GOP’s Resurgence Throws Limelight on O.C. Rep. Cox : Profile: But the attention that comes with new powers isn’t all favorable, as securities fraud bill demonstrates.

Power surfing through the marbled corridors of the Capitol on a recent February morning, Christopher Cox was in a mood to do a little name dropping.

“Newt” called him at home to seek counsel about the free-falling Mexican peso; House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Majority Leader Dick Armey joined him in a recent meeting with 20 of the nation’s governors; Gov. Pete Wilson and the Newport Beach Republican set the agenda for a meeting with other California Republicans, and at Gingrich’s request, Cox would host a briefing by new Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin for all GOP members of the House.

Perennially frustrated by the second-string status accorded to Republicans in a previously Democrat-controlled House, the 42-year-old Cox has risen from obscurity to become a member of the House leadership team in one of the greatest power waves to roll through Washington.

Ah, it’s finally great to be a Republican in Washington.

And for Cox, having emerged as the highest ranking Californian in the new Republican-controlled Congress, his days of inconsequential political labor are over.

“I got my wish,” said Cox, who once believed his only path to greater power was through the U.S. Senate. “It’s the same result through serendipity.”

With his dispassionate exterior, wrapped in a pressed gray suit, perfectly combed hair and straight-toothed smile, Cox is the guy most likely to emerge from a wind tunnel unruffled.

Like his Republican colleagues, however, Cox, who was a White House lawyer in the Reagan Administration, is learning that power does not come without a price: At the behest of Gingrich, Cox is carrying a controversial securities fraud litigation bill that has made him a target for trial lawyers who are accusing the congressman, a former securities lawyer, of conflict of interest.

The bill, scheduled for a House floor vote this week, would make it tougher for investors to prove securities fraud in federal court. The proposal is a key plank of the Republican “contract with America,” yet an unsettling position for Cox, whose Orange County district is suffering a municipal bankruptcy caused by failed security investments.

Last December, when U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) contended that the bill could apply to the small investors in the failed Orange County investment pool, Cox said he did not know the bill affected current cases and removed the politically damaging clause. In a sharply worded letter to Boxer--who holds the seat many believe Cox will seek in 1998--Cox accused her of attempting to “exploit the tragedy in Orange County.”

A month later, trial lawyers attempted to show that the bill could hurt Cox’s own constituents by strategically placing in the Commerce Committee hearing room some investors who had money in the Orange County fund.

More recently, Cox grew testy over news reports about his past relationship with William E. Cooper, a once-prominent Orange County businessman who was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison for defrauding thousands of mostly elderly clients of $136 million. The fraud was carried out by First Pension Corp., owned by Cooper and two partners.

Cox said recently that he did not know Cooper well, a characterization corroborated by the businessman.

During the mid-1980s, however, Cox helped prepare securities offerings for a First Pension entity. He said the work was unrelated to the Cooper scam.

In a lawsuit recently filed by investors against First Pension and Cox’s old law firm, Latham and Watkins, the congressman was mentioned but not named as a defendant.

Cox also worked in 1984 on Cooper’s attempts to acquire a California bank. And after Cox won his first primary race in 1988 for Congress, Cooper contributed $2,000 to his campaigns and hosted a 1991 fund-raiser for Cox at the businessman’s $700,000 Villa Park home. (Lawyers at the Latham and Watkins firm, which specializes in banking and securities law, also donated almost $126,000 to Cox’s four congressional races.)

Last week, Cooper said Cox and his firm knew nothing about the First Pension fraud.

“We purposely kept the information (about the fraud) away from Latham, because they wouldn’t have represented us if they knew,” Cooper said during an interview at a Santa Ana restaurant. “It’s not the kind of thing you run in and tell your attorney about.”

Cox said the First Pension lawsuit was distributed to Capitol Hill reporters in an attempt to embarrass him for sponsoring the bill that would help put an end to frivolous lawsuits.

