A Winding Path Led to Huffington’s Senate Bid : Election: Multimillionaire says his political ambitions are driven by a spiritual calling. But some see a paradox.

In his quest to reach out to others, to leave his mark on the world, Michael Huffington has thought about being many things. The first-term congressman has thought about being a clergyman, a teacher and a filmmaker.

During his youth, he experienced the discipline of military life in a private academy. In a restless career mostly in the oil and gas business, he also dabbled in the stock market, real estate and banking. He briefly held a high-level job in the Defense Department.

But after contemplating his life’s path in a Greek monastery last year, the multimillionaire from Montecito believes he has found his true calling: He wants to be a U.S. senator from California.

“I am not a good writer,” Huffington said in an interview with The Times. “I am not a radio-TV personality. I’m not an actor. I’m not a priest. I’m not a teacher. But hopefully, I’m a political leader.”

Though he has settled on his immediate goal, the restlessness is still there. A few minutes later he was asked whether he had considered the presidency. Huffington said: “If I could be President, obviously, then I would like to be President. But I would rather be a U.S. senator than almost anything.”

At 46, Huffington seemingly has come out of nowhere to be regarded as the Republican front-runner for the seat held by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. He is the least known major candidate for office this year in California, taken very seriously because of his personal fortune--estimated at $70 million--and his willingness to spend it on politics.

Californians know little about him because most of his career has been spent working in a privately held family company in Texas. He moved to California to run for office only three years ago.

Why California?

“Firstly, I love beauty,” said Huffington, who attended Stanford University. “This is one of the most beautiful states in the country. I love the weather. That’s the biggest reason, obviously.”

Because he is so little-known statewide, Huffington has been spending millions of his own money on television ads to introduce himself to voters. Huffington is a very private man and there is an awkwardness as he presents himself publicly. He has a skinny 6-foot-3 frame and a smile that seems a bit stiff, as if he was caught in an uncomfortable moment at a cocktail party.

Image and Reality

In television ads and in speeches, he presents himself as a regular guy with middle-class roots who acquired his huge fortune “with hard work and luck” and a mere $1,000 investment, underscoring the potential for individual success that makes America great.

But a different portrait of Huffington emerges from dozens of interviews with members of his family, friends and colleagues, as well as hours of interviews with him. In this portrait, he is Roy Michael Huffington Jr., the only son of one of the richest men in America, the namesake of a father who rose from poverty to become one of the legendary oil and gas wildcatters in Texas history.

Much of that wealth was not realized until Huffington was an adult, but there was enough as he was growing up to send him to an expensive prep school and the finest universities.

Throughout his life, Huffington has been the good son who revered his father, followed his school’s code of honor, never rebelled in college and then joined the family company at his mother’s request.

Today, based largely on money earned from his father’s company, Huffington owns mansions in Montecito and Washington. He married Arianna Stassinopoulos, a best-selling biographer renowned for her social connections as well as her quest for New Age spirituality. Barbara Walters and Lucky Roosevelt were bridesmaids in their splashy New York wedding paid for by Ann Getty, a Manhattan socialite who introduced them.

Huffington spent $5.2 million to win his current office, the congressional seat representing Santa Barbara. That works out to $7,123 for each day of his two-year term.

Huffington cites this spending as a source of independence, calling himself “a political renegade” who does not have to depend on campaign contributions from special interests. He describes himself as a political outsider because “I don’t want to be part of the good old boy network.”

Yet he has been a member of Team California, a group of rich Republicans who pool their contributions of $25,000 apiece to have a bigger impact. His family’s oil business had its own political action committee to gain influence and the family’s donations helped Huffington land his appointment in the Ronald Reagan Administration.

Huffington is reticent about his personal fortune. When it is suggested that his wealth comes primarily from the success of his father, he is testy. “We need to make sure you guys get paid more money so it won’t be such a big subject,” he told a reporter at one point. “I have to tell you that a majority of the people, they don’t care about it. When I go around walking precincts, people don’t ask about it.”

Huffington says his political ambitions are driven by a spiritual calling to public service. Although his friends believe he is sincere in his spiritual quest, some consider it a paradox because most of his adult life has been focused on the acquisition of wealth.

