Elections May Test Sen. Hurtt’s Strategy to Craft GOP Majority : Politics: In his bid to put Republicans back in power in Sacramento, the conservative legislator hopes to seal his own future.

He burst into the staid chambers of the state Senate a year ago, a political outsider crashing the most exclusive of clubs. Life in the Capitol hasn’t been quite the same since.

Legislative rookies are expected to quietly find their spot on a back bench, but Rob Hurtt--Orange County businessman, conservative Republican, evangelical Christian--would have none of that. Hurtt had just spent $300,000 to win a state Senate seat. Like any good capitalist, he wanted his money’s worth.

The upstart lawmaker, who had never before held elected office, spent his first year testing the traditions of the political Establishment. He talked precociously of becoming Senate Republican leader and griped about his party’s complacency. Occasionally, Hurtt brashly questioned GOP veterans about floor votes he felt were anti-Republican. Democratic leaders quickly labeled him a bully.

But his biggest splash has come with the huge sums of campaign cash Hurtt funnels to other like-minded candidates. In the brutal election battles of the California Legislature, Hurtt has become the Republican T . rex. In the past two years, the senator has joined with three other Christian businessmen to contribute a whopping $3.6 million to conservative candidates and causes.

Now come the elections of 1994, and for Rob Hurtt, the future could be just a few precinct victories away. He is the GOP’s Senate point man on campaign strategy, and perhaps the chief architect of the Republican Party’s latest grand design to recapture the Legislature.

If all goes according to GOP plans, the party will gain ground in the Assembly and Senate during this year’s races, then seize power in one or both houses in 1996. Should that scenario unfold, the junior senator from Orange County could probably script whatever political future he wants.

That is a pretty heady possibility for a lifelong industrialist who, until recently, had never tinkered with California’s political machinery. Before politics, Hurtt was into cans, building a fortune with his Garden Grove company that manufactures decorative tins and plastic containers. By most accounts, the hard-driving senator has nimbly switched hats from businessman to politician, using money and gumption to acquire a position of influence many lawmakers never achieve.

“I think Rob is the best thing that has happened to the Republican Party in many, many years,” said state Sen. John Lewis (R-Orange), a conservative ally from Orange County. “For years, we’ve been outmanned and outspent by the Democrats. Rob is the great equalizer.”

Although many conservatives look to the 49-year-old senator as a political messiah, Democrats are alternately bemused and bewildered, irritated and incensed. And worried.

As they mobilize to defend the Capitol turf they have controlled for decades, Democratic leaders point to Hurtt as the prime threat--and not just because of the money he commands. Hurtt may promote himself as a “citizen legislator” and champion of business, but Democratic chiefs contend that the public facade masks the Bible-based platform of the religious right.

Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), the Senate leader, suggests the Republican freshman and the Allied Business PAC, the political action committee Hurtt formed with Orange County savings-and-loan heir Howard Ahmanson, are bent on creating a “religious oligarchy.” If conservative Republicans sweep into power, an era of New Testament intolerance would follow, Lockyer warns: “Our democratic institutions are threatened.”

Hurtt is weary of the dire rhetoric, saying Democrats are “trying to make me into a bogyman.” Yes, he believes in traditional two-parent families, is staunchly against abortion, opposes specific rights for gays and supports conservative goals such as school vouchers.

He insists, however, that he has no desire to see California become a theocracy. For now, he is content to vote against taxes, sponsor legislation to fight unions and work to slash regulations hampering industry. The conservative social issues are important, Hurtt concedes, but they can wait until California’s recession-racked economy rebounds.

In any case, Hurtt assures doubters, “there’s no reason for alarm. Our agenda is pretty much America and apple pie.”

The man himself, friends say, is hardly puritanical. He drinks in social settings and laments that he has taken up smoking again after more than a dozen years of abstinence (he vows to quit). To pass evenings away from home, Hurtt often invites Republican allies over for low-stakes poker in his hotel suite. And while many of his legislative cohorts tool around town in tax-subsidized Buicks and Lincolns, Hurtt pilots a sports car he bought with his own cash.

Conservative colleagues say he is glib and quick-witted, principled and competitive, a hard charger and a fast learner.

Not everyone is so kind. Some moderate Republicans, who spoke on condition they remain unidentified, contend that Hurtt is a politician with an attitude, flaunting an imperious nature developed during years as a boss in the business world. They also grumble about his freshman mistakes and occasional cantankerous confrontations. One veteran lawmaker complained, “He can tell you off with a smile on his face.”

But get Hurtt talking about his boyhood and he can be downright charming. A product of Pasadena public schools, the 5-foot-8 senator tells of getting knocked unconscious in a high school football game and wobbling to the sidelines: “The coach spun me around and said, ‘No, son, the other sideline.’ ” Hurtt also played tennis with future Wimbledon champ Stan Smith. “He was two years younger than I was,” Hurtt recalled. “Whipped his butt.”

After college, Hurtt went to work for his dad’s can manufacturing firm, Container Supply Co. The firm prospered, with sales of $23 million in 1990. Underlying that success is his father’s simple philosophy: Don’t operate on borrowed money. It’s a law Hurtt says the state of California should emulate.

