Whee! the People

“ I am not a gifted public speaker. In fact, I am not even an average speaker. “ --Wolf Dalichau, announcing his candidacy for U.S. Senate

Modern politics requires modern methods, and so Wolf Dalichau has been brushing up on sound bites. He sits in his campaign office here, a couple doors down from his Rollin’ Pin Bake Shop on Glendale Boulevard, and recites the one-liners that seem to play well on those rare occasions he is actually invited to speak somewhere.

“I make a joke about my German accent,” the baker says. “I say, ‘Nobody complained about Lawrence Welk’s accent.’ They get a kick out of that. Or I tell them, ‘I have worked with more dough than all the senators put together.’ ”

He smiles at his own jokes, and then pauses, straining to remember some more. He can’t. “I am drawing a blank,” he says with a shrug. “Usually it’s just something about dough.”

Okay, so maybe Wolf Dalichau is not ready for Leno. He has more on his mind than comedy. A political neophyte, he announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate in January--eager, to quote a campaign flyer, “to give a voice to Californians who cry out for change.” Ready, as another press release put it, to do battle on behalf of “we, the people.”

*

Since entering the Republican primary, Dalichau has waged a relentless and, until now, largely unsuccessful campaign to see his name published in a newspaper. He figures he has sent at least 20 letters to this newspaper alone. To his dismay, almost all the media attention in the GOP primary race has focused so far on Michael Huffington, the mega-millionaire from Texas who also wants to displace Sen. Dianne Feinstein next November. Dalichau sometimes will make the obligatory listing of also-ran no-names, but that’s been about it. This is a shame, because in a political world so frequently devoid of color, Dalichau is a walking rainbow.

Here, for instance, is a candidate who concedes that his initial motivation in seeking office is to settle scores with city inspectors who shut down his doughnut-making machine.

Here is a candidate for U.S. Senate whose official biography lingers proudly on his father’s tour of duty in World War II, as a soldier in the German army.

Here is a candidate who admits in an interview that, although his campaign is short on cash, financial help is expected to arrive any day now from his fiancee’s mother in Palm Springs. “She said,” he adds in all earnestness, “that the check is in the mail.”

Here is a candidate seemingly unafraid of impossible odds, and also puns. As yet another of his many missives to editors declares: “Big shots demand, ‘How DARE a ‘baker’ run for U.S. Senate?’ Well, Benjamin Franklin was a printer. Thomas Jefferson was a farmer. And Harry Truman sold hats in Missouri. Maybe California kneads a ‘baker’ in the U.S. Senate to save dough!”

Of politics, Dalichau says, “the whole thing is corrupt.” Clearly, he has read a little LaRouche, and has listened to a little Limbaugh. His major campaign issues are immigration, crime and bureaucrats--in particular, bureaucrats who police doughnut machines. He doesn’t claim to have many answers, but he’s convinced that these are the questions. The solutions he can work on once he arrives in Washington.

*

Anonymity aside, it’s obvious that Dalichau is enjoying his campaign. “The time of my life,” he calls it. Regulars who come to his bakery for coffee address him as “Sen. Wolf.” Merchants on the block have put his campaign poster in their windows. “Wolf’s the one,” the posters declare. That a fellow named Nixon employed a similar slogan is news to Dalichau.

He speaks most fondly of those few times he has addressed small gatherings of voters. “It is unbelievable,” he says. “I didn’t realize. There are tons and tons of people out there who think just like me.” No doubt.

It is easy to ignore Dalichau’s candidacy, to dismiss him as just one more cashew in the California nuthouse. Except that, in a crazy way, he’s right. There are plenty of people “out there” who believe the business of politics has failed, who advocate a retaking of government by citizen-politicians. It is this sentiment that produced flawed messengers such as Ross Perot and crude methods such as term limits and the rhetoric mouthed so easily by Dalichau and a legion of candidates like him.

In fact, in this context, Dalichau and Huffington pretty much are running the same campaign. Sadly for Wolf, however, there’s one thing he has absolutely wrong. Populism, schmopulism. In politics today, dough still counts for everything. And he’s covered with the wrong kind.