Economic Ills Cloud Kim’s Trip to Washington : Politics: The Republican nominee in the new 41st Congressional District doesn’t raise as much money as he had hoped during two-day visit.

Jay Kim’s brand of bootstrap Republicanism crashed headlong into urban reality last week when the neophyte congressional candidate passed through the nation’s capital looking for money for his campaign.

Kim, the GOP nominee in the new 41st Congressional District that straddles Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, was walking near the Capitol when he came face to face with one of Washington’s homeless, begging for money.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you get a job?’ ” recalled the gray-haired candidate, a 53-year-old Korean emigre, engineer and businessman who serves as mayor of Diamond Bar. “He got really upset. He said he can’t get a job. I said, ‘Get a job in a car wash.’ Then he started cursing me, really bad.”

Kim, who would become the first Korean-American to serve in Congress if he is elected on Nov. 3, shook his head. “It’s sad, here in the heart of the country. I think that’s (an) indication of how bad the economy is.”

Those same economic ills apparently put the damper on Kim’s fund-raising efforts during his two-day visit. Despite a turnout of more than 50 at a Thursday night reception sponsored by American Consulting Engineers Council, only a half-dozen lobbyists showed up for a $500-a-head breakfast on Friday morning at the posh Capitol Hill Club.

Among those who attended was Terri O’Grady of the National Rifle Assn., who said Kim is one of 16 or 17 California House campaigns that the gun lobby will support. “From the NRA’s perspective, he’s good on our issues,” O’Grady said.

Precise figures on how much Kim raised were not immediately available, according to campaign officials. But it seems unlikely that the candidate met his goal of taking home $20,000. Washington fund-raiser Nancy Maxwell, who organized the breakfast for Kim, said the faltering economy has hurt all political fund raising.

Kim, nevertheless, insisted that George Bush, not Bill Clinton, is the man to put things right.

“Bush is an easy target to blame” for the nation’s economic problems, Kim said. “It just seems unfair that we have to blame it on him all the time. . . . Even if the President wants to do certain things, Congress has been a bottleneck.”

Democratic candidate Clinton’s plan to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans is clearly a bad idea, Kim said.

“I don’t know why we should penalize people who have succeeded,” he mused. He is equally opposed to the Democrats’ proposal to mandate some form of national health insurance, arguing that it will cripple small-business owners.

Neither position should surprise anyone who has read Kim’s resume. After immigrating to the United States in 1961, Chang Joon Kim, as he was then known, took jobs as a dishwasher and busboy. His wife, June, worked as a restaurant hostess and grocery store clerk.

After Kim earned a master’s degree in engineering from USC, he legally changed his name to Jay, his anglicized nickname. In 1976, he founded Jaykim Engineers Inc.

The prosperity of the business has allowed Kim to personally loan his congressional campaign a total of $163,000, according to reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission. With an additional $176,000 in contributions raised through June 30, Kim so far has spent nearly $340,000 on the election. Most of the money went to defeat four Republican challengers in a tough June 2 primary.

By comparison, Bob Baker, a 41-year-old Anaheim Democrat who will face Kim in November, has raised less than $5,000, he said last week. And money is not Baker’s only problem.

Voter registration in the new 41st district, which includes parts of Placentia, Fullerton, Yorba Linda and Anaheim, is about 50% Republican and 40% Democrat. About 150,000 of the district’s 580,000 residents live in Orange County.

“I realize I can’t compete with him and his money,” said Baker, a defense analyst for Northrop Corp. “He can just go out and write a check.” Despite that, Baker said he believes he has a good chance of defeating Kim because of Kim’s support of President Bush.

“Jobs and the economy are first and foremost,” the Democratic candidate said. “People are fed up with the way things are. People are dissatisfied with the economy.”

While Kim endorses the President’s plan to help business and hold down taxes, he has a decidedly libertarian take on some key social issues.

That may be why Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), himself a former Libertarian, has taken Kim under his wing. A top Rohrabacher aide, for example, arranged press interviews for Kim during his visit, and stood at the candidate’s side during the breakfast fund-raiser.

But Rohrabacher and Kim part ways on the issue of abortion. “I wish you didn’t ask me that question,” Kim said.

Despite his own religious convictions, Kim explained, “I’m not going to force other people to believe what I believe. I believe in individual choice. This country is great because of freedom. The government should not interfere in the bedroom, or in the kitchen.”