Just Down the Road in Yorba Linda, a Driven Newcomer

As first the rain and then the hail pounded the streets of Yorba Linda on this historically significant Tuesday afternoon, a relative political newcomer is sitting in his threadbare campaign headquarters and reflecting on his old hero, whose casket was whisked into town just a couple hours earlier.

“The irony is amazing,” congressional candidate Todd Thakar says. Amazing in that Thakar’s introduction to politics came 22 years ago as a 14-year-old high school freshman in Wabash, Ind., who volunteered to work at the local Republican headquarters in support of the Nixon-Agnew reelection effort.

“It was the first time I was ever really involved in anything, and it was the Nixon campaign. Then at our school, we had a big thing, a Nixon-McGovern thing. I was head of the Nixon group. I can even remember what I wore--red, white and blue bell bottoms. We did a rally with both sides, and I headed up the Nixon rally. We had Styrofoam hats and Nixon-Agnew bumper stickers around the front of them. I even remember the cheer; it was like ‘1-2-3-4, 3-2-1-4, Who for, what for, who you gonna vote for, Nixon-Agnew, Nixon-Agnew, ’72.’ ”

The brush with politics lit a fuse in Thakar. He decided he wanted to be a politician. “Some people want to be a fireman or this or that, but this is what I always wanted to do,” he says. “How I knew when I was 14 that this was what I wanted to do, I don’t know, but this was it. It’s a public service thing. I want to be a representative. It’s not the politics. I’m not enchanted with the politics at all.”

The reason he and I are discussing life’s ironies is that the campaign office Thakar has established is now only a few hundred yards from the Nixon Library & Birthplace, which today will become the site of the former President’s burial.

Thakar opened the campaign office in the Old Towne section of Yorba Linda several weeks ago. A Republican, he’s in an uphill campaign--not to mention a crowded field--to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Jay Kim in the 41st Congressional District. The Republican primary is crucial in that the winner is virtually certain of being elected in November in this heavily GOP district.

I asked Thakar how Nixon’s death affected him. “It’s been real interesting, going door-to-door campaigning and having so many people mentioning that this was his (Nixon’s) home. I learned he died while I was out campaigning Friday night, and so it was a little bittersweet. But it’s OK because the outpouring and the respect that is coming is good. Few people had the vision and leadership and impact that he did.”

I ask if Nixon disappointed him. “I remember the summer of ‘73, and we were painting our house and just watching the Watergate hearings,” he says. “I don’t ever believe that Nixon was involved in the break-in or aware of it (before it happened), but I couldn’t help but think if he had taken a strong stand right after it happened and accepted the responsibility as the leader of the party and vowed to get to the bottom of it, that things would have been very different.”

At least one young Nixon staffer who testified during the Watergate hearing told young people to stay away from politics. I ask Thakar if that admonition affected him. “I certainly didn’t buy into it then, but I had even more firsthand experience later. I worked on Capitol Hill for 3 1/2 years for Pete Wilson (during Wilson’s U.S. Senate tenure). I think my idealism brought me there, but in the time I was there I was thinking, ‘Is this what I want to do with my life?’ I really struggled with that, and I went back and forth, because when you get back there and you see it work firsthand--or see it operate--I saw a lot of things I didn’t like. There’s a lot of politics and it took a good couple of years to resolve if this was something I really wanted to do, because of the bad things you see.”

I asked if Nixon’s inglorious presidential demise left an impression. “It goes back to what I said before, if he had taken the responsible initially. . . . “ He pauses, then says, “I think ethics is something you can’t compromise. People don’t expect their leaders to be perfect, but they do expect them to be honest and fair.”

I try to picture a young Richard Nixon winning his first run for Congress at 33. Now, the Old Man, as his admirers sometimes called him, is dead at 81. The Old Man is out and a crop of new young congressional wanna-bes, like the 36-year-old Thakar, are coming.

“Here I am,” says Thakar, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years (preparing for a career in politics), my first campaign was the Nixon campaign, and that was the energy and exhilaration of a kid and a President you believed in, and all that was good about America. Now here I am 20 years later, and my headquarters ends up being down the street.”

Settling on the office location near the library happened almost by chance, he says.

“And now that we’re here, the irony is real heavy.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.