politically disadvantaged and socially downtrodden.

If some view the long, often tedious hours involved in helping citizens resolve problems with the federal bureaucracy as being the unglamorous minutiae of a congressman’s job, Bates reveled in it. Routinely working 14-hour days, Bates kept his office open six days a week--a rarity in Congress--and enjoyed half-seriously billing himself as “America’s hardest-working congressman.”

“That’s where a lot of the satisfaction came in this job, because that was where you could really get things done for people,” Bates explained. “With bills and legislation, things sometimes get a little blurry. But with casework, you can clearly see the impact from problem to resolution. I’ll miss that.”

Even in mid-December, only days before he was required to vacate his office, Bates continued to meet with a procession of constituents seeking relief on problems ranging from tax and immigration disputes to alleged harassment of defense whistle-blowers. Though he promised to do whatever he could in his limited time remaining, at times, his frustration over the irony of being asked to help the district that voted him out of office boiled over.

“You’re asking me to solve the problems of the world in a few seconds, and I’m not going to do it,” Bates told one woman. To another man, he snapped: “I don’t know if the word got back to you, but I lost my election. I’ll be gone long before your problem’s solved.”

Bates’ succinct summary of his 1,665-vote loss to Cunningham is “not enough money, not enough time, not enough breaks.”

Admitting that he blames “the guy I see when I look in the mirror” for his defeat, Bates concedes that the exceptionally heavy political baggage that he carried into the campaign--the result of his 1989 rebuke from the House Ethics Committee over sexual harassment charges lodged by two female staffers--made him particularly vulnerable to voters’ wrath at a time of general anti-incumbent sentiment.

That political damage was exacerbated by Bates’ loss of weeks of valuable campaign time, as the budget impasse between the White House and Congress kept him in Washington until late October. Simultaneously, contributions to his campaign dried up because of two diametrically opposite trends: hedging from past supporters who sensed his possible defeat, and overconfidence from others accustomed to Bates’ tendency to, as one of his strategists put it, “cry wolf about every race he’s ever been in.”

Those liabilities notwithstanding, Bates’ loss was arguably the major surprise in last month’s local elections, if for no reason other than the fact that Democrats hold a daunting 53%-35% registration edge in the southern San Diego district.

“In another year, this might have been survivable,” Bates said. “But this time, anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Still, it comes down to the fact that I made a mistake and paid the price for it. And it was a big price.”

With no firm job offers yet in hand, Bates said that he and his wife likely will remain in Washington until next spring, so that their 15-year-old daughter can complete the school year. Then, Bates’ employment opportunities, combined with his judgment on a possible political comeback, will determine whether his family returns to San Diego.

While some local Democrats view Bates’ defeat as an opening for their own congressional aspirations, others have urged him either to attempt to unseat Cunningham or perhaps run in another district in 1992, should the decennial reapportionment following this year’s census add another congressional seat here.

Describing that prospect as “maybe a little more than 50-50,” Bates said that he will will not decide on a possible political future until he sees how the district boundaries are redrawn and after taking a poll in mid-1991.

“If people say they miss me, who knows?” Bates said. “But if they say good riddance, it’s back to the private sector.”

As he spoke, Bates thumbed through a stack of letters on his desk, most of them expressions of sympathy over his defeat and appreciation for his past assistance. One of them concluded by saying: “The dummies who voted against you will rue the day.”

“Well, if enough people like that are out there, Jim Bates may be back,” Bates said, chuckling. “But what I want to know is, where were they on Election Day?”