Huffington Draws Fire, but He’s Proud of Slim Record : Politics: Self-styled renegade says he’d have more influence as a senator. Foes label him a do-nothing.

Michael Huffington vowed that he would become a different kind of congressman when he spent a record $5.2 million of his own money in 1992 to capture a California House seat.

After 16 months in office, there is little doubt that he has succeeded.

A self-styled political renegade, Huffington points with pride to an unusual record of accomplishment: He has offered only one original bill and no amendments to legislation, refused to pursue all but a few federal projects for his Santa Barbara-area district, called for eliminating one of the two committees of which he is a member and frequently criticized his colleagues for excessive spending.

“I didn’t come here to be an activist in terms of promoting and passing legislation,” Huffington said during a series of interviews. “People want to get rid of some of those old bills. They want spending to come down.”

The same record is used by critics to portray Huffington as a do-nothing legislator who has been ineffective at representing the interests of his constituents. They say Huffington revealed his true ambitions last fall when he announced plans to run for the Senate only nine months and nine days into his first term.

“I’m so fed up with him and the way he has treated this district,” said Bill Snelling, a retired Republican who serves as chairman of a private consortium that is building a commercial space center in Huffington’s district. “He’s another Kennedy as far as I’m concerned. He’s got everything money can buy. He’s out to buy power.”

Huffington, 46, prefers to compare himself to the mythical public servant played by Jimmy Stewart in the 1939 Academy Award-winning film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” He acknowledges that he may be every bit as naive as the Stewart character as well.

Upon arriving on Capitol Hill last year, Huffington admits, he had little notion of how the House operated. He presumed that he could walk onto the House floor, raise his hand and offer amendments to pending legislation. Little did he understand that restrictive rules in the 435-member House afford no such flexibility to most legislators, let alone a freshman member of the minority party.

“I didn’t realize how bad it was,” Huffington said. “I want to stand up there and passionately say I’ve got something I want to get done. And I can’t do that here.”

Huffington says this is one reason he is seeking a seat in the Senate, where rules give each of the 100 members more influence.

Huffington’s current congressional performance offers a stark contrast to the record established by his opponent in the primary, former Orange County congressman William E. Dannemeyer, during seven terms in the House. The winner of the June 7 Republican primary will face the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in November.

Dannemeyer’s unyielding conservatism rarely left any doubt where he stood on issues ranging from gay rights to instituting prayer in schools. Perhaps his most significant achievement came in 1989 when he forced a last-minute roll call vote that killed a 51% congressional pay raise he opposed.

More often, Dannemeyer offered legislation that had no realistic chance of passage. As he ascended to ranking minority member of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health and the environment, Dannemeyer earned a national reputation as an outspoken critic of homosexuals. He liked to remind audiences that God created “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” (Huffington, by comparison, was one of only 11 House Republicans to support lifting the ban on gays in the military.)

In an interview, Dannemeyer, 64, challenged Huffington to re-register as a Democrat due to his “liberal” votes. “When anyone seeks the Republican nomination and his voting record is on the fringe of where most Republicans are, it is appropriate to ask, ‘Is he really in the right party?’ ” Dannemeyer said.

Assessing his record, Huffington described himself as an independent Republican and he often staked out territory on his own or with a few others.

Alone among the 54-member California congressional delegation, Huffington refused to sign a February, 1993, letter asking President Clinton for $1.4 billion in immigrant and refugee funds. He later explained that the request wasn’t large enough and signed a follow-up letter. Huffington also was the only California Republican who declined to support naming the Channel Islands National Park Visitor Center in honor of Robert J. Lagomarsino, the popular longtime congressman he knocked off in a bitter primary battle. Huffington changed his mind after The Times wrote a story noting his lone opposition.

He was one of only three members to oppose naming post offices in Beaver, Utah, and Pulaski, Tenn., after former U.S. Sens. Abe Murdock and Ross Bass, respectively.

“It’s just ridiculous,” Huffington said. “Just because we got to Congress, why are we spending taxpayers’ money chiseling our names in limestone?”

