Valley Man Is a Rebel With Disparate Causes

Jan Tucker is not a woman. Nor is he of Armenian descent. He’s not a professional politician, not a full-time journalist and not a pimp.

But what Jan Tucker isn’t makes what he is all the more intriguing.

For the 40-year-old San Fernando Valley man has aligned himself with causes and groups that seem incongruous on their own and positively implausible put together. And not just as a rank-and-file member: Tucker--part activist, part gadfly, part idealist--takes positions of leadership in the crusades he champions.

Though male, he is a board member and publicity director for the Valley/Northeast Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women (more than once have newspaper editors changed references to Tucker from he to she). Though of Russian extraction, he serves as vice president of the Armenian American Action Committee, Western Region.

And though a full-time private detective, Tucker still finds time to serve as vice chairman of a newspaper union group and PR guru for an organization advocating legalized prostitution. To top it all off, he is now seeking the U.S. presidential nomination of the California Peace and Freedom Party, a political throwback to the rebellious ‘60s that espouses a “feminist-socialist” platform.

“I don’t give a s--- how many people think I’m a nut,” Tucker said, salting a recent interview with the unvarnished language of a hard-bitten private eye. “I’m a nut in high demand.”

That he is, living the driven life of a self-professed “intensity junkie” with a finger in a bakery’s worth of pies. Both supporters and opponents agree that Tucker pours true passion into his causes, coupled with either a large dollop of media savvy or a talent for self-aggrandizement and troublemaking, depending on the point of view.

Certainly, the red-haired, mustachioed East Valley resident is a confident, sometimes combative man, whose strong opinions and insistence on being right have led to disputes with political and business associates. He is not afraid to broadcast his views, or even to march into court when he believes himself wronged, as a number of lawsuits bearing his name attest.

But no one denies that Tucker knows of what he speaks, whether on feminism, “Theory Z” management, Swedish socialism or modern American political history, which he discusses with a dash of conspiracy-theory ominousness.

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“Jan is a bright, educated, energetic guy,” said Israel Feuer, one of the founding members of the Peace and Freedom Party.

“He’s very dedicated to the agenda that he’s bringing to a given situation,” added Casey Peters, another longtime party member who has seen Tucker operate over the years. “He certainly has his cynical side, but obviously he has an idealistic side, or he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing.”

But how does an Arleta-born and -raised guy come by the eclectic, semi-radical views and values that lead some to label him a maverick among mavericks?

To Tucker himself, the answer lies in biology.

“It’s genetic. I’m a fourth-generation red-diaper baby,” he said, referring to the communist sympathies of his parents and other ancestors.

In junior high school in the ‘60s, while his peers studied their textbooks, Tucker spent his spare time fiddling with a shortwave radio, listening to the crackle of Radio Japan and stations out of war-torn Vietnam. Those broadcasts exposed the teenage Tucker, the youngest of three children, to other cultures and outlooks.

“That’s what turned me into a relatively independent thinker,” he said. “That was a revelation.”

By high school, where he says a teacher pronounced him “clinically insane” for his political views, Tucker began his involvement with the Peace and Freedom Party. His unconventional ways continued at Cal State Northridge with a double major in political science and Chicano studies as well as some dabbling in women’s studies courses, presaging his current activities with NOW and other women’s groups.

“I was a tried-and-true, dyed-in-the-wool feminist by the time I left college,” he said.

And it’s not just the idle boast of a sensitive male who thinks he understands women better than the average Joe.

“He’s a totally dedicated feminist. He’s been around almost longer than anyone” in the group, said Jean Morrison, president of the Valley/Northeast L.A. chapter of NOW.

There are still people who assume “Jan” must be a woman, people who assume he must be gay and women who assume his NOW membership is little more than a novel way to score a date.

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But his long-standing work for NOW, firing off press releases and marching in rallies, has won over the most suspicious of women activists, even if some split with Tucker over his call for legalized prostitution--”another oppressed group that needs help,” as Tucker puts it. His resume lists him as the PR hound for COYOTE, or Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics, a hookers’ rights group.

