ELECTIONS / 22ND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT : Huffington’s Spending Puts Heat on Lagomarsino

In one of the nation’s most expensive primary contests, a wealthy Santa Barbara 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 (R-Ventura).

Like the independent presidential candidate, 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 vows to spend whatever it takes to defeat Lagomarsino, a political institution who represented portions of Ventura County for 34 years before moving north to run in the 22nd Congressional District that encompasses Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

In the past 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 has fought back with sharp accusations that Huffington is a Texas 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 this year, Lagomarsino, a millionaire in his own right, has loaned his campaign $192,000 and raised about $219,000 in donations.

Yet some of the congressman’s staff members privately confide that they are worried about the election’s outcome. Although they say their polls show 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, have 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 chairwoman. “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 presenting him as a conservative businessman who, unlike Lagomarsino, favors abortion rights.

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

He has mailed 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 about his candidacy to the homes of about 10,000 Republicans. “The truth is, we don’t have a Congress, we have a club,” Huffington said 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.”

But Lagomarsino, who has served 19 years in the House and 34 years in public office, has been a political survivor. He was one of the few Republicans to first be elected 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.

He received a written endorsement from President Bush after White House political strategists and Gov. Pete Wilson urged the lifelong Ventura County resident to move north to the newly drawn district to avoid a primary battle with his protege, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley).

Republican leaders, including Vice President Dan Quayle, at first tried to persuade Huffington not to take on the valued Republican. But the pressure seemed only to strengthen the resolve of Huffington, 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 is “Picasso: Creator and Destroyer,” a controversial biography of the painter.

Looking into Huffington’s finances, Lagomarsino has managed to plant a few barbs.

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

Huffington responds 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.

Lagomarsino’s campaign has grown uncharacteristically shrill. In one case, Lagomarsino 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.”

Stout said she was shocked by Lagomarsino’s letter, particularly because she and her friends have been satisfied with Lagomarsino in office. “I would never say a word against Bob Lagomarsino,” she said. “But Mr. Huffington came along with fresh, new ideas. I think we will lose out if we don’t take him.”

Most of Lagomarsino’s counterattacks have 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, who is running for the Republican 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.”