Some of his friends and family also see the aspirations of a son who has spent most of his life in the shadow of his father.

“It is a classic oldest son trying to strike out on his own to make his mark,” said Dan Case, a San Francisco investment banker and a longtime friend. “Although he was an extremely good businessman, it would have been difficult for him to make the kind of mark that his father did.”

Born Sept. 3, 1947, in Dallas, Michael Huffington spent most of his early years living in a three-bedroom, ranch-style house in the Houston suburb of Bellaire with a workaholic dad, a homemaker mother and a younger sister.

Huffington rarely got out of line, but when he was 7, his father disciplined him for lighting matches indoors. He was taken into the back yard, given a bucket and a box of matches. His instructions were to strike a match and then drop it in the bucket.

“I had to keeping lighting them until I burned my finger,” Huffington said.

Strict Upbringing

His father eventually gave the same lesson with tobacco and alcohol. “He said: ‘You want some cigarettes? Here are some cigarettes.’ I kept smoking until I turned green. Same thing with drinking. We went out, when I was of age, to go drink until I was so sick. . . . I don’t drink hard alcohol that much because of that.”

Huffington heartily endorses the method of discipline. “I think it was very clever,” he said, and intends to use the same technique, if necessary, with his two daughters, ages 2 and 4.

He remembers his father talking to him at great length about the importance of self-sufficiency and education. When Michael was 9, his father left his job as a geologist for Humble Oil, the precursor to Exxon, to launch his own oil and gas prospecting company.

At 14, Huffington regarded himself as totally unmotivated--”I was a couch potato. I watched TV all the time”--so he asked his parents to send him to Culver Military Academy in Indiana.

“Subconsciously, I knew I needed the discipline to excel,” Huffington said.

At Culver, a private school where tuition and fees now run $16,950 a year, Huffington worked his way through the ranks to become one of the top student military officers. He rowed crew and took pride in strictly adhering to the academy’s code of honor.

“I even turned in my roommate for being (five minutes) late to our room,” Huffington recalled. “And he was higher ranking than I was. But I happened to be the officer on duty that night. Two days later, he moved out on me. I don’t blame him. He was mad at me. The point is, I was abiding by the rules.”

Now, as a member of the academy’s board of directors, Huffington is a large contributor and recently picked the color of limestone of the school’s new $10-million Huffington Library.

After Culver, he attended his father’s alma mater, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and marched with the ROTC. Stanford, which had rejected him because of insufficient grades, admitted him in 1966 when he reapplied.

At Stanford, Huffington spent four years rowing crew and pursuing a double degree program in engineering and economics. He also recalls his first realization that he wanted to enter politics and become a U.S. senator.

Yet his tenure at Stanford was marked by an extraordinary indifference to the greatest political and social upheaval of his time.

During those years, 1966 to 1970, Stanford erupted in student anti-war protests. The ROTC office was firebombed. Hundreds of students occupied buildings, thousands boycotted classes and an estimated 80% of the student body attended one demonstration.

None of this made a strong impression on Huffington. He describes his position on the Vietnam War this way: “I was basically neutral. But I think while I was there, I was probably for it.”

As for the prospect of military service, he said: “I was fully prepared to serve had I been inducted.” He does not recall other feelings one way or the other.

Roots of Success

During his first four years in college, he had a student deferment. In April of his fifth year, his draft number was called and Huffington went to an induction center in Houston for his physical exam.

“I was in great shape. I rowed crew and I’d been a swimmer and I thought for sure I’d be able to make it,” Huffington said. “And, lo and behold, they took a look at my eyes and they said, ‘Forget it. What are you even doing here?’ ”

He failed his physical exam on April 13, 1970, and soon was classified “not qualified for military service,” records show. He said he does not know how bad his eyesight was then or is today. He wears hard contact lenses.

Huffington remembers joining the Young Republicans and sitting at a card table on the Stanford campus to promote Reagan’s first bid for the presidency in 1968. “I liked the guy. He seemed optimistic. I am a very optimistic person.”

