The Big Blow of Defeat :...

It was a long, bitter campaign. Name-calling and innuendo punctuated talk about the issues. Each day was a wearying search for votes that stretched into the night.

And when it was over he had lost, rejected by his fellow citizens as unworthy to represent them. He was tired, sick and, perhaps, a little stunned by the nature of politics, particularly the broad rhetorical brush strokes that turned a flesh-and-blood candidate into a caricature he hardly recognized.

To one degree or another, the range of emotions and physical reactions experienced by Stan Groman, a conservative candidate for the Redondo Beach school board, would have been immediately understood by thousands of others who fell short in last month’s elections.

“I was just drained” by the nights and weekends of knocking on doors, says Groman, 50, a small businessman. “I had a cold and I was just physically fatigued.”

When the voters spoke on Nov. 3, Groman finished ninth in a 12-way race, spending an estimated $2,000 to $3,000 for his 5,793 votes.

Groman’s loss in his first try for public office offers a microcosm of a bleak side of democracy: For every contested office there are one or more losers, the political chaff of the electoral harvest. For some of these castoffs, defeat is like a fist in the stomach. Some never recover from the blow. Others react with bitterness and blame their defeat on others. For a troubled few, defeat is a fate worse than death.

“As with any assault, there are two ways of looking at it. One is to look inward: ‘What did I do?’ And one is to look outward and find the reason why: Which is to blame other people,” says Jack Smith, president of StressNet, a psychological consulting group in Cleveland.

Still, some failed candidates often find opportunity in loss. Learning from failure, they try again and win--as Bill Clinton did after being ousted from the Arkansas governorship in 1980 or Richard Nixon did in finally gaining the White House in 1968. Others create new careers or discover that life does indeed exist outside the limelight.

But whatever the individual reactions to political defeat, losing is almost always a transforming experience. At the very least, lives are measured ever after from this milestone of rejection. The transformation may reflect the emotional capital candidates invest in their campaigns.

“Everybody who runs thinks the future of the republic depends on their election,” says Herbert E. Alexander, a USC professor of political science. “Yet the fact is the republic goes on regardless of who wins or loses.”

Conversely, a losing cause can be a source of pride. “I’d do it again,” says Groman. “I needed to stand up for what I believe in and run.”

The United States is still a land of opportunity for anyone who wants to gamble with the voters. A U.S. Department of Commerce census found some 504,000 federal, state and local elective offices in this country. That is roughly one elective office for every 500 people, from the presidency down to hospital boards, sewer districts, mosquito abatement boards and a few elected coroners.

Inevitably, the top of the heap gets the most scrutiny.

Since his loss, President Bush’s rare public appearances have been observed with an intensity once reserved for the lineup of Kremlin leaders atop Lenin’s tomb. As the one-term President disappears down history’s trapdoor, accounts of Bush’s recent forays have dwelled on his facial expression, his body language, the nuances of his remarks. Some reports had him bitter and blaming others. But in his own public statements, Bush took full responsibility for the loss.

About a week after the election an unnamed Administration official said of Bush, “He still believes the things he said on the campaign trail, that he’s right for this country. Now he sees this young kid, governor of a small state, is President of the United States. That can’t be refreshing to think about.”

Subsequently, Bush was reported by one newspaper to be deeply despondent about his loss. Bush aides fought back--sort of. Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Bush had been disappointed but had begun to snap back during a Florida vacation.

After his return to Washington, suspicions of presidential depression continued to dog the Chief Magistrate. At a luncheon last week, Barbara Bush insisted that she and her husband are “very happy.” In an apparent reference to reports of gloom in the White House, she added, “You wouldn’t know it, would you?”

Yet at that same gathering, Bush alluded to his diminished role, speaking of “these marvelously responsible things I have left to do--walking the dogs and accepting this enormous turkey.” The latter referred to a Thanksgiving bird Bush had posed with earlier.

Eventually the sense of gloom and personal diminishment recedes, says former U. S. Rep. Ed Mezvinsky. For the 55-year-old lawyer, the key to life after elective office was perspective and personal growth.

A Democrat, Mezvinsky was elected to Congress from Iowa in 1972 and lost four years later. President Carter appointed him a U. S. representative to the United Nations the following year. In 1979 he moved to suburban Philadelphia, where he practices law and specializes in international trade issues. In 1981, he became chairman of the state Democratic Party and served for five years in that post.