The impetus for Hurtt’s political mission can be found in part at his Garden Grove factory, a bustling maze of assembly lines and punch presses. That sound and fury of free enterprise has drawn the scrutiny of regulatory agencies, notably the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

“This is what the AQMD hates, this great big ugly thing,” Hurtt said one recent afternoon, waving a hand at a huge oven that bakes ink labels onto aluminum cans--and produces the building blocks of smog. Hurtt has been battling the AQMD for years over how much the oven can be used.

Hurtt was also prodded toward politics by watching his four children grow up in a world much changed from his youth. The watershed came when he talked with a high school counselor about his eldest son’s mediocre grades. The counselor told Hurtt not to worry. His boy was a good kid, never got into trouble.

“A light bulb went on,” Hurtt recalls. “They didn’t care if he wasn’t learning anything. As long as he wasn’t causing problems, they thought he was great.”

The spiritual element played a role in his political conversion. Hurtt began attending a men’s Bible study group in the mid-1980s, and joined an evangelical church in Santa Ana. He also drew inspiration from the work of James Dobson, whose evangelical operation in Colorado Springs, Colo., produces books, tapes, videos and the nationwide radio program “Focus on the Family.”

In the late 1980s, Hurtt decided to put his money where his convictions were. He founded Capitol Resource Institute, a conservative Sacramento group that specializes in family issues. But the businessman quickly learned the limits of lobbying for conservative causes in the Democrat-dominated state Capitol. Hurtt turned to trying to remake the Legislature in a conservative image.

He began in 1990 by donating modestly to a few Orange County candidates. But the campaign contributions skyrocketed with the creation of Allied Business PAC before the 1992 elections. Hurtt and his three cohorts quickly became a force, helping elect 12 of the more than two dozen conservatives they supported that year.

Hurtt took the plunge himself when a central Orange County Senate seat was vacated, saying he feared a Democrat might swoop down and defeat a weak field of GOP contenders. He cruised to victory in March, 1993, with 76% of the vote.

He arrived in the state Capitol and immediately made waves. In one episode, senators blanched after he voted in committee for a jail construction bond, then joked loudly to a prison guards lobbyist to remember it when Hurtt came calling for a campaign contribution.

Some colleagues contend that Hurtt’s first-year difficulties went beyond snippy rhetoric. They say he failed miserably to heed advice from legislative veterans, as if oblivious to the Capitol’s cardinal rules: Experience and knowledge count, and political friendships are based almost as much upon personality as on ideology and money.

Those facts smacked Hurtt in the face after he made noises about challenging Sen. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno) for Senate GOP leader. Despite his campaign clout, Hurtt fell far short of the support he needed when the leadership fight came to a head last fall.

“I was quite honest with him and told Rob he needs to pay his dues,” said Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley). “Being leader doesn’t just mean you get Republicans elected.”

In a conciliatory gesture, Maddy named Hurtt chairman of the Senate’s new elections committee. Some see it as a shrewd ploy by Maddy--the leader can take credit for election victories, but blame Hurtt if the GOP stumbles this year. Hurtt has tried to make the most of the post, but expresses frustration over the committee’s lack of aggressiveness.

On the legislative front, Hurtt broke from tradition and was the only lawmaker from either party who didn’t support Lockyer’s nomination in January for president pro tem of the Senate. In early March, Hurtt was one of only three Senate Republicans to join in overriding the governor’s veto of a Democratic illegal immigration bill.

In some ways, the Democrats need Hurtt. That fact was vividly illustrated a few weeks ago when all 40 senators gathered for an annual photograph. Sen. Tom Hayden, the liberal from Santa Monica best known for his Vietnam-era activism and marriage to actress Jane Fonda, arrived late. Finding his spot, Hayden paused to shake hands with Hurtt.

“Photo opportunity!” one of the senators quipped.

“Yeah, but which one will it hurt more?” remarked another, prompting laughter.

It may have been a joke, but therein lies a political truth: Rob Hurtt has become the poster boy for the Democratic fund-raising machine.

When visiting potential donors, Lockyer totes charts warning of a “theocratic” threat posed by Hurtt and his moneyed allies. The pitch is well-received. “Voters,” Lockyer said, “don’t want to be governed by extremists.”

Hurtt says Lockyer and other critics have it all wrong. Given his way, Hurtt wouldn’t force-feed religion, he maintains. Rather, he has a vision of society flipping back the calendar.

“I think we’d all be a lot healthier for it,” Hurtt suggests. “I don’t think you’ll find anyone who feels the country or the people are better off than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago.”

Profile: Rob Hurtt

32nd Senate District (R-Garden Grove)

* Born: May 19, 1944

* Family: Wife, Nancy, and four children, youngest 17

* Education: Claremont McKenna College

* Career: Elected March, 1993, to seat vacated when former Sen. Ed Royce was elected to Congress; established Allied Business PAC with three other Southern California Christian businessmen before 1992 elections; in late 1980s, founded Capitol Resource Institute, a Sacramento-based lobbying and educational group focusing on conservative family issues.

Sources: California Senate, Times staff reports

Researched by ERIC BAILEY / Los Angeles Times