Harriett Wieder and Her Anita Hill Wake-Up Call

Harriett Wieder, 72 years old, life-long political insider, Republican stalwart in her fourth term as Orange County’s only woman supervisor (still) . . . has had a feminist awakening.

She calls herself a prototype: Woman of a certain age, raised in a certain atmosphere (nice girls don’t offend), finally sees that men (not all of them nice) like running the world and aren’t about to share power without a fight.

Thank you, once again, Anita Hill.

“I was in Palo Alto, visiting my son and daughter-in-law, and I was walking, with the radio and the headsets, alone, and I was listening to the testimony,” she says. “And I was disbelieving what I was hearing. I think it was a shock. That was my wake-up, right then.”

And, yes, Harriett Wieder believed Anita Hill. A year later, she still does--and then some. It’s as if a crescendo of gongs has been ringing in her head, or a light has been turned on. After decades of playing by the boys’ rules, she is sounding like she’s simply not going to take it anymore.

She was talking about all this in her Santa Ana office the other day, about her “coming out” for what she thinks is right. She calls it standing up and being counted, as a matter of conscience and as part of a legacy that her granddaughters will be able to point to with pride.

“What I’ve learned is you should not want to be one of the boys, because you can’t be,” she says. “And it’s one thing to have an awakening, but it’s what you do with it that counts.”

And, for the record, Wieder says she is not running for re-election in 1994.

Wieder’s already publicly joined the bandwagon for Clinton-Gore, although she says she has no intention of re-registering as a Democrat, thank you very much. She’s in on a guerrilla movement to reclaim the local GOP from those on the fringe, but doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.

This former GOP convention delegate who describes herself as “gung-ho Bush” four years ago, now says she believes that future political scientists will study the 1992 Republican campaign strategy as a classic example of how to lose.

She thinks the guiding principal of moderate Republicanism--an individual’s right to choose how to live one’s own life--has been trampled by the Morally Correct.

Watching this year’s convention on TV, Wieder says the message that George Bush sent her from Houston was, “I’ve sold my soul to the religious right.” And that scared her, big-time.

“The Republican party of 1992 is not the party I belong to,” she says.

So now Harriett Wieder is on a tear.

Yes, she’s still a Jewish mother--after I shook hands with her, she ordered me to wash mine at once so that I wouldn’t catch her cold--but now she doesn’t seem to care if her detractors paint her as a yenta out of control.

“Loyalty goes two ways,” she says of the local Republican types who were aghast when she began publicly breaking rank, starting with her support of Judith Ryan’s failed congressional primary campaign.

(Ryan is the former judge who wanted to save the country from Bully Bob Dornan, the 14-year congressman whose latest claim to fame is pushing President Bush to accuse Bill Clinton of being a dupe of the KGB.)

And, no, Wieder adds, her newfound activism isn’t just sour grapes over her loss in the congressional primary to Dana Rohrabacher four years ago. Rohrabacher was the one who uncovered the fact that Wieder had claimed a college degree that she never earned. His campaign consultant later ran Wieder’s fourth supervisorial campaign.

But then Wieder says this: “(Local GOP head) Tom Fuentes doesn’t know that I know he supported Rohrabacher. But I know. And this after I gave $25,000 to the Republican Party. . . .

“I don’t owe them anything. I don’t need them. But there is always the possibility that they might need me, and I’m not going to be there for them.”

Who says women are afraid of a fight?

All of this, of course, is about power. Being a politician--if in fact, she does retire in ‘94, Wieder will have completed 30 years of public service--this woman has always understood this in her bones.

But she says it wasn’t until the Thomas-Hill hearings that the implications of a power imbalance became clear. Now when she talks to women’s groups, power is often her theme.

Except many in the audience, still, don’t seem to understand what it is she really means. Then Wieder will use a synonym, of the household variety, that women have grown up with from Day One. Responsibility .

The subtle smiles move across the faces of her listeners then. Women know from responsibility, in their bones. Do they want to give responsibility for their lives to somebody else?

“Feminist is not a dirty word,” Wieder says, recounting her response to “one of the guys” who accused her of being a feminist herself.

“I think feminism today is so far removed from the bra-burning days. I think feminism today is understanding your own feminine attributes, and that’s great.”

Of course, none of this would be too newsy anyplace else. But this is Orange County, where until recently, the electorate seemed to march in lock-step to a Republican dirge. That’s why the national and international media have been taking note.

Wieder rattles off the out-of-towners--the British Broadcasting Corp. called yesterday--who have interviewed her about the Republican split.

“I’ve had more fun interviewing them as to why they are interested,” she says.

We talk more--about her two children, four grandchildren, her marriage of 51 years--and then mention of her sister, Estelle Ullman, brings her to tears. She died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 64.

Four years ago, Wieder was diagnosed with breast cancer herself. But it was caught early in a routine mammogram and hasn’t reappeared.

“That’s another something I’ve learned, about women, and power,” she says. “It has to do with choice, but also with information. Information is power too. I guess we’ve come full circle in this discussion.”

In other words, it’s all part of the continuum. It’s part of a wake-up call.

Dianne Klein’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.