Campaigner Dornan Stirs Strong and Varied Feelings

Returning to Penn Station on the maiden voyage of his 1996 presidential campaign this weekend, Orange County Rep. Robert K. Dornan and 18 family members were hurriedly escorted off their train by Amtrak officials who told them a woman was brandishing a gun.

“Is it because of us?” asked Robin Griffin, the congressman’s daughter.

The answer was “No.” The incident had nothing to do with the Dornans.

But the question did not seem entirely ludicrous. As the staunchly conservative Garden Grove Republican was reminded on this trip, people who know of him either love him or loathe him.

Dornan beamed when a red-headed young man inside New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral gushed over him. “You speak from here,” the stranger said, pointing to Dornan’s heart. “Keep the faith.”

And he grew tense when a Southern California resident approached him in a hotel lobby and angrily said, “It’s Easter and I’m sorry to see you. . . . You’re a bigot.”

It was like that during the three-day Odyssey to New York and New Hampshire that began what promises to be an unusual and colorful presidential bid. The candidate is a high-energy firebrand who, at times, seems to approach sensory overload. He is buoyed by the fierce loyalty of his family and fans, yet faces hard animosity from those who oppose his brand of conservatism.

Dornan’s quest goes beyond capturing the GOP presidential nomination, though that goal is difficult enough for a man who currently ranks near the bottom of the nine-member field. He also wants to erase the image of a bombastic, right-wing radical he claims is a creation of the liberal news media.

Even before Dornan, 62, stepped aboard an Amtrak train in Washington this Easter weekend for his first campaign tour since announcing his candidacy on Thursday, few expected his long-shot bid for the White House would be anything approaching routine.

So it wasn’t especially surprising that the outspoken critic of abortion and gay rights would be greeted at the Wilmington, Del., station by a man dressed as a pregnant woman, holding a sign that read: “Dornan is the one.”

Dornan, despite his well-known “in-your-face” debating style, kept his cool and soon realized that the stunt was being pulled by an old congressional colleague, Delaware Gov. Thomas R. Carper, a Democrat, as a joke with the state’s Republican Party. The congressman jovially agreed to go along.

Borrowing a fast-paced tune from “Oliver!” Dornan broke into song: “I’m reviewing the situation. Should I go out on that platform or hide like a coward in the car? What should I do? People elected a governor and I have a screaming transvestite in my ear.”

It was one humorous vignette along the campaign trail in what Dornan intends to be a deadly serious--albeit unconventional--presidential bid.

There were no professional handlers or full-time campaign managers on this outing, which more closely resembled a family vacation than a presidential campaign. With fund raising just getting underway, most of the staff is made up of volunteers. The advance work in New Hampshire was handled by members of Young Americans for Freedom.

“People don’t understand, we are the team,” said Griffin, his daughter, and part of the Dornan entourage that included the congressman’s wife, Sallie, their five sons and daughters, nine grandchildren and his former chief of staff, Brian Bennett.

On the road, they pulled into a New Hampshire fast-food restaurant to strategize. “Until we get more money, for now, the Wendy’s restroom is our ‘War Room,’ ” said Robert Dornan Jr. in a reference to the name given to the strategy room of the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign.

The family tells him to stay focused, to quit being so laudatory of U.S. Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), another declared candidate, and instead talk about himself. Sometimes Dornan listens to his family’s advice, but other times he just can’t help himself.

Standing outside Nashua High School, the nine-term congressman clenched his teeth and his fists, re-enacting an incident of 20 years ago when his wife was hit on the chin in a political argument at the historic Concord Bridge in New Hampshire.

“No, no, no,” a son-in-law yelled out to him, worried that photographs of his storytelling would only embellish the combative image they are trying to downplay.

The “real Bob Dornan,” the congressman finds himself repeating, is “the compassionate Bob Dornan, the fun-loving Bob Dornan.”

Far right? “Absolutely absurd!” he told a network television crew after arguing that he’s the best candidate to move the Republican debate more to the center right on social issues.

“I am the center and (the GOP) is moving a little bit to the left,” he protested to a New Hampshire television reporter.

Social issues, he said in another interview, are “all new material to Bob Dole, but not to Bob Dornan.” Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, he added, “clanks” when asked about some of the contentious issues such as abortion that tend to divide Republicans.

Standing on the steps of the Congregational Church in Exeter, N.H., Dornan spoke about the social issues that are the apex of his campaign theme: “Faith, Family, Freedom.”

But he also he turned to his favorite subject, President Clinton, and also on this weekend to former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who has caused controversy with his recent book admitting the mistakes of the Vietnam War. As he discussed Clinton’s protests against the war, he mimicked the President’s Southern accent.

“Clinton is going to use McNamara’s book. . . . He says it vindicates him. Not hardly,” the candidate told about 75 people who had gathered on this chilly, sunny day. “Let the debate begin. Turn up the heat.”

The crowd’s applause was broken by a woman who shouted, “You weren’t there! You weren’t there!” A man a few feet away yelled out, “Tell the truth!”

But Dornan, who visited Vietnam as a combat photographer, responded: “I went eight times. . . . I will give you the facts.” He argued that “better men than Clinton” died in the war.

Sprinkled among the crowd were people like Michael Farinola, 28, an independent voter who listened attentively but did not openly react.

“I agree with about 70% of his issues. I don’t agree with his views on abortion, I don’t agree with his views on religion in school,” he said.

Then there were fans like 74-year-old Mary Catherine Ragan, who addressed him with the familiarity of a longtime friend. “You look wonderful without the beard,” she told him, waving her campaign sign.

Throughout the weekend, he referred to Clinton as “sleazy,” “deceptive,” “draft-dodging,” “foul-mouthed,” “arrogant” and a President who “lied his way into the White House” about “multiple womanizing,” and other purported misdeeds.

Dornan portrayed himself as perhaps the only Republican candidate willing to take on the President--a conviction that he said is born of passion.

At one campaign stop, Dornan’s eyes filled with tears when he spoke of his father. “My dad, three weeks before he died at the age of 83, said, ‘Bobby, make your passion count for something.’ ”

On Easter Sunday, before visiting with Cardinal John O’Connor at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the congressman and his wife ended their first campaign tour by renewing their wedding vows on their 40th wedding anniversary.

Sallie Dornan looked into the eyes of her husband before placing his wedding ring on his finger and said she was honored to be his wife.

No, not a conventional campaign.