He spent that August in Washington answering phones and running errands for Houston’s congressman, a former oilman and friend of his father’s named George Bush. He remembers it as a time of inspiration. “I thought of it as a very ethical, good place to go,” Huffington said.

Huffington and his roommate, Bob Fink, were elected to two of the four positions as co-presidents of the senior class.

“Mike was basically this incredible straight shooter,” said Fink, now a psychiatrist in Washington state. “It was like he was in his middle age. He did not rebel at all. He did not smoke dope. . . . He had his mind made up to where he was going. He was going to enter the oil business. It was clear he came from money and was going to have money.”

Huffington recalls trying marijuana “once or twice,” not at Stanford but during his 20s in Houston. “I remember trying it and not liking it.”

From Stanford, Huffington went to Harvard Business School where his studies kept him too busy to be concerned about politics. “Then Watergate came along. I was somewhat disillusioned. And then, I forgot about running. I just figured on being a businessman.”

In his Senate campaign, Huffington is running as a successful businessman who can apply his experience to cut government spending. He often portrays himself as a self-made entrepreneur who parlayed a small investment into a fortune. “That’s what’s great about America. You can start with $1,000 and you can end up making something.”

But the record of Huffington’s 18-year business career presents a less clear picture of unblemished bootstrap success. Only four of those years were spent outside his father’s firm, and those jobs resulted from school connections or family ties.

His career began in 1972 at the First National Bank of Chicago, where he followed his best friend at Harvard University, L.E. Simmons, into the corporate finance office. His two-year stint at the bank led to the break he highlights in his political speeches.

In 1974, Simmons’ older brother, Matt, was approached by a London-based merchant bank to set up a Houston affiliate that would provide financial advice to companies working in the oil fields. Matt Simmons said he invited Huffington to join him because Huffington’s father was a well-respected oilman. “He brought us a lot of credibility,” Matt Simmons said. “Neither of us were from Houston. We needed all of the help we could get.”

The London bank put up most of the money, but the Simmons brothers and Huffington kicked in $1,000 each. This is the $1,000 investment Huffington refers to when he talks about his business success.

About two years later, however, Huffington and the Simmons brothers bought out the bank’s share for nearly $500,000.

“Around that point in time, Mike realized it wasn’t his cup of tea and he wanted to join the family firm,” Matt Simmons said.

His departure in 1976 was marked by strained negotiations. Huffington filed a lawsuit, and Matt Simmons said the brothers eventually purchased his shares for about $700,000.

“Let’s just say it was a lot of money,” Huffington said. “And, it allowed me the opportunity to buy some stock in my father’s business.” It also permitted the young bachelor to buy a three-story, 5,667-square-foot Houston townhouse with an elevator.

Huffington said he joined the family business because “my mom came to me and said: ‘Look Michael. You’re dad is stretched. . . . He needs to talk to somebody. He needs somebody with financial business sense.’ ”

Over the next 14 years, Huffington helped direct a company that struck it rich while he was still in graduate school. He said his tight-fisted influence and financial acumen helped put the company in a position where it fetched an estimated $600 million when it was sold in 1990. But his critics challenge his contribution to the family business, saying he was involved in a couple of bad deals that cost the company millions and left a group of furious bankers who claimed that he failed to live up to his word.

His father’s business, Roy M. Huffington Inc. or Huffco, hit the jackpot in 1971 when it sank an exploratory well that tapped a huge natural gas reserve on Kalimantan Island in Indonesia. It was the kind of strike that elevated Roy Huffington, a geologist with a Harvard Ph.D., into the pantheon of Houston wildcatters.

But it took years for Roy Huffington to stitch together the financing needed to develop the fields, build a gas liquefying plant in the Indonesian jungle and line up ocean tankers to haul the gas to Japanese buyers.

Family Business Role

Michael Huffington joined Huffco a year before the first tanker eased out of Bontang Bay, Indonesia, with a gas shipment bound for Japan. “There was no revenue from our overseas operations during the first couple of years I was there,” he said. “If things had not gone well, we could have been a complete bust.”

With his MBA and banking experience, Michael Huffington spent most of his time at Huffco focused on the company’s finances. He said he never saw himself as an oilman like his father, but rather as a financial manager in an oil and gas business.