It was at a NOW rally a few years ago in support of rape victims in Bosnia that Tucker met restaurateur Tara Petrosian, president of the Armenian American Action Committee-Western Region, and now one of Tucker’s biggest fans.

Impressed with the media coverage Tucker helped generate for the NOW event, Petrosian telephoned him soon afterward to enlist his help for her own committee, which wanted to publicize Azerbaijan’s blockade of Armenia. Tucker readily signed on.

“I really agonized calling this strange person and asking for favors. However, he was very open,” Petrosian said. “I asked if he would help us. He said yes, he would. I said we have no funds, and he said no problem.

“My next question was, ‘Why would you do this for nothing?’ There was a long pause, and he said, ‘I’m still one of those crazy people who believes in living his life according to principles.’ He’s a great humanitarian. He’s always for the underdog.”

At times, that underdog is Tucker himself. And he is not afraid to promote his cause or his personal agenda.

For nearly two decades, those efforts have included little-heralded but energetic campaigns for elected office under the Peace and Freedom Party banner. Tucker has run for everything from state treasurer (1994, coming in last out of five candidates) to state Senate (1992, last of four) to U.S. Congress (1990, last of four).

His most significant showing occurred in 1980, when Tucker’s candidacy helped siphon enough votes away from Democratic incumbent Rep. James C. Corman to allow Republican Bobbi Fiedler to storm Congress with a razor-thin 752-vote margin of victory.

This year, despite a second-place finish in a nonbinding primary, Tucker is waging a fight for the Peace and Freedom Party’s U.S. presidential nomination at the party’s annual convention in August in the Bay Area.

True to his nonconformist ways, he refuses to court Peace and Freedom supporters from other states for a broad-based candidacy but aims to make his campaign a California one only, with a platform devoted to party reforms. He has even formed his own faction within the party to advance his cause.

“Our party’s structure resembles the organizational principles of the Marx Brothers more closely than those of Karl Marx,” Tucker wrote in a typically blunt candidate statement advocating professional fund-raising and publicity coordination to spruce up the party’s image.

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Such opinions do not endear him to Peace and Freedom die-hards--some of whom he once sued 22 years ago over allegations that he tried to undermine their authority in the affiliated Socialist Party. Nor does Tucker’s knowledge of how to work the media necessarily win him points among Peace and Freedom members, whose party few people have heard of, much less voted for (California registration: 70,572 voters out of 14.5 million).

“His M.O. is not my M.O.,” said Feuer, one of the party’s founding members. “I’m not as public-relations-media-hungry as he is. It’s a matter of personal style, I guess, and ego. He’s very ego-driven. It’s not unusual for people in politics.”

Tucker’s sometimes abrasive personality and his tendency to tread on others’ toes has earned him enemies. So has his work as a private investigator, a job he slid into--then never gave up--after a stint as a security guard in graduate school.

“I have kind of a bad-boy reputation as a P.I.,” he said, with more pride than chagrin. Nonetheless, the state agency in charge of overseeing private detectives said that Tucker’s license is in good standing and that he has no history of disciplinary action.

His clients have included David Wayne Sconce, the Ventura County mortician once accused of poisoning a business rival with oleander, and Irv Rubin, the controversial national chairman of the Jewish Defense League. Seven years ago, Tucker and Rubin sued rival Jewish activists, accusing them of trying to “discredit and defame” the two of them and even trying to get Rubin killed.

According to court records, one of the competing activists, Barry Krugel of the Jewish Defense Organization, called Tucker a “devil worshiper” and “a fool . . . who fancies himself as a lawyer” on a local radio talk show. The other defendant in the suit, an associate of Krugel’s, was arrested after he allegedly shot at Rubin in New York.

The case was eventually settled.

Tucker’s name also crops up in several other lawsuits, mostly as a plaintiff in business disputes. Not surprisingly, Tucker says he does not mind all the antagonism that has come his way.

“For all the enemies I have, I’ve got nine times as many friends,” he said.

And he plans to continue his pursuit of unpopular causes, whatever opposition, scorn or sideways glances he may incur.

“Sometimes,” he said, “you gotta be the Norma Rae who stands up to the boss.”