A Surf-and-Turf Battle to Unseat Rohrabacher

This was not your run-of-the-mill birthday party.

When Sally J. Alexander’s friends crowded around a backyard swimming pool Sunday afternoon, they were feting not her 82nd birthday, but the kickoff of her campaign as Democratic nominee for Congress.

And, true to form, the red-haired activist and retired public relations specialist brought along a Boogie board, the icon of her challenge to surfing politician and GOP incumbent Dana Rohrabacher.

Alexander hopes to meet Rohrabacher for a joint surfing/Boogie board exhibition by the beach this summer--he on the surfboard, she on the Boogie board--and maybe even go toe-to-toe on the issues, from the environment to Medicare.

The vision of this surf-savvy octogenarian riding the political waves has quickly captured the fancy of the national media.

Since the Wall Street Journal declared her “the oldest challenger to seek election to Congress this year--and maybe ever,” her telephone has been ringing nonstop with calls from CNN, the “Today” show, even a German news service.

Two national television crews attended her Sunday party, with one cameraman intently documenting her serving pieces of birthday cake in the crowded kitchen while the theme from “Chariots of Fire” emanated from the next room.

Amid the fuss, Alexander seemed unfazed.

In a wry reference to her age, she quipped in a poolside speech: “Everything’s working in me, and I’m working for you.”

But things are not working so well in America, says this rock-solid Democrat who cast her first presidential ballot for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and turned 82 on Wednesday.

Boogie boards aside, she assured reporters her campaign is no joke. She insists the conservative Rohrabacher is vulnerable and she’s angry about the prospect of Medicare cuts, the lack of a national health-care system, what she terms attacks on a clean environment.

She lists a litany of other goals: safe streets, strengthening the public school system, training for displaced workers, less waste at the Pentagon.

Her daughter, Sandy Hester, 53, of Claremont, who has run unsuccessfully for state Senate, describes her mother--the great-grandmother of four--as a vigor-filled woman who rises early, works out regularly at the gym and keeps four Boogie boards and four beach bikes in the garage for family workouts.

Even Sunday morning, hours before her kickoff, the pace was brisk at the neat white-and-blue Huntington Beach home Alexander shares with her husband and campaign manager, Chauncey A. Alexander, 79.

The telephone rang incessantly. A volunteer sorted campaign fliers while Chauncey Alexander was crunching voter registration numbers in the computer, reporting that in the heavily GOP 45th District, his wife will need to pull 13% of Republican voters (“the magic 13,” he calls it) to defeat Rohrabacher.

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Sally Alexander, meanwhile, talks about why she is launching her first bid for major political office.

“I’m not only angry, I’m scared about the general tenor of Congress,” she says.

She has written Rohrabacher’s office frequently; she pulls out a letter she wrote just last week that urges him to “make Medicare serve seniors’ needs,” to support diabetes research and campaign finance reform.

She describes herself in the letter as “your constituent and opponent in November!”

(Neither Rohrabacher nor a spokesman could be reached for comment Sunday, and messages left at his Washington office were not returned.)

In her only other campaign, she was elected an advisory neighborhood commissioner in southwest Washington, D.C., in the mid-1970s, before moving to Huntington Beach in 1982.

Her resume includes a long list of political and community activities, and Orange County Democratic Chairman Jim Toledano calls her a “remarkable activist.” Her age, he predicts, won’t hurt her candidacy and may even help. “People have begun to realize in the last 15 or 20 years that age is not a handicap.”

Indeed, the invitation to “Hang Ten with Sally” at Sunday’s kickoff featured a photo of a female surfer--not Alexander--and the slogan “Aged to perfection.”

And if elected, does she have the stamina to serve? Absolutely, she retorts in her frank, no-nonsense tone.

“The more you do, the more you get,” she says. “You lose your energy if you don’t use it.”