CAMPAIGN JOURNAL : Surrogate Adds Distinctive Accent to Race

Arianna Huffington’s schedule has been tight all day and now, typically, she is late for a live radio talk show that started almost five minutes ago.

Strangely, she does not even appear rushed, let alone panicked, though her driver now reports that he is lost. Still no problem. Retrieving a cellular telephone from her pocketbook, Huffington speaks to the radio station in a rich accent that she compares to Zsa Zsa Gabor’s, and learns that her car is actually right outside the studio’s front door.

Minutes later, the 43-year-old Greek immigrant is on the air, repeating once again the need for a more spiritual America, a central theme from both her latest book and her husband Michael’s U.S. Senate campaign. Without a belief in God, she adds, we get too bogged down in life’s everyday problems--like toothpaste.

“Toothpaste?” exclaimed radio host Rich Dixon, who has already told his listeners that Huffington has “unimaginable” wealth, estimated to be at least “70 . . . million . . . dollars.”

“You don’t have toothpaste problems,” he insists. “ I have toothpaste problems.”

But Huffington says that her problems are really quite typical and that, yes, her husband is a clean freak who has scolded her for leaving the top off of the toothpaste tube.

It is not uncommon for people to view glamorous Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington as a visitor from the rare air of high society. And that would be true. But these days, Huffington is stumping California’s very unglamorous chicken-dinner circuit as one of the major speakers and strategists in her husband’s bid for the Republican nomination to try to unseat Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

In fact, while Rep. Michael Huffington (R-Santa Barbara) has all but ignored his Republican opponents and focused instead on the November election, Arianna Huffington has been the campaign’s most prominent representative in the GOP primary.

She has faced off against Republican rival William E. Dannemeyer more than half a dozen times this spring at candidate forums throughout the state, including one here late last month. In contrast, Michael Huffington has appeared with Dannemeyer only a few times, and not since the state Republican convention last February.

The arrangement irritates Dannemeyer.

“I’m about ready to call the sheriff and suggest that he begin looking for a missing person named Michael Huffington,” the former Orange County congressman joked recently. “It’s appropriate to have surrogate speakers, but there comes a point when you cross the line. They have.”

Michael Huffington defends his wife’s role as an important complement to the campaign because, as a congressman, he has to be in Washington three or four days during the week. Besides, he said, she is an exceptionally good surrogate. When he arrived at an event last week in Napa, the sponsors told him he was their second choice for the Senate. She was first.

At their appearances, she and Dannemeyer make an odd pair and their relationship has been icy.

At the Black Angus restaurant in Stockton, she is gracious and polite, even after she has listened to 10 minutes of Dannemeyer ridiculing and vilifying her husband as an inexperienced, do-nothing Texas carpetbagger.

“When I see a member of Congress like Michael Huffington . . . I define him as an economic liberal and a social liberal,” Dannemeyer said, pounding the air with his fist.

Huffington said that when she tries to greet Dannemeyer, he only grumbles and then bolts. When the two were seated next to each other, she said she succeeded in starting a brief conversation with an “icebreaker” question about his family.

“I’ve been courteous to her,” Dannemeyer insists. “But I’m under no duty to engage in a continuing discussion with Mrs. Huffington.”

It is part of Huffington’s character, however, to navigate rough waters with a smooth touch. Instead of anger, she meets her challengers with a disarming smile and a sympathetic response.

She was confronted a few times at the Republican Women’s Federated Club in Stockton, where about 60 people lunched on teriyaki chicken at tables adorned with red-white-and-blue carnation centerpieces. After her speech, Huffington faced two questioners who disagreed with her husband’s support for abortion rights and gay rights.

She reminded a man who identified himself as a soldier that gays have always been in the military, so that is not the issue. “The focus should be on conduct,” she said.

To the other, she said: “I would not personally have an abortion, but we need to remember one thing as Republicans--we do not agree on everything. And . . . if you disagree with somebody 20%, that person is not your 20% enemy. He is your 80% friend.”

Dannemeyer said he thinks Huffington comes across as a bit patronizing, as he said any person of great wealth would appear before a middle-class audience. Others said she proved to be an accomplished speaker and a deft campaigner. But even that sometimes raised questions.

“They felt Arianna was attractive and she was handling herself well,” said Nancy Boone, president of the Stockton women’s club. “But the question afterward was, ‘Who is running?’ . . . There were some questions (about whether) we are going to have another Hillary.”

Beyond her debating and speechmaking, there is little doubt that Arianna Huffington is a major force in campaign decision-making. She participates in all strategy meetings. And the central theme of the campaign--a more altruistic society--overlaps substantially with the message in her sixth book--just released--titled “The Fourth Instinct, the Call of the Soul.”

In Stockton, Huffington sought to underscore that campaign theme by stopping at a youth shelter in the hour she had between her luncheon speech and the radio show.

Huffington’s visit interrupted an afternoon recreation period where a number of teen-age boys were either playing Monopoly or watching the game. Huffington, wearing a peach silk business suit and fine jewelry, immediately took control, approaching one boy who spun a basketball on his finger and asking him to teach her the trick. She never did make it work, but, as her instructor warned, it’s not easy with long fingernails.

“Volunteering gives a very different understanding of the problem,” Huffington said later. “It stops being us and them.”