O.C.’s Umberg Still in a Spin After Defeat : Politics: The Democrat assemblyman who lost his bid for state office contemplates his future.

It’s enough to send anyone reeling. On Election Day, Tom Umberg went from Orange County’s hottest Democrat to Orange County’s most famous also-ran. Battered in his effort to unseat Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren by a decisive 54%-to-39% margin, Umberg will soon be out of politics and out of a job.

“I’ve been spinning the last few days,” said Umberg, who abandoned his Garden Grove Assembly seat to run statewide. “I’m going to have to sit back for a little while and figure out what the future holds. Obviously, I would have liked to have been attorney general. But that ain’t happening.”

Yet, not all is gloom and doom. Even in defeat, the 39-year-old lawmaker remains remarkably resilient, the days ahead still his to seize.

Several prominent Southern California law firms have already called. His supporters talk optimistically of a possible appointment to a post with the U.S. Justice Department. Meanwhile, some politicos continue to insist Umberg remains a potentially hot property, tailor-made to run for Congress, district attorney, maybe even attorney general again.

“I think Tom Umberg has a good political future,” said Joseph Cerrell, a Democrat campaign consultant. “Politics is the art of being at the right place at the right time, and he was bucking a Republican year and a Republican incumbent.”

John Van de Kamp, former state attorney general, said his advice to Umberg has been simple: Follow your heart.

“I think he’s got a bright future, but where he’ll land I don’t know,” said Van de Kamp, who is now in private law practice in Los Angeles. “I think Tom really loves public service. I think he’ll be back in that in some fashion or another. . . . I would think the Clinton Administration and (U.S. Atty. Gen.) Janet Reno would find Tom very attractive.”

Republicans see it far differently, gleefully driving a rhetorical stake into the heart of the Democrat who had horrified them most.

“I have met few individuals with a greater naked ambition and lack of character than Tom Umberg,” said Orange County GOP Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes, a longtime Umberg loather. “He is a fellow who would compromise principle and any inkling of values for political expediency like few others. It must be a terribly difficult thing to come crashing down with this big a rejection by the people.”

But even Fuentes doesn’t doubt that Umberg could rise from the political grave. “He’s too much a government type to give it up,” he said.

For his part, Umberg isn’t ruling out another foray in politics. But such thoughts seem a rude intrusion at a time of mourning. “Right now the thought of running for office again is like asking someone who had a baby die if they’re going to have more children,” Umberg said. “You just poured your heart and soul into something and it didn’t work out.”

Moreover, Umberg’s political career in Sacramento and the endless campaigns have greatly intruded into his family life. The silver lining of defeat is that he gets to spend more time with his wife, Robin, and three young children.

Umberg said he has absolutely no second thoughts about the tough tactics his campaign team employed in the attorney general’s race.

As the underdog, he gambled on a television ad that attempted to do what might have seemed impossible before the race--to tag his opponent as soft on crime by blaming him in part for the death of 12-year-old kidnaping victim Polly Klaas. The controversial TV spot, which showed the girl’s grandfather laying flowers at her memorial shrine, faulted Lungren for failing to obtain funding for a computer system that might have allowed officers to arrest her alleged abductor, Richard Allen Davis, before she was killed.

Lungren denounced the commercial as flat-out wrong, even before it was broadcast. Later, he criticized Umberg for taking more than $800,000 in campaign contributions from Native American tribes that were battling the attorney general over reservation gambling.

Umberg is doing no Monday-morning quarterbacking on the commercial or the contributions. The Polly Klaas ad, he reasoned, was necessary to get “everyone’s attention” amid the TV tumult of California’s high-stakes governor’s race and the costliest U.S. Senate contest in the nation’s history. Of the money from the Native American casinos, Umberg stressed that the tribes have “a legitimate right to electronic games on their reservations and a right to play in the political arena.”

“The commercial didn’t sour his future,” said George Urch, Umberg’s campaign manager. “People are always looking for the easy answer, and in this race that commercial was a wash. If anything, he comes out looking strong. He raised $3.2 million and he beat Lungren in most of the debates. He won the individual battles, but he lost the war.”

That’s an assessment some political consultants find hard to swallow. They suggest that the Polly Klaas ad, in particular, may have lowered Umberg’s stock both with the public and political leaders in his own party.

“Umberg has hurt himself,” said Sal Russo, a conservative consultant. “He had an uphill battle, but everyone had high expectations for him. A few of my Democrat friends were dismayed with the direction he took. He lost some favor. And I think the commercial crossed the line of propriety with the public.”

While that debate continues, there is little question among most Orange County leaders that Umberg played a key role during his four-year tenure in the Capitol. With the Democrats in full control, Umberg was the vital link to the ruling party for a county dominated by Republicans.

“I thought he did a great job for Orange County serving people of both parties,” said Christopher Townsend, an Orange County Democrat who helped with the 1992 Clinton campaign. “He represented the progressive moderate our party needs. I believe he could have defeated (Republican Rep.) Bob Dornan if he had wanted to run for Congress instead. I know Dornan was relieved he didn’t run.”

Umberg delivered for the county on numerous occasions, lobbying for money to widen the Santa Ana Freeway, getting funds for indigent health care, shepherding a bill that helped ease the controversy over where to locate a new county jail.

In all, he introduced 98 pieces of legislation, with 65 reaching the governor’s desk and 53 being signed into law. Among them were a hate-crime bill that made it a felony to terrorize an individual based on race or religion, another cracking down on boiler-room crime and one designed to cut into attorney fraud against the elderly.

Republicans such as Fuentes often portrayed Umberg as a puppet of Willie Brown, the powerful Democratic Assembly Speaker. They consistently argued that Umberg, a former U.S. attorney and military prosecutor, was allowed to vote tough on crime and tax issues only so he would run well at election time back in conservative Orange County.

It’s a characterization that still chafes at Umberg. He characterizes himself as a moderate who consistently ran afoul of more liberal members of his party, Brown included. He recalls continually butting heads with the Speaker and other liberals over immigration and criminal justice bills.

When Umberg authored a measure to eliminate conjugal prison visits for the spouses of convicted murderers, he said, the Democratic caucus “just about took my head off.”

Today, he criticizes many of his Democratic colleagues for their attitude on crime issues, most notably the “three strikes” anti-crime law.

“They wanted to bury their heads in the sand,” he said. “They didn’t want to author responsible alternatives.”

As a self-avowed centrist, Umberg said his most profound disappointment with Sacramento was the polarization between the parties and the intense partisanship that marked the Capitol during his tenure. “For many of my colleagues,” he said, “it was much more important to embarrass the other party than it was to accomplish anything.”

But he also has a fair share of good memories, most notably the times that the process worked. Umberg enjoyed the problem solving, those rare instances of bipartisan spirit and the opportunity to do a good deed for a constituent.

Unlike many of his conservative Republican colleagues from Orange County, Umberg has never viewed government as the sworn enemy. Late on the last night of the 1994 session, Umberg stood in the middle of the Assembly floor and gazed at the rows of oak desks, the lofty galleries and velvet drapes.

“I stood there looking around,” Umberg said, “and thought there are very few people who have the same sort of privilege to be a policy maker.”