On more substantive issues, Huffington was the only California Republican to vote against a GOP alternative to the Clinton tax plan that would have reduced the deficit by $352 billion over five years. Huffington said the cuts didn’t go far enough. He favors a woman’s right to abortion and voted for the Brady Bill, which extends the waiting period in many states to purchase a handgun.

While favoring environmental measures such as banning oil drilling off the California coast, Huffington opposes legislation introduced by Feinstein to protect the California desert because he says it will cost the state jobs.

“He is very independent in terms of the way he approaches issues,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands). “He doesn’t automatically knee-jerk with the party line.”

Huffington argues that what makes him an outsider is his ability to keep lobbyists at arm’s length, in part because he has no need to accept campaign contributions from special interests. He says lobbyists should be barred from practicing on Capitol Hill.

In addition to donating his $133,644 annual salary to children’s charities in his district, Huffington does not accept congressional pension benefits and pays his own travel costs between Washington and California.

“I’m trying to be a servant,” said Huffington, who acquired an estimated $70-million fortune after working in his father’s oil company for 13 years. “That may sound ironic. I came here to serve. I don’t want it to cost people money. In my own way, I’ve made a difference. I’ve saved taxpayers money. I’ve served in essence for free.”

Although he is promoting congressional reform, Huffington has developed few allies among his peers. He had to consult a congressional pictorial directory when a reporter asked for names of colleagues who were familiar with his work.

He regards his time spent with children as an integral part of his job. He spends much of his day handwriting personal letters to constituents and greeting visitors on the Capitol grounds, particularly young people.

“We have this wonderful interchange,” Huffington, a father of two, says of his relationship with children. “To me, I’m touching kids. And if I touch them, that’s great. They’ll touch other people as they’re growing up.”

As measured by traditional standards, Huffington’s House record is razor thin. His only original legislative proposal would disallow tax deductions for tobacco companies, part of a crusade to destroy the smoking industry. He is rarely heard from in his Banking and Small Business committees, although he attends meetings faithfully.

“He’s nonexistent,” said a fellow California Republican congressman, who asked not to be identified. “I’m still waiting for him to prove himself.”

Huffington said he has no desire to create a phony record by introducing legislation that has little chance of passing or holding hearings that accomplish nothing. “I don’t want to join in the charade that is played in Congress,” he said.

Throughout his tenure in the House, Huffington has had trouble retaining congressional staffers, losing all but three of the 19 employees he initially hired. In interviews, some of those former staffers recalled a frustrating office environment with a distant and distrustful boss and little possibility of accomplishment. They described Huffington as an extremely private man who sometimes kept his whereabouts a closely guarded secret.

These former staffers said they grew disillusioned when Huffington appeared uninterested in pursuing a legislative agenda.

“His whole attitude is totally different,” said one former top aide, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Being a congressman is just one little aspect of his life. It’s not a total consuming vocation as it is with most other members of Congress. So consequently he tends to stop and smell the flowers a lot more.”

Huffington said his attitude is different and that he does believe in “smelling the flowers. Occasionally, I will take my staff out to the lawn out there and sit there and say, ‘Look at this Capitol, look at these trees. Smell it.’ ”

Other former staffers interviewed by The Times referred to the events of Sept. 14 as evidence of Huffington’s peculiar approach. The congressman had five key votes on the House floor that day and several confirmed appointments in his Capitol Hill office, including a meeting with federal regulators and local officials to resolve a thorny environmental problem in his district.

But Huffington never showed up for work.

Instead, he took an 8 a.m. cross-country flight without notifying staffers about his departure. That evening, surrounded by prominent Republican Party donors at a Century City fund-raiser, Huffington declared himself the GOP candidate in this year’s California Senate race.

Aides in Washington said Huffington did not share his plans to run for the Senate, then accused them of leaking the announcement to the press.

Huffington said he is different from run-of-the-mill politicians in Washington who use their government-paid employees to get elected. By keeping the announcement secret, Huffington said, he was erecting a “Chinese wall” between legislative and campaign activities.

