CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS ’92 : CONGRESS / 22nd DISTRICT : Whatever It Takes : Millionaire Throws His Money Behind Bid to Unseat Lagomarsino

In one of the nation’s most expensive primary contests, a wealthy businessman who likens himself to Ross Perot has spent nearly $2.2 million of his own money to unseat longtime Republican Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino.

Like Perot, who is expected soon to announce an independent presidential bid, Michael Huffington portrays himself as a political outsider from Texas who made his fortune as a savvy entrepreneur and is not beholden to anyone. He has vowed to spend whatever it takes to win the 22nd Congressional District that encompasses Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo County.

In the last five months, Huffington has hired a team of seasoned political consultants and inundated his party’s registered voters with a sophisticated multimedia campaign that projects him as a new generation Republican who should replace a tired career politician.

“Michael Huffington is every incumbent’s nightmare,” said John Davies, a Santa Barbara political consultant. “He’s an attractive candidate with no record, great contacts and all the money in the world. What do you attack him on?”

Lagomarsino, who lost the home-base portion of his district in Ventura County through reapportionment, has fought back with sharp accusations that Huffington is a carpetbagger who is trying to buy a seat in Congress. “It’s the hardest primary battle that I’ve had,” Lagomarsino said. “It’s certainly the most expensive.”

So far, Lagomarsino, a millionaire in his own right, has loaned his campaign $192,000 and raised about $219,000 in donations.

Some of the congressman’s staff members privately confide that they are worried about the election’s outcome. Although they say their polls show that the congressman is “comfortably ahead” in the Santa Barbara area, it is difficult to determine who is ahead in San Luis Obispo County.

Huffington has set the pace of the campaign. His attacks on Lagomarsino, 65, an affable Republican with deep roots in the community, has caught old guard Republicans off balance and fractured Santa Barbara’s clubby Grand Old Party in a fight between old loyalties and new money.

“This is an earthquake,” said Diane Bowers, Santa Barbara County Republican chairman. “It’s not comfortable, but it is forcing people to look at what they believe in . . . The public is overwhelmed.”

Since the Winter Olympics in February, Huffington, 44, has saturated the airwaves with radio and television ads that present him as a conservative businessman who, unlike Lagomarsino, favors abortion rights for women.

In addition to his own money, Huffington has also spent about $100,000 he raised from about 70 contributors.

He has mailed out booklets, flyers and personalized letters to thousands of voters with a slogan that says: “It’s time for the truth. It’s time for a change.”

He has delivered videotapes touting his candidacy to the homes of about 10,000 Republicans. “The truth is we don’t have a Congress, we have a club,” Huffington says on the tape. “The armchairs of the club are deep and comfortable. . . . Let’s break up that club.”

Most recently, Huffington has criticized Lagomarsino for supporting a local company that sold surveillance cameras to an arms procurer of the Chinese government at the time of the 1989 Tian An Men Square massacre. The cameras, Huffington says, were state-of-the-art equipment used to spy on political dissidents.

Lagomarsino characterizes the criticism as negative politics. He bristles at any mention of the surveillance camera issue. “It’s ridiculous and counterproductive.”

First elected to the House in 1974 after serving 13 years in the state Senate, Lagomarsino has well-established credentials as a political survivor. He was one of the few Republicans to win election to Congress at the height of the Watergate scandal, when Democratic candidates swept most political races.

Four years ago, he again surprised his detractors, fending off a spirited challenge from state Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara). At the end of the contentious campaign, the two candidates had spent more than $3 million combined and Lagomarsino squeaked by with a margin of fewer than 4,000 votes.

A lifelong Ventura County resident, Lagomarsino acceded to the urgings of White House political strategists and California Gov. Pete Wilson that he move north to avoid a primary battle with his protege, Republican Rep. Elton Gallegly, in the aftermath of reapportionment.

In return, he has received a written endorsement from President Bush. And Republican leaders, including Vice President Dan Quayle, tried to persuade Huffington not to take on a valued GOP House member such as Lagomarsino. But the pressure seemed only to strengthen the resolve of Huffington, the heir to a Houston oil and gas fortune, son of the U.S. ambassador to Austria and husband of author-socialite Arianna Huffington. Her most recent book was a controversial biography, “Picasso: Creator and Destroyer.”

Looking into Huffington’s personal finances, Lagomarsino has managed to find some targets for criticism.

He has repeatedly blasted Huffington for failing to pay California income taxes until 1991, even though he bought his $4.5-million Santa Barbara mansion in 1988 and publicly told voters he has lived there for four years.

Huffington says that until 1991, his main residence was in Texas, a state that does not levy income tax. After he came to California permanently as co-owner of a film production company 18 months ago, he and his wife decided to sell their Texas home.

At times, Lagomarsino’s campaign has become uncharacteristically shrill. In one case, he wrote a letter to 95-year-old Mary Stout, a Republican fixture in Santa Barbara who did a radio ad for Huffington.

“While I appreciate your freedom to choose,” Lagomarsino wrote to Stout, “you are now a part of a very negative campaign that is hurting (my wife) Norma and me personally. It is also hurting President Bush and all the other good, hard-working Republicans in office.”

Much of his campaign has focused on Huffington’s money. “Don’t be fooled,” said Lagomarsino’s latest campaign mailer. “Stop an outsider from buying this election.”

Huffington said he needed to dip into his personal fortune to rectify the traditional imbalance that favors incumbents.

“So much of what has had to be spent on this race was to get my name known almost as well as his,” Huffington said. “If people don’t know you, they don’t vote for you. That’s when it becomes an expensive race.”

Although Huffington is becoming well known, his ubiquitous ads may be triggering some backlash.

“Huffington is spending so much money and it is starting to turn some people off,” said Mary Rose, a Santa Barbara consultant for Democratic candidates.

Sandee Beekers, a Republican who is running for the party’s central committee in Santa Barbara, said she is tired of finding her mailbox stuffed with Huffington’s flyers.

“I just throw it away,” Beekers said. “We’ve already heard enough about him on the television.”