House Image Toughens Race for O.C.’s GOP Congressmen

Orange County’s five Republican congressmen are bracing for a rare, unsettled political season, darkened by charges of congressional check-kiting and excessive pay raises, perks and privilege.

And, as is often the case in Washington, the damage--and the best strategy to control it--is in the eye of the beholder.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), who has confessed to overdrawing his House bank account on eight occasions, lays the blame for Congress’ problems with the Democrats.

“Anybody who thinks that the Republicans share the blame for any policies that come through Congress just doesn’t know what’s going on,” said Rohrabacher, one of two local representatives who faces a potentially tough primary challenge.

But Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), who represents southern Orange County, sees things differently.

“I don’t think that this is a partisan matter, and I don’t think that the people are looking at it as a partisan matter,” said Packard, who overdrew his House account four times. “Any Republican who tries to cast the blame on the liberal leadership of the Democrats, I think is barking up the wrong tree.”

There is, however, one issue on which the Orange County conservatives agree--Congress is paralyzed, they say, and all five suggest that House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) will pay the price and be forced out as speaker after the November elections.

The check scandal is just the latest in a series of public relations disasters for Congress. Allegations of embezzlement and drug dealing at the House post office, the controversial vote for a hefty pay raise, and the disclosure that many House members left their bills at the House restaurant unpaid all have contributed to the crisis of public confidence.

The differing assessments of who is to blame for the public’s disgust comes as Rohrabacher, who is serving his second term, and seven-term Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) gear up for what are expected to be spirited challenges from members of their own party in California’s June primary election.

Further complicating the political outlook, all of the incumbents will be running in new districts created as a result of the 1990 census. In some cases, as many as half the voters in a district are likely to be unfamiliar with the sitting congressman.

Rohrabacher will face Costa Mesa Councilman Peter F. Buffa and Huntington Beach Councilman Peter Green in a contest in the new 45th Congressional District, based in Huntington Beach. In the new 46th district, Dornan is being challenged by former Orange County Superior Court Judge Judith M. Ryan, who has vowed to make Dornan’s opposition to abortion rights a principal campaign issue.

Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) is in an uphill primary fight to unseat U.S. Sen. John Seymour, a moderate Republican who was appointed last year to fill the unexpired Senate term of Gov. Pete Wilson.

Packard and Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) also face primary challenges, but those threats are considered less serious. Nevertheless, both lawmakers acknowledge that the angry mood of the electorate could cost them votes.

A recent private poll in Orange County found that 70% of the respondents identified with the anti-incumbent sentiment, a Republican consultant recently told The Times. A similar number agreed with the statement, “It’s time for a change,” the consultant said.

In a recent interview, Rohrabacher previewed his plans for tackling that issue.

“It’s easy for people on the outside looking in to think that any member of Congress should be blamed for what’s going on . . .,” Rohrabacher said. “But the Democratic party has absolute total control, and that’s what I’m telling (the voters).

“I think this started out when Congress gave itself a $50,000-a-year pay raise . . . and followed up in short order by raising the public’s taxes,” he said. “If we were doing our job and the country was doing well, I don’t think that people would complain that you have a gym or would even be thinking about it.”

Cox, the only member of the Orange County congressional delegation who did not overdraw his House bank account, appeared to agree with at least part of Rohrabacher’s assessment.

“Will the voters recognize that the Democratic party has controlled the House of Representatives for 38 years?” asked Cox, who, like Rohrabacher, was first elected in 1988. “Will they blame the problems of the House bank and the House post office on the people who ran them? Or will they instead paint everyone with that same broad brush?

“I’m not sure,” Cox added, “but I think there will be some of that.” Packard, who came to Congress in 1983 after his election as a write-in candidate, said there is plenty of blame to go around for Republicans and Democrats alike. “I speak as one who has watched this operation from within, and I’m convinced it’s not a good operation,” said the former Carlsbad mayor.

While it is easy to place the blame for Congress’ ills on the shoulders of the Democratic leadership, he said, it is a temptation that Republicans should resist.

“I could make that claim,” he said, “but the people aren’t buying it, in my judgment. They’ve reached the point, and their anger is at such a pitch, that they really are not even concerned whether you wrote bad checks, or voted for the pay raise, or voted for the tax increases. They’re angry at all of us, and I think it’s going to cause a lot of trouble.”

At the same time, Packard and Orange County’s other two House veterans, Dannemeyer and Dornan, are casting themselves as outsiders who have never been comfortable with or caught up in the trappings of the what Dornan calls the “imperial Congress.”

“I don’t ride around in limousines,” Packard said. “I don’t have a different lifestyle. But some (members) do, apparently.”

Said Dornan: “This whole plantation mentality around here is exploding, and I couldn’t be happier. . . . My race is a battle in the mailbox to just remind the people that I’ve been battling the imperial Congress my whole career.”

Dannemeyer indicated that he, too, will try to put distance between himself and congressional insiders.

“I’ve never been an insider here,” said Dannemeyer, who has admitted to overdrawing his House bank account 27 times despite being one of the most fiscally conservative members of the House. “I have been a taxpayers’ representative, I have taken on this institution. I’m the guy who forced a roll call vote in February, 1989, (on) the pay raise.”

The real crisis in Congress, Dannemeyer said, is not the pay raise, or the House bank scandal, or the restaurant deadbeats. It is the $400-billion-plus federal deficit, he said.

“Somebody has to tell the American people again and again and again, that if we want to regain control of the destiny of America, we have to retire a lot of people serving here. We need to retire the big spenders, whether they are Democrats or Republicans.”