“This is the most outrageous smear I have ever seen,” Cox said. “I am sorry I ever shook hands with Cooper. I would spend my own money to make sure he spends an extra five years” in prison.

Michael J. Aguirre, the San Diego attorney who filed the investors’ lawsuit, said it is ironic that Cox, “the congressman from Orange County, which just had the greatest bankruptcy because of securities fraud, now comes back and says, ‘We need to weaken the securities fraud laws.’ ”

Unaccustomed to harsh criticism, Cox considers the current state of cutthroat politics a “necessary cost” of governing in the sound bite age. But he does not intend to walk away.

Rep. Jack Fields (R-Texas), who chairs the subcommittee that first heard Cox’s bill, said, “I don’t believe Cox is demagogic and I think he really likes pressure. I don’t think that pressure can get too great.”

While his critics question his motives on this bill, Democrats and Republicans alike laud Cox for his intelligence and ability to focus on the mind-numbing minutiae of the federal budget.

A young lieutenant in Gingrich’s “revolution,” Cox is the pensive, cautious warrior.

While other members of the new House leadership team surrender to uncontrollable urges of brashness, Cox wears his restraint like a badge of honor. He can disagree without being disagreeable and, most unlike Gingrich, is not likely to shoot from the lip.

Now working in Gingrich’s shadow as chairman of the GOP committee that sets the legislative policy agenda, Cox tries to walk the fine political line between being the Speaker’s obedient disciple and speaking out when he disagrees.

When Gingrich supported President Clinton’s controversial $20-billion loan package to Mexico, for example, Cox disagreed but muted his criticism and turned down high-profile media interviews.

“You can’t be part of leadership if you always walk out of closed-door meetings and announce that everything you disagree with is crazy,” Cox said. “As long as there are ample other people to carry the message . . . then my public diplomacy ought to remain a matter of careful judgment.”

That penchant for prudence is viewed by some as bordering on arrogance, but those closest to him say it’s just part of being Chris Cox.

Even before asking for a date with the woman who would become his wife, Cox placed a preliminary telephone call to ask what she had been doing in the four years since they met.

“He was worried about calling me,” said Rebecca Cox, whose own political connections landed her on the powerful Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission.

Still, a perception of distant coolness prevails as the barrier that sometimes keeps him from the innermost circle of Gingrich’s confidants.

Last fall, Cox received lukewarm reaction when mentioned as a possible challenger to Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio) for chairmanship of the House Budget Committee.

A Republican staffer close to the committee said members didn’t like the idea, partly because of where Cox comes from--an affluent, mostly white, California coastal district that cannot relate to welfare cuts, for example. Kasich, who became chairman, is from the Columbus, Ohio, urban area.

“Cox was talking (budget) theory, but Kasich was talking real life,” the staffer said.

There is no question that this anti-tax, anti-spending, economic conservative believes he knows what’s wrong with the federal government, particularly its budget process.

Ask Cox, a Harvard Law and Business School graduate, what his objective is and he points to a nearby cabinet in his Capitol Hill office crammed with volumes of books containing the law of the land. “Well now , of course, the objective is to clean up the U.S. Code.”

His short-term goal, beyond the 100-day “contract with America” calendar, is to attempt a “complete overhaul” of the 1974 Budget Act, which allowed spending to be approved piecemeal and is blamed by conservatives for causing the rise in the budget deficit.

And he’s not kidding. For leisure, he reads math books along with biographies of historic figures.

As a member of the Orange County delegation--which many feel is typified by the unrestrained conservative activism of Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove)--Cox wins respect as a thinking conservative.

A hard-driving perfectionist who was described by one of his GOP colleagues as having “high intelligence wattage,” Cox has persnickety habits that are are well known. In one demonstration of his meticulousness, he recently issued a three-page press release with 10 footnotes.

As comfortable as Cox is in discussing economic theory, he shifts in his chair when asked about social “wedge” issues such as school prayer, abortion, and current welfare proposals that would deny cash benefits to unwed mothers under the age of 18.

