Far From Limelight, Huffington Regroups : Politics: Ex-candidate says he enjoys being a private citizen and plans to make back the millions he spent. He is ‘fairly confident’ he will run for governor.

A year ago, Mike Huffington was an ambitious Santa Barbara congressman with an office on Capitol Hill, his eye on the Senate, a full-time scheduler to juggle his appointments and a press secretary to feed the media maw. Today, if you want to reach him in Washington, you have to leave a message with his wife.

While Arianna Huffington runs in the same circles as Newt Gingrich, Mike Huffington can be found addressing a group of Republicans in Torrance. While she discusses the role of the press on “CBS This Morning,” he does a “Wayne’s World”-type program on a Santa Barbara cable access channel, hosted by 19-year-old conservative Charles Kirkby and produced by Kirkby’s mother.

Virtually overnight, the man who spent a record $28 million of his own money to be a U.S. senator--only to lose to Democrat Dianne Feinstein in a squeaker--has fallen from headliner to has-been. But if he has vanished from the California political landscape, it may be less to recoil than regroup.

The 47-year-old millionaire is already positioning himself for another run at public office, most likely for governor in 1998. He says he will spend the next two years making back the fortune he lost in a vicious Senate campaign as well as helping Republicans beat incumbent Democrats in Sacramento. And he will gladly step aside to let Arianna, lecturer and author, be the Washington quote machine while he tools around California in a teal-blue, four-wheel-drive and a shirt with no tie.

“I am fairly confident I will be running for governor,” Huffington said last week from a Florida hotel where he is working on a television pilot for ABC, having recovered from a devastating loss that cost him not only the Senate post but his seat in the House.

“But I’m having the best time right now. I enjoy life as a private citizen; that was an easy transition for me. Most people would not be able to get out of bed.”

He has come a long way from just weeks ago, when Huffington’s critics wondered if he would have to be dragged out of Washington by the heels. After first contesting the absentee ballots and then the election, Huffington alleged widespread voter fraud and refused to concede. He was spotted roaming the halls of Congress, using the senators-only elevator, popping into the members-only dining room, smirking in the direction of Feinstein’s office door--unseemly sights in a Washington where, as the saying goes, there is nothing more ex than an ex-congressman.

Now he claims zero affection for the city that is home to his daughters, 3 and 5, and career base to his wife. She operates the Critical Mass Institute in Washington to promote volunteerism and is putting together a cable television show about the news media called “Beat the Press.”

Huffington now divides his time between both coasts, spending one week in the family’s home in an exclusive neighborhood near the National Cathedral, then two weeks in California, working out of an office in the Santa Barbara mansion or driving 90 minutes to his Santa Monica production company, Crest Films.

He is making investments and indulging his dream of producing a feature film. (He declines to provide details, but his wife said he is in search of an inspirational, family values script that points up “the better angels in us all.”)

He says a third of his time goes to the film business, a third to his family and the rest to politics. His mission next season is to make sure the Legislature tilts his party’s way should he capture the Statehouse.

“If I run for governor,” he said, “I want a state Legislature that will pass and implement the programs I stand for--welfare reform, cutting taxes, the line-item veto.”

He says that he is through injecting vast sums of money into his campaign, that he has “paid his dues” and earned the name recognition necessary to raise funds as well as anyone else in the field.

“I sacrificed not only the money spent on the campaign, but I didn’t invest other than very conservatively while in Congress (to avoid conflicts of interest). I gave my salary to charity. I didn’t charge (the taxpayers) for air fare. Financially, that was quite a draw on me.”

But some observers say Huffington will have more than his bankbook to repair if he plans to take on state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, the early favorite for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. That bruising campaign with Feinstein and two lackluster years in Congress did little for the image of a man sometimes seen as a millionaire who tries to buy elections.

“No one is going to give him money. No one thinks he needs it. Nobody feels any obligation to him, and there is no one sitting out there dying for Mr. Huffington to be governor of California,” said a Republican strategist who followed Huffington’s Senate campaign.

During his two years in the House, Huffington distinguished himself not by how much he did but by how little, offering only one original bill and no amendments to legislation, and refusing to go after all but a handful of federal projects for his district.

He was a loner, making few if any close friends in the California delegation and leaving critics calling him “an empty suit” and the “alleged congressman.” After the Senate race, better than one out of two voters had a negative opinion of both candidates, the strategist said.

People who meet Huffington in political circles are often surprised that he is more substantive than his reputation suggests. Conservative strategist Paul M. Weyrich said of a recent gathering attended by the Huffingtons: “What surprised some participants was that this is in fact an intelligent fellow who had something interesting to contribute.”

That would seem faint praise for a candidate who spent a now infamous fortune to deliver his message. But Huffington believes he earned the name recognition to build a formidable fund-raising network, and with congressional Republicans looking to shift power to the states, Sacramento is the place to be.

“I have talked to blue-collar workers out there . . . one hustling cars for passengers at LAX. He said to me, ‘You did great,’ ” Huffington said. “If I have people I am touching out there that I didn’t realize, that’s terrific. Why not do it again?”