‘Deadbeat’ Kojima’s Ex-Wife May Lose Factory : Families: She wonders why President Bush doesn’t ask her former husband, who gave the GOP $500,000, to pay $120,000 in overdue child support.

Standing in the middle of the small Huntington Park factory where her workers sew dresses for J. C. Penney and other retailers, an ex-wife of the nation’s best-known “deadbeat dad” said she may lose her business unless President Bush personally intervenes.

“Bush is talking so much about deadbeat dads, and (the) biggest (Republican) political contribution came from a deadbeat dad,” she said, angry and near tears. “If he cares about this issue so much, why doesn’t he just get on the phone and ask Michael Kojima to pay the money he owes to his sons?”

If she cannot quickly collect the $120,000 she says her ex-husband owes her and her two sons, Soon Kojima said, she may lose her factory to the recession. She is behind on her home mortgage too.

Last April, Michael Kojima sat at the head table with Bush at the largest political fund-raiser in American history, a star-studded event called the President’s Dinner that raised $9 million for Republican congressional candidates. Kojima donated $500,000, the largest contribution of the event, which was held in Washington.

But when he turned out to be a father who owed more than $220,000 to two ex-wives and four children--as well as up to $1 million in other business and personal debts--the embarrassed committees that had held the fund-raiser put the money in escrow and asked a federal judge to decide who should get it.

Meanwhile, Michael Kojima remains in jail on $1-million bond for failing to pay child support to yet another ex-wife, a Burbank beautician named Chong Kojima. Before the whole mess gets sorted out, Soon Kojima said, she is afraid she will lose everything she worked for to help put her teen-age sons through college.

For the first time in her life, she said, she missed the mortgage payment on her house in Harbor City this month. Then she missed the rent payment on the Huntington Park factory, where her 40 employees make clothing.

She set up the business a year ago with savings from her 17 years at a former job and money she borrowed from friends. But because of the recession, business is down and money is scarce.

“I’m trying not to lay workers off,” she said. “But it’s also hard because this is the slow season.”

Her landlord has given her until the end of the month to come up with the rent, and she hopes to scrape together enough business before then to meet her mortgage as well.

Soon Kojima wrote Bush a personal note months ago, asking for her share of the $500,000 her ex-husband had contributed to Republican coffers. She received a letter from the congressional campaign committees, explaining the escrow account and encouraging her to have her lawyer contact the court. He did; she is now one of several creditors vying for the money.

But when she watched Bush say in the presidential debate Sunday that single parents need help, her rage boiled over. “Those mothers need help,” Bush said, “and one way to do it is to get these deadbeat fathers to pay their obligations to these mothers. That’ll help strengthen the American family.”

“He is taking money from the families of deadbeat dads,” she said. “Does he really care about us? I think he’s saying all this only because this is an election.”

Michael Kojima was arrested in Salt Lake City last Saturday on a fugitive warrant for failure to pay $101,000 in child support to Chong Kojima and her two daughters. He also owes about $120,000 to Soon Kojima and her two sons, but $100,000 of that is in the form of a personal note that Soon Kojima had him sign after she gave up attempting to collect the child support. She has a court judgment ordering him to pay the note.

Soon Kojima asked that Bush either telephone her ex-husband in jail and ask him to pay the money or do what he can to have the congressional campaign committees pay her. Given that Bush and Kojima had dinner together, she said, “why can’t he call?”

It is not clear whether Bush has the authority to order GOP fund-raisers--the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee--to write a check to Soon Kojima.

At first, GOP officials seemed eager to divest themselves of the money and the controversy. And in court documents filed after they put the money in escrow, they said that because of their belief in “family values,” they would not object if the judge turned the money over to the ex-wives. But they also maintained that the party has “a valid interest in and is entitled to the political contributions.”

Asked for comment about Soon Kojima’s plight, Tony Mitchell, deputy press secretary for the Bush-Quayle campaign, said cracking down on deadbeat fathers “has been something that the President has said is an important issue. . . . We believe very strongly that fathers need to live up to this responsibility.”

He declined to comment on Michael Kojima except to say that Bush believes “all fathers need to live up to their responsibility.”

Bush has vowed to step up federal efforts to help collect overdue child support, and has demanded that deadbeat parents pay up or face penalties.

In Wisconsin last month, he proposed penalties ranging from revocation of driver’s licenses to imprisonment for being delinquent in their child support.

“And we will say to deadbeat parents who owe and haven’t paid, then you’re going to pay a price,” he said. “You’ll get no passport, no professional licenses, no housing or student loans or any other help from the federal government until you do right by your children.”

And in a July 31 speech in Riverside, Bush said: “When dads take off, we don’t forget. . . . If you’re a dad and you’re not around, my message is simple: There is nowhere for you to hide.”

Those comments just make Soon Kojima angrier.

“He is the President of the United States, and (his party) is taking money that came from a deadbeat dad,” she said. “Why is he saying these things if he isn’t willing to do something about them when he can?”

Then she added wryly: “I voted for Bush in 1988 because I thought he would help the economy.”