The project that most captured his imagination was a decade-long accumulation of property in downtown Houston. Huffington secretly directed the operation through intermediaries so property owners would not inflate their prices. Ultimately, Huffco assembled the equivalent of 11 city blocks.

He dreamed about building a self-contained residential community with restaurants, shops and movie houses. “If I had never wanted to go into politics, I would have stayed with it and done that.”

Huffington believes his most significant role was that of family tightwad. He argued for paying off debt rather than starting ventures--a voice that proved prophetic when oil prices tumbled in 1986.

“His job was to keep down our debts and he did an excellent job at that,” Roy Huffington told The Times. “Mike has always been a fiscal conservative. Even when he was a little fellow, he had a piggy bank and saved his money very carefully.”

Roy Huffington also credits his son with bringing talented financial managers to the firm.

Outside of Huffco’s inner circle, Michael Huffington sometimes engendered hostility, as might be expected for a boss’ son who quickly rises to become vice chairman.

“He is the typical rich kid who is playing with his father’s money,” said George Berko, an employee of Huffco’s partners in Indonesia. “Almost everything he put his hand on failed. He had a refinery and a drilling company that failed. The banks ended up holding the bag. He made a lot of promises to the banks and ruined his reputation.”

Some Failed Ventures

In the mid-1980s, two of Huffco’s subsidiaries collapsed. One was the Independent Valley Energy Co., a refinery in Bakersfield. The other was Culver Drilling Co., designed to dig deep wells in Oklahoma. Michael Huffington had arranged the financing for both.

Huffington said he never favored the refinery, but he was gung-ho on Culver Drilling Co., which he named after his high school academy.

When the businesses failed, Huffington left a trail of angry bankers who claim that he offered verbal assurances that Huffco would go beyond written guarantees and cover losses that amounted to tens of millions of dollars.

Huffington denies ever making such promises and said Huffco lost “quite a few million” on Culver Drilling too. “In business, you lose some, you gain some.”

Some bankers, who declined to speak on the record, admit they were naive at the time and should share the blame. They said they had long provided loans to his father on the strength of his word, but few of these oral arrangements had been tested because the oil patch was booming.

Part of the resentment against Michael Huffington resulted from his hardheaded style. Former employees recall that Huffington insisted that everyone have a clean desk at the end of the day and banished smoking and free coffee from the office for health reasons.

“There were a lot of people who felt he was very harsh,” said Bill Taylor, a former employee. “He was harder on me than he had to be. But on a personal basis, he was a good friend,” Taylor said, giving him ample time off when his wife was dying of cancer.

Robert D. Wagner Jr., a commercial banker, recalled: “There are a lot of guys around who had run-ins with him during negotiations. Some people have the smooth touch and others the bludgeon. He took more the bludgeon approach.”

Huffington agrees that he was a tough negotiator but never more abrasive than necessary. He says he was under considerable financial pressure in the mid-1980s. “I was not sleeping well because I was concerned about the future of the firm.”

In 1988, Huffington said he persuaded his father to sell the family’s domestic oil exploration subsidiary to a French company. The sale price was not disclosed, but Huffington said he found himself flush with cash at age 41.

Roy Huffington had hoped his son would take the reins of the medium-sized oil company and make it “monstrous.” But his son had a different idea. He wanted to cash out of the family business so he could follow his own dreams--which included moving to California and entering politics.

The clincher came when President Bush offered to appoint Roy Huffington the U.S. ambassador to Austria. The family business, including the property amassed in downtown Houston, was sold to Taiwan’s Chinese Petroleum Corp. for an estimated $600 million.

The sale left Roy Huffington, now 76, as one of the richest men in America with a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $310 million.

Michael Huffington takes credit for the April, 1990, timing of the sale, which he said brought the family top dollar during a period of relatively high oil prices. Huffington moved to Montecito with his $70-million slice of the profits in 1991.

He purchased a half-interest in Crest Films, a small production company, and encouraged its employees to make more feature films instead of documentaries and TV ads for big corporations. “The other side of me wants to make movies,” he said.