“I think the loss taught me that you have to grow and move into other areas, and change--although maybe one would prefer to do it voluntarily . . .,” Mezvinsky says. “You have to have enough confidence and not be overwhelmed by voter rejection. I didn’t personalize it. There is nothing worse than hanging on.”

Former Speaker of the House Jim Wright of Texas came to a similar conclusion, even though his long legislative career ended because of scandal. When allegations of financial misconduct forced his resignation in 1989, Wright, 69, decided not to hang around Washington, a ghost of his former self. After nearly 35 years in Congress, he returned to Ft. Worth, where he writes a weekly newspaper column and is a visiting professor at Texas Christian University.

He concedes that his forced departure was a shattering blow, the end of an ambition that began in high school.

“It was my whole life,” Wright says of Congress. “I’d built my whole career around the expectation of being an effective leader . . . This (leaving the House) was an eventuality for which I had never been prepared. But I decided I would come back home.”

Today, Wright pronounces himself happy with his new life and sounds like a man who discovered a new world: “There is a marvelously full life of which I had never been aware. Wonderously rich.”

Ironically, both psychologists and political pros say the ability to bounce back is the sign of a winner.

Jerilyn Ross, a psychotherapist and director of the Ross Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders in Washington, says that “sometimes the people who are most successful are the ones who have come back from defeat.” She cites President-elect Clinton’s comeback after his loss of the Arkansas governorship and notes that Clinton seems to have learned from that experience.

“It was striking to me that Clinton never got carried away, even on election day,” Ross says. “He didn’t count his chickens before they hatched. That’s another trait of winners. They don’t get carried away with fame and glory and money.”

Ken Khachigian, manager of Republican Bruce Herschenson’s losing U. S. Senate race against Barbara Boxer, thinks prolonged self-pity is for amateurs.

“The ones that get down and bitter about it (losing) and have it last for a long time probably shouldn’t have gotten in the first place,” he says.

USC’s Alexander observes that even during a campaign the candidate’s ego may need massaging. He cites a California gubernatorial race in which a campaign manager plastered his candidate’s face on strategically placed billboards so that the candidate would see himself larger than life. The manager said he had “to keep his (candidate’s) morale up, but I don’t think a billboard ever converted a vote,” according to Alexander.

For candidates without a hope of winning, even a short period of depression seems pointless.

Attorney Richard Burns, running on the Libertarian ticket, attracted only 4% of the vote in his race for the 19th District seat in the California Senate. The percentage was “probably about the midpoint of my hopes . . . ,” he says modestly. “Not in any coolheaded moment did I entertain the notion that I might win. . . . I would have been shocked to win.”

Yet every serious but unsuccessful campaign seems to produce collateral damage. Friends, relatives and supporters may suffer from defeat as much or more than the candidate.

For instance, Allan K. Douglas lost the mayor’s race in the Central California coast town of Arroyo Grande by a mere 56 votes. “In the back of my mind I knew it was going to be a close race and I was prepared to lose . . . ,” he says. “My wife took it a little harder than I did. She was kinda down.”

To Khachigian, his candidate’s defeat was particularly galling because of what he considers dirty tricks in the last days of the campaign. It was also Khachigian’s first experience at losing, although he has worked on Republican campaigns since 1968. Herschenson spent the final laps embroiled in publicity generated by Democrats about his visits to a Hollywood strip joint and a newsstand that sold adult magazines.

“I’ve had a lot of anger and resentment over the way the other side conducted itself at the end. . . . ,” Khachigian says. “I’ve got my sights set to settle some scores pretty soon.”

True to his word, Khachigian sent a letter to Democratic Party officials warning, “We’re on the attack--and we’ve got you and your skunk works in the cross hairs.”

Few American candidates or their supporters, however, have reacted to losing quite like Gus Patrick.

In 1977, the Prescott, Ariz., handyman won a seat on the city council as an independent reform candidate. For four years, he relished his role as political maverick, including failed attempts to recall the mayor and fire the city manager and police chief. But voters apparently tired of his antics and he was defeated in 1981.

After his loss, Patrick continued to attend council meetings and speak as a private citizen. But as time passed, despair about his loss deepened. Finally, on June 28, 1982, Patrick delivered a rambling statement to an afternoon city council meeting.

As his speech ended, he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a .38-caliber handgun, said, “Give me liberty or give me death” and fatally shot himself in the head.

Times staff writer Marlene Cimons in Washington contributed to this report.