CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : . . . While Herschensohn Plays Finances Close to the Vest

Like his philosophy, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Herschensohn’s investments are by far the most conservative of the four major party candidates seeking California’s two Senate seats, an analysis by The Times shows.

In disclosures filed with the U.S. Senate, Herschensohn reports no stock holdings. But he is not without resources. He lent his campaign $300,000 and has 11 bank accounts, including two retirement funds, several certificates of deposit, and savings and checking accounts, plus government savings bonds.

Herschensohn, seeking the six-year seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Alan Cranston, is more secretive about his finances than the other candidates. He refused to release his tax returns, unlike his Democratic opponent, Rep. Barbara Boxer, and candidates vying for the other Senate seat.

“I’m not paid by the taxpayers,” Herschensohn said. “It is no one’s business how much I was paid by KABC. It’s no one’s business how much I paid for my condo. It just isn’t anyone’s business.”

His one out-of-the-ordinary venture is a nonprofit corporation, Leadership to Preserve America, which he founded to tout his views--and help serve his political goals--after he lost his 1986 Senate campaign.

Herschensohn has insisted that he did not establish Leadership to Preserve America to help himself win a Senate seat this year. But in the years when his political campaign was dormant, the broadcast commentator used the group to keep his name before his supporters, sending newsletters containing reprints of his commentaries, giving speeches and hosting high-profile fund-raising events featuring prominent conservatives Oliver North, Jack Kemp, William F. Buckley and others.

“Chiefly,” he said, “the reason for doing it was because I wanted to continue the policies that I advocated in the ’86 election . . . and see how far they could go.”

Herschensohn’s use of a nonprofit corporation is an old political trick. Former President Ronald Reagan, among Herschensohn’s idols, formed such a group to keep his name in the public after his failed 1976 campaign.

Cranston also set up a nonprofit corporation. He used it to register Democratic voters who helped him win reelection in 1986, only to fall victim to his fund-raising prowess when it was revealed that Lincoln Savings & Loan President Charles H. Keating Jr. gave $850,000 to Cranston’s nonprofit group and that Cranston intervened with banking regulators on Keating’s behalf.

Herschensohn’s Leadership to Preserve America has never been nearly so well-funded. Over the last four years, it reported receiving revenue of $260,000.

Because it is nonprofit, the organization can accept donations of any amount, unlike a federal campaign committee, which cannot accept individual donations of more than $1,000.

Unlike Herschensohn’s Senate committee, Leadership to Preserve America is not obligated to release the names of its benefactors--and it does not.

Although Herschensohn maintains that the organization is not tied to his political campaign, he held a joint fund-raiser in which money was raised to retire his 1986 Senate campaign debt and to fund the nonprofit corporation.

Leadership to Preserve America also has at times operated from the same address as Herschensohn’s Senate campaigns, and some of his paid campaign aides and several of his campaign donors also are affiliated with it.

The director of Leadership to Preserve America, Janet Klein, worked full time at the campaign for part of 1991, receiving $4,000 a month from Herschensohn’s Senate committee.

Her husband, Howard Klein, the unpaid attorney for the nonprofit corporation and for the Senate campaign, said Leadership to Preserve America and Herschensohn’s campaign have been “scrupulous” to keep their distance.

Its board of directors includes some of the most prominent contributors to conservative causes: developer Buck Johns; John Cronin, active in raising funds for President Bush’s reelection, and Rich Snyder, president of the In-N-Out restaurant chain.

Its chairman is Jay Hoffman, a political consultant who made news in 1988 in one of the stranger footnotes to the story of ousted Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Acting on Marcos’ behalf, Hoffman offered $5 billion of Marcos’ money to the government of Corazon Aquino. In exchange, Marcos wanted to return to his homeland from his exile in Hawaii. The deal gained support from some Aquino backers, but Aquino refused the offer.

Herschensohn and Hoffman met during the 1986 campaign, and Herschensohn said Hoffman has hosted fund-raisers for his Senate campaign. Like other Herschensohn supporters, Hoffman said he supports Herschensohn because of his conservative views.

What would Herschensohn do if his supporters or anyone else sought to unduly influence him in Washington?

“I’d tell them to go to hell,” Herschensohn said. “But that isn’t going to happen with the friends that I have. I just can’t imagine it.”

Based on Herschensohn’s financial disclosures filed with the U.S. Senate, it appears that his personal holdings are unlikely to become entangled with his public duties if he wins Nov. 3.

Although his annual pay exceeded $200,000 from his television and radio commentaries at KABC television and radio, he bought his first home in 1984--a one-bedroom condo in Hollywood valued at about $180,000. He said he had no previous interest in home ownership.

“The question should be: ‘Why does someone have an interest?’ ” he asked.

Unlike Boxer, whose personal finances are intertwined with her husband’s, Herschensohn appears to be financially independent of others. His only immediate family member is a sister. He and his sister jointly own the family home and a piece of property near Palm Springs, which they inherited when their mother died last year.

Herschensohn married once, in 1963, separated in 1971, and has no children. He did not file for divorce until 1989 and had no community property. He said he finally got the divorce because it “was getting complicated” to explain to friends that he was separated, not divorced.

A friend, astrologer Joyce Jillson, said in an interview: “This is someone who doesn’t care about money. . . . He believes in paying cash. He doesn’t believe in owing a cent.”

Nor does he believe in being obligated, she said. Jillson accompanied Herschensohn to a dinner at a corporate dining room a few years ago in downtown Los Angeles, where one of the hosts tried to persuade Herschensohn to plug a cause. As she told it, Herschensohn got up and left, refusing to allow the man to so much as validate his parking stub.

As much as he is able, Herschensohn said, he leaves mundane details of life to others. He hates to shop, he said, so Jillson buys his shoes for him. He also pays little attention to fund-raisers or how much money they bring in.

“I don’t do that,” Herschensohn said of money matters. “I do one thing--that’s policy and issues, debate and speeches. . . . I’ll get those people who I trust to do the kinds of things that I don’t want to do.”