THE 104TH CONGRESS : Freshman From ‘Sticks’ Savoring the Limelight

Of all the things to go wrong, it would have to be the wine.

Just as George P. Radanovich, the owner of Radanovich Wineries, was being sworn in as one of the nation’s freshman congressmen, two cases of Radanovich wine, which were supposed to have arrived via United Parcel Service, were lost somewhere between here and the West Coast.

So instead, the blue-eyed Republican from North Fork, Calif., was treating his family, well-wishers, visitors and an opening stream of lobbyists to bottles of Sutter Home.

“When I find that UPS guy,” Radanovich said, half in a laugh, half in anger, “I’m going to strangle him.”

But despite the glitch on this freshman lawmaker’s first day--the first day of a new Republican majority in Congress--this could not have been a better day.

Just a few short months ago, he was one of many little-known business people, farmers and private citizens--minor political players from America’s hinterlands who had never stood on the national stage. But his obscurity ended at the stroke of noon Wednesday, when he was transformed into part of this country’s new political power base. Suddenly, he became a nobody turned somebody in a town where not just anybody matters.

Radanovich is a small-town winemaker in California’s Central Valley. He came here this fall after unseating a six-term Democrat in the second-largest majority against an incumbent, 57% to 39%.

At 39 and never married, he still lived at home with his parents in Mariposa. He came to Washington and took a $133,000-a-year salary and a one-room apartment behind the Supreme Court that rents for $800 a month.

He is a devout Catholic who opened his day Wednesday with 9 a.m. Mass at St. Peter’s Church on Capitol Hill. Then he unabashedly toured the Capitol with his parents, George and Joan Radanovich, and giddily pointed out such hot tourist attractions as Statuary Hall and the concrete tunnel under the Capitol building.

“Oh yes, I’m proud of him,” said his father, a retired clothing merchant in Mariposa. “We come from a town of 1,900 people. A little town. The sticks.”

And as a loyal Newt Gingrich lieutenant, he was chosen as one of the few freshmen to give a floor speech on opening day--albeit just nine paragraphs about the not-so-sexy issue of proxy voting. But he did find himself sitting on the aisle and in a position to shake hands with Gingrich as the Georgian strode to the front of the chamber to take his new post as Speaker.

He was, he said, proud to be part of a group that Gingrich in his opening speech called “commoners together, to some extent Democrats and Republicans, to some extent liberals and conservatives--but Americans all.”

Radanovich had ridden the small-town circuit of civic duty, serving on the local planning commission and the water authority and, later, for one term on the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors.

After a failed 1992 bid for the House that ended in defeat in the Republican primary, he concentrated on building a base in vote-rich Fresno and, with redistricting, took on veteran Democratic Rep. Rick Lehman, also of North Fork. He attacked President Clinton and embraced the GOP’s “contract with America.” In November, Radanovich, grandson of a Yugoslav immigrant, became the new representative of California’s 19th District.

He arrived Tuesday morning at his new office on the third floor of the Cannon building, not glamorous digs but the best he thinks a freshman could wrangle. The furniture was dented and scratched. Outside his window is a panoramic view of the roof of a parking lot.

But if he stands behind his desk and cranes his neck to the right, he can see the plume atop the head of the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol.

In an interview in the Speaker’s lobby, surrounded by political warhorses such as Democrat Henry B. Gonzalez of Texas and Republican Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, he said: “With this new Republican majority, I have a chance to really make things happen. Without the new leadership, I would have had to hang out a cross to get things done.”

He won assignments to the Natural Resources and the Budget committees. He wants to balance the budget and set term limits at about six years. He would do away with the Education Department to help bring down the federal deficit. He represents a farming and gold-mining district where he believes in the Ronald Reagan doctrine that big government is not the answer but the problem.

Obviously, so do his constituents. They sent him here.