A Philosophical Side

Huffington, an Episcopalian, says his quest for political office is driven by a spiritual calling, a desire to give something back to a country that has given him so much.

According to close friends, Huffington has spent years pondering philosophical questions about the meaning of life, his God-given purpose on Earth, and even why was he born into a family that became so wealthy.

“Michael is an extraordinary idealist,” said the Rev. James Parks Morton, an Episcopal priest at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York who is also a close friend and beneficiary of Huffington’s charitable giving. “He takes all of this extremely seriously. God put him with these resources to do something good. He sees political leadership as the most important thing he can do.”

Huffington often talks of restoring values in America to solve social ills ranging from teen-age pregnancy to inner-city violence. But these are not the traditional values that have become code words for the religious right.

Although Huffington is a fiscal conservative, he breaks from his party on social issues, favoring abortion rights, gun control and allowing gays in the military. The values he talks about are discipline, faith and responsibility.

In many respects, Huffington’s spiritual-political quest closely resembles the thesis of his wife’s book, “The Fourth Instinct: The Call of the Soul.” Her manifesto, released this month, explores the spiritual rewards of altruism and helping the needy.

Raised in the Presbyterian Church, Huffington was drawn to the popular sermons of an Episcopal priest in Houston in the 1980s and soon converted.

Huffco associate Mike Decker said Huffington frequently sought his thoughts on fundamental questions about the existence of God, human potential and what he wanted out of life. When Decker wanted to play golf, Huffington would press to go to dinner for another deep philosophical discussion.

“He was so relentless,” Decker said. “At first, it was sort of annoying, but then it became fascinating.”

“It is a paradox in a way,” Decker said. “A strong emphasis on material life allowed him to get where he is. Yet his material success allowed his spiritual-creative side to develop.”

Huffington said he sees no inconsistency in his transition from hard-nosed businessman to spiritually driven altruist. He said his father “didn’t go into his business to make money. . . . Nor was it my pursuit. My pursuit was making things happen, making things grow. I like to build things. Monopoly was a fun game for me.”

He also said that he served widely on civic boards and often “shared what I got. I always took people out. I don’t recall very often anybody paying for dinner. I took people on trips. I tried to be generous.”

Huffington says his political ambition comes from years of philosophical inquiry and prayer. “I’m absolutely, totally motivated by that,” he said. “That’s why every day I can get up and feel good about life, because I’m giving something back.”

Asked about what other giving he has done because of his spiritual quest, Huffington said: “I’ve volunteered time and made contributions to lots of organizations--too numerous to even remember.”

But the only times he can recall volunteering his time to help the needy were when he raised scholarship money at Stanford and served meals last New Year’s Eve at two homeless shelters in Santa Barbara.

After surfacing briefly at Stanford, Huffington’s dormant interest in politics revived in Houston when he helped set up phone banks for Bush’s first presidential campaign in 1980. He attended the Republican National Convention, painting signs for youthful demonstrators trying to get Bush picked as Reagan’s running mate.

By January, 1984, he had a discussion with then-Vice President Bush and began a long search for a political appointment in Washington. To Reagan and Bush officials at the White House he indicated his interest in an array of high-level jobs in Defense, Interior, State and Treasury, White House records show.

“I had to knock on doors and sell myself,” Huffington said. His job search coincided with a surge in the Huffington family’s donations to Republican causes, which rose from $27,500 in the 1981-1982 election cycle to $66,000 in 1983-84 and $95,350 in 1985-86.

In a note attached to his circulating resume, one White House staffer flagged its importance: “He comes from a prominent GOP family and Craig says he is ‘big in oil and gas.’ ”

President Reagan nominated Huffington for assistant secretary of commerce for trade administration in September, 1984, but pulled the nomination from the Senate a few months later without explanation. Huffington said White House officials belatedly learned of a conflict of interest. Huffco routinely sought export licenses for its overseas operations from the assistant cmmerce secretary for trade administration. Huffington said he never lobbied government officials on behalf of Huffco.

Two years later, Huffington landed a job as a deputy assistant secretary of defense. This was a lower-level job than his first, short-lived appointment, but did not require Senate confirmation.