Carefully measuring his answers, Cox says he’s against “one-size-fits-all” solutions for welfare. He avoids the debate over abortion rights, instead defining his position in terms of what the federal government’s role should be. “The federal government should stay out. Period,” he says.

Same thing with school prayer. “The federal government should have no role, neither as a regulator, nor provider, nor as appropriator,” Cox says.

Few doubt that his caution is driven by his ambition.

“He doesn’t make mistakes,” a California GOP activist said privately. “There’s no doubt he’s ambitious and thinks he’s as good as anyone in town. While he probably shares everything on the (Republican) agenda . . . and he’s passionate about the change (in Congress), he is a little bit smarter and cooler of a customer.”

Cox refuses to speculate about his political future, but doesn’t discourage talk of higher office.

“I am interested in results,” he said. “That is the only reason I am here.”

Times staff writer Debora Vrana contributed to this report.

* DOCTORS LIKE COX BILL: Reform seen limiting costs of malpractice insurance. A10

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: Rep. Christopher Cox

* District: 47th Congressional

* Born: Oct. 16, 1952

* Hometown: St. Paul, Minn.

* Education: Bachelor’s degree, USC, 1973; MBA and law degree, 1977, Harvard; served as editor of the Harvard Law Review for two years

* Family: Wife, Rebecca, and two children

* Professional background: 1978-86, securities lawyer, Latham and Watkins; 1986-88, White House senior associate counsel

* First elected: 1988

* Congressional positions: Became highest-ranking California Republican and a member of Speaker Newt Gingrich’s leadership team after being elected chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee; also serves on the Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over financial matters, including the Orange County bankruptcy

* Election record:

1988 Cox: 67% Lida Lenney (D): 30% Roger Bloxham (Lib): 2% G. Farsai (P&F;): 1% 1990 Cox: 68% Eugene C. Gratz (D): 32% 1992 Cox: 65% John F. Anwiler (D): 30% Maxine B. Qujirk (P&F;): 5% 1994 Cox: 72% Gary Kingsbury (D): 25% Victor A. Wagner Jr. (Lib): 3% ***

INTEREST GROUP RATINGS

Rating Group year Interest Rating American Conservative Union 1994 Conservative 100% Americans for Democratic Action 1993 Liberal 0 American Security Council 1991-92 Defense/foreign policy 100% Peace PAC 1993 Defense/foreign policy 0 National Right to Life Committee 1993 Abortion 89% National Abortion Reproductive 1993 Abortion 10% Rights Action League Business-Industry Political 1994 Business 100% Action Committee AFL-CIO 1994 Labor 11% National Council of Senior 1992 Seniors 0 Citizens Children’s Defense Fund 1993 Children 0 Consumer Federation of America 1993 Consumers 10% NAACP 1991-92 Civil rights 25% Christian Coalition 1993 Family issues 100% League of Conservation Voters 1993 Environment 25% National Taxpayers Union 1993 Taxes 81%

***

KEY VOTES

Bill: Vote

Establish federal criminal, civil penalties for using force, threat of force or physical obstruction to block access to abortion clinics: No

Prohibit federal abortion funding except in cases of rape, incest or to save life of mother: Yes

Require five-business-day waiting period before person could purchase handgun to allow local officials to conduct a background check (Brady Bill): No

Ban manufacture, possession of 19 types of semiautomatic weapons: No

Proposed constitutional amendment to require balanced budget by 2001 or the second fiscal year after ratification, whichever is later: Yes

Approve North American Free Trade Agreement: Yes

Cut aid to former Soviet republics from $900 million to $552 million; limit Russian aid to humanitarian assistance: Yes

Deny federal aid to state, local school agencies prohibiting constitutionally protected voluntary prayer in public schools: Yes

Sources: Christopher Cox; Project Vote Smart/Center for National Independence in Politics; Times reports

Researched by GEBE MARTINEZ / Los Angeles Times