Dannemeyer’s Down but Not Out of Politics : Future: After losing Senate bid in primary, he plans to help defeat Democratic congressional candidates.

In William E. Dannemeyer’s voice, there was a note of excitement tinged with nostalgia.

The veteran of almost three decades of politics was wistfully recalling the glory years of 1981 and 1982. It was, he said, a brief moment in modern history when the Reagan revolution delivered tax cuts and conservative Republicans felt they had within their grasp the power to change the direction of the country, if not the world.

“They were the two most rewarding years I have had in public service,” he recalled last week.

But more than a decade later, the glow of victory has faded. And for Dannemeyer, personally, it has been replaced by defeat.

Frustrated with the workings of a Congress that would not join his occasionally lonely crusades against homosexuality and for voluntary school prayer and a strictly balanced federal budget, the Fullerton congressman made a quixotic bid for the U.S. Senate and failed.

Defeated he was, he reluctantly conceded after last Tuesday’s Republican primary, but not departed.

“I’ll be around,” he promised, protesting that it was too soon to write his political epitaph.

Dannemeyer pledged to hopscotch the state with as much fervor as if he were on the ballot himself to help defeat “big spending” Democratic congressional candidates in the November general election and to protect the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

After November, Dannemeyer said, he would analyze final election results and might even attempt a political comeback. “I wouldn’t rule it out,” the 62-year-old congressman said.

Sounding like a candidate still blazing the campaign trail, Dannemeyer charged that his Republican primary opponent, U.S. Sen. John Seymour, and Gov. Pete Wilson are “liberals (who) want to make the Republican Party a clone of the Democratic Party on economic and social issues.”

And President Bush, he complained, has allowed the party to drift away from fiscal and social conservatism that marked the opening years of the Reagan administration. Unless Bush fires Richard Darman, Office of Management and Budget director, and Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, Dannemeyer hints that he might oppose his party’s presidential nominee.

There is reason to worry, Dannemeyer said, over “whether the Republican Party, as an institution, will itself be infected at its leadership level with atheism.”

Without hesitation he identifies what he believes is already undermining America: “The judiciary, academia, public education, the news media, television and the Democratic Party. Those elitist groups in this country are dominated by the philosophies of atheism. (For them) there is no God.”

Unmentioned was the issue that he has come to be identified with most strongly in his 14-year career in Congress: his open repugnance for homosexuality, and his efforts to--in his words--”bring the spread of AIDS under control.”

More than any other issue, congressional observers said “gay bashing” made him the man that many people loved to hate--or love.

“If you ever had anybody talk about Dannemeyer, it would not take more than 30 seconds before the issue of homosexuality would come up,” said Norman J. Ornstein, a political scientist with the conservative, Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. “It became almost an obsession with him.”

The most often-told stories about the congressman’s handling of the AIDS issue involve either his 1985 statement that AIDS patients emit “spores” that can infect pregnant women and their unborn children--a claim he quickly dropped--and a 1989 incident that drew a crowd of disbelieving colleagues when he inserted into the Congressional Record graphic descriptions of homosexual acts.

Gay rights activist Carol Anderson of the Los Angeles-based Gays and Lesbians Against Defamation, criticized Dannemeyer for posturing behind a cloak of Christian values while practicing bigotry.

“He preached hatred,” Anderson said. “He did not preach tolerance or love or forgiveness. There’s nothing redeeming in Bill Dannemeyer. If I had to define obscene , it would probably be Dannemeyer.”

But among his staunchest supporters, the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition said Congress’ loss will be the nation’s gain, as Dannemeyer carries the banner for fundamentalist Christians beyond Washington.

“His voice will offer a vital perspective across America, sounding the trumpet, calling the public together, and doing the numbers on the Murphy Browns,” Sheldon said.

Dannemeyer is described by friends as warm and engaging, with a sense of humor. Although his comments may be bombastic, he is not considered flamboyant and could easily be mistaken for a corporate executive.

For his part, the man with the crusty face claims that newspaper photographs rarely show his good side.

“Would you believe that I smile?” he asks. “The reading public has never seen one (picture) of me smiling.”

His dry wit also comes into play when he speaks about some of his more controversial positions.

Recalling the outcry following his 1985 statement that persons infected with the HIV should be banned from donating blood, Dannemeyer said tongue in cheek: “I have nothing but respect for the ability of this 1 to 2% of the nation to dictate public policy in the way that they have.”

Among Capitol Hill insiders, he is credited with being persistent, straightforward, and holding sincere beliefs in his causes, rather than using them for political gain.

Sometimes those traits helped him, but most often they did not, the observers added.

“I think sometimes (the Democrats’) job was easier when we went to the House floor and people saw that if there was something with his name on it, they would automatically vote against him,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), Dannemeyer’s opposite number on the House Health and Environment subcommittee. Even the Reagan and Bush administrations often disagreed with Dannemeyer’s AIDS proposals, the subcommittee chairman added.

Ornstein concluded: “In many cases, he was isolated as a lone dissenter except for keeping public focus on his disdain for homosexuals.”

As a longtime proponent of the balanced budget amendment, and friend of tax watchdog groups, Dannemeyer proposed each year for consideration of alternative federal budgets to those presented by the Reagan and Bush Administrations.

But a political squabble kept him for six years from gaining membership on the House Budget Committee where his views might have had some impact.

Eventually appointed to the budget panel in 1991, Dannemeyer’s departure at the end of the year will be a “terrible blow,” said Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), particularly at a time when the growing budget deficit is getting the political attention Dannemeyer had long advocated.

Dannemeyer was not considered one who tended to “go along to get along,” observers said. But he could, by his own admission, be pragmatic enough to be a “team player” and vote for appropriations bills or amendments that included funding for the pork-barrel projects he usually denounced--even if it seemed to contradict his fight for spending cuts.

