Huffington Holds Out for Unlikely Victory in Race

Republican Senate candidate Mike Huffington continued to hold out Monday for an unlikely reversal of his apparent loss to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, declaring in his first public appearance since the election that he will not concede the race because he believes it was tainted by “overwhelming” voter fraud.

State election officials and a Superior Court judge have dismissed the allegations of voter fraud presented so far, and Huffington did not provide any new evidence in his nationally broadcast interview Monday night on the “Larry King Live” talk show.

Still, the GOP candidate said he is participating in a privately organized investigation that he expects will find so much abuse that he hopes the U.S. Senate will order a new election in California.

“I’ve heard about the fraud, (but) I want us to have all the evidence,” he said. “When we have it, we’ll present it to the Senate and, if it’s so overwhelming, I would hope we would have a new election. If it’s not, I will congratulate Mrs. Feinstein on a victory. But I think, frankly, the fraud is overwhelming.”

Huffington, who said supporters of his effort will go door-to-door to ask voters if they are U.S. citizens and whether they voted at the proper address, charged that opponents of California’s Proposition 187 skewed the election by soliciting fraudulent votes from illegal immigrants.

“The problem is that there is a lot of voter fraud,” he said. “We are finding out daily . . . where people either are not legal citizens who are voting (or) they moved and they’re voting in the wrong place. We have boarded-up shacks where people say they live. We have people voting in vacant parking lots.”

Huffington did not say how long he expects it will take to conclude the investigation, and a spokesman for the effort said the group is still in the early stages of its review.

Martin Cooper, spokesman for the Voter Fraud Task Force, an ad hoc group headed by supporters of Proposition 187, added that, “Clearly, the scope of the voter fraud to impact the Senate race would have to be massive. Is it massive? I don’t think anyone can say at this moment.”

State election officials repeated Monday, however, that they have not found any evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Huffington’s comments also drew a strong reaction from Feinstein’s office, where a spokesman sought to counter the impression that the senator’s victory was exceptionally thin by pointing out that the unofficial margin is already wider than the successful campaigns for Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston in 1986, Republican Gov. George Deukmejian in 1982 and Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren in 1990.

“The solid nature of this victory is very clear,” said Feinstein spokesman Bill Chandler. “This is just another course of sour grapes that Californians are tired of. . . . It’s disappointing that Congressman Huffington has not shown an ounce of sportsmanship. The fact is, he lost.”

California’s high-priced, high-volume Senate race came to a dramatic finish about three weeks ago when the election night results found Feinstein holding such a slim lead that she declined to claim victory, and Huffington, a freshman congressman from Santa Barbara, refused to concede defeat.

More than a week later, Feinstein announced her reelection when most of the uncounted absentee ballots were tallied and it appeared mathematically impossible for her to lose.

The secretary of state’s office said Monday that Feinstein’s lead is now 159,028 votes--about 1.9% of the total cast--with about 20,000 ballots still outstanding. Officials said the counting is expected to be finished by next week.

Huffington and his wife Arianna were interviewed for about 40 minutes by Cable News Network talk show host Larry King, the same program on which the GOP candidate debated Feinstein in October.

In the interview, Huffington said he may seek public office again, possibly running against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in 1998 or against Feinstein, if she seeks reelection in 2000.

He also described some of the heavy stress of the campaign in which he spent more than $28 million of his own money and was the subject of many news and magazine stories critical of his business background, his wife’s unconventional religious experiences and his admission that he violated federal law by employing an illegal immigrant nanny for four years.

Huffington hinted at the personal impact of his campaign spending, saying that his family may move to a smaller home in California. Huffington rejected rumors that he will sell his $4.3-million Santa Barbara mansion. But he said, “I will have to sell some assets to bring some cash back.”

Still, like his wife, the candidate was upbeat about the experience.

“I look at this as a victory whether or not I win or not,” he said. “I ran because I wanted the Senate in Republican hands and it is now in Republican hands. And I think spending $28 million that we kept a lot of (Democratic) money from California going to other states.”

Huffington again criticized press coverage of his campaign, saying that he received unprecedented scrutiny that was not given to Feinstein.

“Some senior media people who are nationally known . . . said they had never seen a ganging up on one person so quickly and so coordinated . . . as that week or two we suffered a lot of negative publicity,” he said. “My biggest problem, though, is that Mrs. Feinstein wasn’t held to the same standard I was.”

Arianna Huffington, a best-selling author, said she plans to write a book about the couple’s experiences in the campaign. She joked that the book would be about how her husband lost or won the Senate race and the couple got its nanny back. And she suggested that a possible title would be, “Faith, Lies and Sound Bites.”

“This has been an incredible experience,” she said. “The most liberating thing for me is that . . . I suppose the public relations nightmare is to have, in the same week, 10 negative articles on you. Well, that nightmare happened to me and it wasn’t so bad. All the things that I really valued--everything that means a lot to me, my family, my faith, my children, my friends--were intact.”

More on Huffington: Times reporter Kenneth Weiss looks at the winding path that led to Huffington’s U.S. Senate bid in a profile that is available by fax or mail through Times on Demand. Call 808-8463 and press *8630. Order item. No. 5511. $2.95.

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