Trying, Trying Again : Elections: The campaigns come and go, but some of the candidates go on and on, ever hopeful of capturing public office.

A Popeye impersonation on “The Gong Show” is not an accomplishment that most City Council candidates would--or could--trot out to be admired.

But then George Arnold is not your typical politician.

The 63-year-old Huntington Beach handyman is one of a handful of never-say-die optimists who have thrown their hats into the political arena enough times to cause tennis elbow.

Now, with Election Day threatening like sunrise, members of this select group of perennial candidates has clambered back onto the campaign trail, wooing voters from the sands of Laguna Beach to the streets of Santa Ana.

Undaunted by up to five previous defeats, these repeat contenders have thrust themselves into the political fray with a gung-ho enthusiasm that would put a rookie candidate to shame.

Some, like Laguna Beach resident Rickey Slater, are taking a new tack. Slater, 58, who was homeless when he suffered his fifth consecutive defeat in 1990, has moved into a mobile home park, spruced himself up and enlisted a campaign manager.

Others, like Costa Mesa candidate Chris Steel, 51, whose political fever has not waned since that childhood day when he first watched Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communism hearings on TV, are sticking to tried game plans. Consistent conservatism, Steel believes, is bound to win the day eventually in Orange County.

Still others, like six-time Laguna Beach candidate Beth Leeds, 51, who reads environmental impact reports as bedtime stories, continue to cram like college students, preparing for an elected office that has so far been just beyond reach.

“The only things I’ve read in the past 10 years are legal briefs, documentation, EIRs, letters from the Coastal Commission, city budgets, the granny flats lawsuits,” Leeds said. “I’ve read the EIR for the (San Joaquin Hills) corridor, maybe, eight times.”

If they have little else in common, Orange County’s recurring candidates share two qualities: tenacity and optimism. Steel said he has spent $70,000 of his own money on the last five campaigns.

“When you make that kind of commitment,” he said, “you’ve got to be dedicated.”

Zeke Hernandez, 46, who is taking his fourth stab at the Santa Ana City Council race this year, says his door-to-door campaign consumes about 30 hours a week. He won about 4,000 votes his first time out, and last time 12,000 residents gave him the nod.

It is the realization that his support is growing that buoys Hernandez. “More than anything else,” he said, “that’s what keeps me going.”

Slater has committed to memory the number of votes captured since he launched his first campaign. In 1982, he said, it was 75, then 104, 821 and 976. Last year, however, his numbers slipped to 550.

Slater doesn’t let the numbers get him down.

“I just forget about it and go on,” he said. “You have to. I don’t have an ego problem.”

Certainly, it seems, eggshell egos would be misplaced in such company. But return candidates say their determination to stay in the game is about more than ego.

What they really want, the contenders say, is to help their communities--cities, they are quick to add, that could stand more than a little fixing.

That inclination for public service made itself known early in some of the county’s perennial candidates.

For Leeds, it began at age 14, when she circulated her first petition in support of Eiler Larsen, Laguna Beach’s beloved “greeter,” whom Leeds said some residents were trying to run out of town. Since then, Leeds has fought one battle after another in her community, from preserving a pepper tree that shades City Hall to helping keep offshore oil drilling away from the Laguna Beach coast.

Costa Mesa candidate Steel traces his political roots to that mesmerizing moment when the McCarthy hearings first flickered onto his television set.

“I said, ‘Boy, this is really great,’ ” Steel remembered. “I didn’t realize till I got older that Joe McCarthy maybe overdid it a little bit and went too far.”

Steel’s political memories play like a newsreel. As a 7-year-old, he says, “I was for Dewey.” Later, he admits, “I might have even voted twice for Goldwater.”

Before moving from Pennsylvania to Costa Mesa in 1972, Steel lived briefly in San Clemente, then the site of the Western White House, “Only,” he said, “because it was close to Nixon.”

Should they eventually get the nod from city voters, these City Council wanna-bes say they would not be shy about redirecting their cities.

“If I got elected,” said Arnold, who also ran once for California governor, “I tell you what, there’d be a lot of changes.” For starters, Arnold said, he would like to weed out expendable city employees and “all the attorneys but one.”

Steel says he would like to help point his city in a “very conservative, very positive, sensible direction.”

Hernandez has set his sights on the youth of Santa Ana, who he says need more recreation opportunities and chances to develop self-esteem.

Some repeat candidates say they may finally be teetering on the brink of victory. After all, 1992 is supposed to be the year of the outsider, and incumbency is one cross these contestants don’t have to bear.

“I think I have the best chance of winning this time because of the attitude of the general public,” Leeds said. “I think people realize politicians don’t really take care of the store and that Laguna needs a lot of attention.”

Occasionally, some admit, uncertainty slinks into their consciousness.

“You have your doubts at times,” Hernandez said. “You wonder. You’ve run three times before, that’s reality. But you’re going to give it one big effort.”

They are not in the race for the exercise, the candidates say: Their goal is to win.

“I don’t run just for the sake of running,” Steel said. “I have a very good chance of winning this time.”

If such optimism is the thread that binds the also-rans, Anaheim’s Gus Bode at first seems the exception to the rule. After four unsuccessful City Council bids, the World War II vet has shied from the race since 1988.

But when he talks about this year’s election, words like “write-in” and “Ross Perot” crop up in Bode’s conversation.

And in 1994, Bode explains, the city will have its first direct election of mayor. “I’ve got a sign out back,” he said, “ ‘Gus Bode for Mayor.’ It’s all printed up.”