Decision ’96 / Key issues and races in the California vote : From the Fringe Comes the Voice of the Alienated

Oh yes, the conspiracy is out there.

It’s everywhere. The bankers. The feds. They’re trying to enslave the world. J. Walter Scott knows. He’s read about the conspiracy. And he’s figured out a way to stop it: He’s running for Congress.

“I’m an enemy of government,” said the 71-year-old retired clerical worker and insurance salesman, who is taking on incumbent Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-La Puente).

Scott, representing the American Independent Party, said he believes that a cadre of eight to 10 people, including Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, is plotting to take over the planet. He said that most federal lawmakers have betrayed the nation, and that these days, he feels alienated from the Democratic and Republican parties.

In that last regard, he is akin to much of the American electorate. The difference, with Scott and with scores of other minor party candidates running in Tuesday’s primary election, is that he is tired of waiting around for a Texas billionaire, or someone else, to shout over the din in the name of the voiceless--he wants to do it himself.

In Los Angeles County, more than 60 minor party candidates, representing the likes of the Natural Law, Peace and Freedom, Libertarian and Green parties, are jockeying in 30 races.

While they champion philosophies of every stripe, they are the darkest of horses in campaigns for the state Legislature, Congress and the White House this year.

Minor party candidates rarely win more than 10% of the general election vote. In Torres’ district, a Libertarian standard-bearer garnered 5% in 1992, while the incumbent won with 61%.

On the far left, Peace and Freedom aspirants push for more compassion in government and for racial harmony. Natural Law candidates advocate frequent meditation. The Green Party backs environmental and consumer causes. With a blend of both ends of the spectrum, the Libertarians hoist a banner for individual rights. On the right, American Independent hopefuls stump to end foreign aid and eliminate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

And in a political era when conservative firebrand Patrick J. Buchanan is mainstream enough to win the New Hampshire primary, someone has to be the fringe.

Scott, who had supported Buchanan but now fears that the hard-line commentator might be going soft, said he has never met anyone more conservative than himself. The business card sums it up: “Walter Scott for Congress. God, Guts & Guns.”

A longtime member of the John Birch Society, Scott said that if he is elected, he will vote immediately to close U.S. borders to immigration, repeal the 14th Amendment granting citizenship to everyone born in the United States, and shut down, by his own estimation, 80% of the federal government.

Scott is the only office-seeker from his party in the 34th Congressional District, so his name will appear on the November ballot no matter how many votes he receives in the primary.

Armed with an index of registered voters, which he purchased from the county for $107, and a telephone, he will spend the next seven months on a mission to win the district.

Torres, who is seeking his eighth term, has little to say about Scott’s chances other than that he believes voters in the district are “intelligent.” In the 1992 presidential election, 51% of the voters there backed Bill Clinton, 31% supported George Bush and 18% cast ballots for Ross Perot.

“I’m often proud to say I have a district that mirrors America. I have just about everything the country has, and I have political diversity,” Torres said. “I’m happy to see a Walter Scott running.”

Scott, who grew up in Columbus, Ga., in the depths of the Great Depression, said he began to shift to the far right when he was introduced to the John Birch Society in 1960.

“I began to pay attention and read and really see what was happening,” he said. “Most people are uneducated. They don’t care. They’re asleep. The majority of the American people are gullible fools.”

He said he believes forces in Washington have been waging a secret war on the rest of the nation for many years, and he worries that one day they will conduct a house-by-house search to confiscate all privately owned firearms.

Conspiratorial elements were also at work in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, he said. “There’s evidence that the government itself, the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms], had explosives stored in the building. They blew it up,” Scott said.

Nonetheless, Scott said there is hope if the electorate, at some point, taps enough constitutionalists to take a majority of the 435-member House of Representatives.

“Then we could shut everything down and take back our country,” he said. “We need 218 people in Congress just like me.”