“So long as the Congress is going to be shelling out iats money, I wanted to make sure Orange County got its share,” Dannemeyer said.

And as the ranking Republican on the Health and Environment subcommittee, Dannemeyer seemed to be enjoying more success in recent years.

During the panel’s discussions of a key AIDS bill sponsored by Democrats in 1990, Dannemeyer overcame the majority’s usual disapproval of his amendments, three of which he succeeded in attaching to the bill, including one calling for AIDS testing of prison inmates. It was an unusual display of acceptance of his proposals.

So why leave now?

Having won reelection to his northern Orange County House seat by substantial margins, Dannemeyer could have run and won for the rest of his life, he said.

And he had a problem with that.

“I believe in term limits, and you cannot very well be sincere about that claim and then run for an eighth term to the House of Representatives,” he said.

There also was the driving ambition to spread his ideology to the U.S. Senate.

Having attempted a previous run in 1986 for the Senate, Dannemeyer aborted the effort due to a lack of funds. He resumed the campaign last year after concluding that Republicans might have a chance to gain control of the Senate this decade.

“Like everyone in this business, I would rather be in the majority than in the minority,” he said, referring to the Democratic Party hold in the House that traditionally limits Republican legislation.

But as he assails the ideological split within his own party, Republicans wonder if Dannemeyer was not growing disillusioned because Congress was looking less and less like the class of 1981-82 that he sees as the best years of his political career.

Political pundits say that while his record of outspokenness played well in Orange County, it created a “kooky” or “fringe candidate” image among voters outside his home base. Even within California, Seymour, his moderate Republican opponent in the Republican primary, beat Dannemeyer by almost a 2-to-1 margin.

Dannemeyer dismisses that conclusion, as does Sheldon, who points to the primary victory of U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Herschensohn, whose views he said are as conservative as Dannemeyer’s.

The congressman maintains that he lost because he needed $1 million to buy television and radio campaign commercials and that he was hurt by “cheap shots”--such as a San Francisco television station’s report about his positions on homosexuality.

He also blamed his defeat in part on President Bush and U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), who headed the Senate’s election committee for Republican candidates. The committee, Dannemeyer claimed, “committed an outright fraud” by funneling funds to Seymour during the primary campaign--funds that were to be saved for the general election.

Seymour said that while Republicans may share Dannemeyer’s views on issues concerning gays, lesbians and AIDS, the voters “feel much more strongly on a whole other set of issues, like jobs, and taxes and law and order.”

Preparing to face former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein in the November general election, Seymour said that, compared to the Democratic candidate, Dannemeyer cannot call him a “liberal,” nor should he be labeled liberal because of his advocacy of abortion rights.

“Conservatives believe that government ought to stay out of their lives,” Seymour said.

“The Republican Party is where it’s always been,” Seymour said, suggesting that perhaps it is Dannemeyer who might be out of step with mainstream Republicans. “There will be other (conservatives) that perhaps won’t be as vitriolic (as Dannemeyer), perhaps they won’t be so narrowly focused on those issues as Bill was. But, of course, those issues are going to continue to be here.”

Two Capitol Hill observers who asked that their names not be used said that state Sen. Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim), the Republican nominee for Dannemeyer’s seat in Congress, may be more effective, if elected. Royce may cast the same conservative votes Dannemeyer would have, they suggested, but without the negatives.

In November, Royce faces Fullerton City Council member Molly McClanahan, who won more than 70% of the vote last Tuesday to win the Democratic nomination.

Dannemeyer is proud of his record and a list of accomplishments he leaves behind. He points with pride to his early support for offshore drilling that placed him at odds with environmentalists, his push for a constitutional amendment legalizing voluntary school prayer, and particularly his attempts to balance the budget.

“I think I have been a responsible, effective voice in articulating the conservative positions on how we can fulfill the responsibility of the federal government without bankrupting the country,” he said.

“I don’t mean that I have been successful in achieving my goals. But there’s a voice here who is determined to manage the fiscal affairs of the U.S. government with a sense of prudence,” he added. “That, I think, I have been successful in doing.”

William E. Dannemeyer: Career Highlights

* 1955-62: Fullerton deputy district attorney, 1955-57; assistant city attorney, 1959-62.

* 1963-66: Democratic state assemblyman.

* 1966: Ran unsuccessful race for new state Senate seat.

* 1967: Switched to Republican Party.

* 1972: Lost bid to return to Assembly.

* 1977: Made political comeback when he won an Assembly seat; served for two years.

* 1979: Began congressional career; was returned to office every two years by margins of 70% or more until his last reelection campaign in 1990, when he got 65% of the vote in the general election.

* 1985: Frequently carried to speeches a three-foot, stuffed turkey dubbed “Rosie,” which served as a symbol for “The Bird Watchers,” one of three major groups he organized to defeat California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird.

* 1986: Became only elected official in the state to support Proposition 64, a statewide ballot measure sponsored by political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. that would have forced state officials to compile the names of AIDS carriers and patients and remove them from some jobs; a similar measure sponsored by Dannemeyer two years later also was rejected.

* 1989: Led successful fight in House allowing the Roman Catholic Georgetown University to withhold formal recognition from campus gay rights groups. Failed in attempt to ban the use of public funds for abortions performed in the District of Columbia. Won House approval of strict guidelines on telephone “dial-a-porn” services. Led the defeat of a congressional pay raise after turning a motion to adjourn into a symbolic vote on the salary increase.

* 1991: Received House support for funding restrictions for grants made by the National Endowment for the Arts.

* June 1992: Lost Republican primary contest for U.S. Senate seat held by John Seymour.

Los Angeles Times