However, former staffers said Huffington has an unusual penchant for privacy. They recalled that he ordered shredders for his Washington and Santa Barbara offices, refused to tell top aides how he would vote and discouraged the use of cellular phones because conversations could be monitored.

For his part, Huffington said he regards shredders as standard office equipment from his days in the business world, keeps his votes to himself because he is his own man and is no longer uneasy with cellular phones.

“In the campaign, I never used to use them,” he said. “Today, as a congressman, I am comfortable with cellular phones. You see, I can grow.”

Recently, Huffington talked about rumors he had heard that Capitol Hill police were monitoring phone calls of House members.

“I’ll tell you, if I’m ever in a position to find out . . . I’ll shut that thing down so quick it will make your head spin,” he told a reporter. “We need privacy in life. I had that from being a private citizen.”

Huffington’s concern about security was among several quirky traits described by former staffers. These included an inclination to hug aides. In one case, Huffington insisted on hugging a male legislative staffer who made it clear he did not want to be embraced, according to witnesses.

Huffington confirmed the encounter, saying it “was not a big hug” and the staffer never got one after that. “I like to hug people. I’m a hugger. So is Bill Clinton. But I don’t hug everybody. I hug people who I think want to be hugged. . . . I just think hugging is something that all children love and probably we adults would too.”

For many members of Congress, their most important role is helping to bring jobs and federal money home to their constituents. Even here, Huffington has blazed a separate path. He considers it inappropriate for a legislator to lobby on behalf of a special interest or a local business, even if potential jobs are at stake in his district.

Last year, Huffington refused a request by Raytheon Corp., one of Santa Barbara County’s largest employers, for help in getting State Department waivers to sell $100 million in shipboard missile defense systems to Taiwan.

Huffington, whose family business was sold to Taiwan’s national oil company for an estimated $600 million, said he left the influence peddling for Raytheon’s battalion of consultants and lawyers. “I’m not going to be a paid or unpaid lobbyist for any company,” he said. “That’s not my job. I represent everyone equally.”

But the California senator whom Huffington hopes to defeat this fall had no such qualms. Feinstein recently wrote letters to Secretary of State Warren Christopher and White House chief economic adviser Robert E. Rubin urging that the way be cleared for U.S. companies to compete for the Taiwanese contract.

Huffington says Feinstein’s efforts on behalf of Raytheon “smacks of a conflict” because she accepted two $1,000 campaign contributions from the firm’s political action committee during the same period she was writing letters for the company.

This was not the first time Feinstein had gone to bat for constituents in Huffington’s district. Earlier, she persuaded colleagues on the Senate Appropriations Committee to set aside $6 million to build a state-of-the-art electric bus facility in Santa Barbara after the House dropped the project.

Huffington initially made the funding request in the House, saying the electric bus facility deserved special treatment because it contributed to clean air and would set the pace for the rest of the nation. But House leaders yanked the bus project from the $37.6-billion transportation bill soon after Huffington voted against the measure on the House floor. After Feinstein’s efforts to reinsert the money, a House-Senate conference committee ultimately compromised and awarded the project $3 million.

Feinstein frequently touts her ability to bring the bacon home to California as a member of the Appropriations Committee.

“My whole philosophy of government is you provide practical solutions to real problems,” Feinstein said in an interview. “It’s personal service. This is what I think matters to people. They can have an advocate, and I’m happy to be that advocate. This is my state.”

On the contrary, Huffington says, he must vote against huge appropriations bills as a true fiscal conservative in order to balance the budget.

“I can’t be voting for all these appropriations bills, because if you add them up, they don’t balance the budget. So I voted against a lot of them knowing full well I had a project in there for my district.” He added: “You find me any other people who will do that.”

The bottom line, Huffington contends, is that he is part of a freshman class that is changing the way business is done on Capitol Hill.

“Listen,” he told a reporter, “you should be thrilled there are people like myself willing to come in and try and shake this place up.”

Times staff writers Kenneth R. Weiss, Dave Lesher and Alan C. Miller also contributed to this article.