In the interim, Huffington met Arianna Stassinopoulos, a native of Greece, on a blind date arranged by Getty. The way he tells it, he immediately recognized her as his soul mate when he asked her: “What is the most important thing in your life?”

“God,” she said, without hesitation. They were married within six months.

Arianna Huffington, a Cambridge University-educated, best-selling biographer of Pablo Picasso and Maria Callas, had been on a spiritual journey of her own that took her across hot coals and continents to sample various religions.

Stint With Pentagon

Aside from the Greek Orthodox Church, her longest spiritual association has been with controversial New Age leader John-Roger and his Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness in Santa Monica. Huffington said he has had nothing to do with the Los Angeles group, but has not discouraged his wife’s affiliation, which began 22 years ago.

Shortly after their honeymoon, Huffington began work as deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy. His principal duty was to review Defense Department position papers on conventional arms reductions and defend these positions at meetings with the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council.

His yearlong tour of duty was not particularly satisfying, he said, given the tedious progress of arms-control talks in Europe. “The main thing is that I wanted to serve in the Administration,” he said.

His staff and superiors said Huffington had little understanding of the highly technical subjects. Many confessed that they were weary of having inexperienced political appointees dumped in their office.

“This was a favor to George Bush who was a friend to the Huffingtons, but it was no favor to the rest of us,” said Frank J. Gaffney Jr., who shared an office with Huffington and was his immediate supervisor in the final seven months.

“The organization continued to toil away under him and in some cases in spite of him,” said Gaffney, now director of the Center for Security Policy in Washington. “It didn’t matter where he was or what he was doing as long as he wasn’t doing any damage.”

Huffington dismissed Gaffney as a contemptuous boss who never tried to find out what he was doing.

Near the end of his Pentagon employment, the Huffingtons had a stillborn son five months into the pregnancy. Huffington said he was devastated and went to an Episcopal monastery in New York with Decker, his Huffco colleague. The first 24 hours was spent in total silence, followed by prayer and religious services.

“It was a very contemplative thing,” Decker said. Huffington emerged three days later, talking about the brevity of life and how it was time to fulfill his long-postponed desire to move to California and get involved in public service.

In March, 1988, the Huffingtons purchased a $4.3-million, 11,384-square-foot, Italian-style villa in the hills of Montecito near Santa Barbara. It was called Villa Ruscello.

In 1992, he challenged and defeated longtime Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura) in a race that fractured the Santa Barbara County Republican Party. To win the seat, Huffington spent a record $5.2 million of his own money, an extravagance that stunned his family and longtime associates who knew him as a penny pincher. “I was floored when I saw the amounts he was spending,” Decker said.

Within a couple of months on the job, he said Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and others began encouraging him to challenge Dianne Feinstein for her Senate seat.

He was interested, but did not make a commitment until that August when he traveled to Greece with Arianna and his two daughters. On the vacation, he briefly left his family to enter a Greek Orthodox monastery on Mt. Athos.

For three days, he spent time “praying and just looking over the sea and spending time with the monks,” he said. “Psychologically, I was ready to go after I came off Mt. Athos.”

Times staff writers Dave Lesher and Glenn F. Bunting contributed to this story.

Profile: Michael Huffington

Michael Huffington is competing with former Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) and Kate Squires, a Riverside businesswoman, for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination. The winner will face Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-San Francisco) in the fall.

* Born: Sept. 4, 1947, Dallas

* Residence: Montecito

* Education: Culver Military Academy, 1965; Stanford University, 1970, bachelor’s degrees in economics and engineering; Harvard University, 1972, MBA.

* Career highlights: First National Bank of Chicago, 1972-74; co-founder and director of Simmons & Co., a financial services firm, 1974-76; director and vice chairman of Roy M. Huffington Inc., an oil and gas company, 1976-90; congressman 1992-present.

* Family: Married, April 12, 1986, to Arianna Stassinopoulos, a best-selling biographer and lecturer. Daughters, Christina, 4, and Isabella, 2.

* Quote: “I want to make a difference. I’m not here to be a career politician, take a paycheck, do a few things and move on. If I’m not making a difference, obviously, I’ll go back to private life.”