Dole’s California Missionary Preaches the Doctrine of Victory : GOP candidate’s chief strategist in state doggedly defends chances of reaping 54 electoral votes where others--including some allies--insist on retreat.

Kenneth L. Khachigian has the reporter just where he wants her: cornered.

“They’re lying to you, Carla!” he says by way of introduction, toting his luggage across the lobby of a private air terminal in San Diego.

Soon, GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole’s jet will arrive with the traveling press corps. Khachigian, the campaign’s chief strategist for California, will then shift into formal consulting and opinion-spinning mode. But now, he has happened upon another reporter with her laptop open and nowhere to hide.

Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Examiner has little choice but to listen, with a slack-jawed smile, as Khachigian hammers away at the persistent rumblings that Dole may be preparing to pull the plug on his longshot effort to win the state and its 54 electoral votes.

Finally backing off, Khachigian fires a parting shot at Bob Mulholland, a Democratic advisor who has compared Dole’s California campaign to the voyage of the Titanic.

“He’s slime,” the gray-haired, sad-eyed Khachigian says.

What’s striking, though, is how pleasant his demeanor has been throughout his tirade, how gentle the voice that delivers the insult.

For many political insiders, Khachigian’s knack for the almost gentlemanly eye-gouge, combined with undisputed political acumen, makes the 52-year-old San Clemente attorney the only choice to orchestrate the odd game of chicken the Dole campaign is playing with the Democrats in California.

So, since his appointment in May, Khachigian has been using his talents for charm and confrontation on all who doubt the GOP’s stated game plan: that Dole will either win California, despite trailing by 17 percentage points in a recent Times Poll, or force President Clinton to keep spending time and money here until election day, depleting Democratic resources that might be spent elsewhere.

If the Dole campaign listens to Khachigian, says former Gov. George Deukmejian, “then I am very confident that Dole can win California and go on to win the election.”

But Deukmejian--who calls Khachigian a major contributor to his own political success--adds, “What I don’t know, and what is hard to discern, is to what extent people in national headquarters are heeding the advice they get from Ken.”

For political spectators, that question makes the already brutal game of bluff and bluster all the more interesting-- especially since it is unclear whether Khachigian himself knows the campaign’s true commitment.

Few of those who have worked with him, though, doubt that he’s raring to do battle--as their uniformly bellicose descriptions testify.

“He’s a warrior,” says Don Sipple, who ran Dole’s media campaign until a recent shake-up.

“He’s a very good guy to have in your foxhole if you’re in a firefight,” says Steven A. Merksamer, a Sacramento attorney and Deukmejian’s gubernatorial chief of staff.

“Ken’s the consummate street fighter,” says GOP consultant Brian Lungren, an advisor to and the brother of state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.

But Khachigian’s attributes go far beyond his hard-nosed attitude, Dan Lungren adds.

“Ken is from the Central Valley. He understands the people there, the common-sense, traditional values there. Secondly,” Lungren says, “he’s indefatigable. . . . He just keeps working, working, working, working. And third, he has a pretty good sense of the mood of the electorate.”

Gov. Pete Wilson has a similar view. “He has the ability to penetrate very quickly right through to the heart of an issue and put it in terms the voters can understand.”

Khachigian’s blend of combative style and strategic savvy took root in the San Joaquin Valley farm life of his childhood and blossomed in California’s 1960s-era political hothouse.

His toughness, friends say, must surely connect somehow to tales the boy heard of his grandfather’s escape from Armenia ahead of the Turkish massacres; of his grandmother’s death from disease and starvation while in exile.

Khachigian was raised with his three brothers on the 60-acre walnut, grape and cotton farm his grandfather established after coming to America. He first applied his scrappy nature to politics at Visalia’s Mount Whitney High School, winning election as sophomore, junior and senior class president. His conservative streak was cemented in 1962, when a roommate at UC Santa Barbara gave him a copy of Richard Nixon’s “Six Crises.”

“I was fascinated by it, and intrigued by Nixon’s strength under fire,” Khachigian says.

While paying his way through Columbia Law School--sometimes as a custodian at the Statue of Liberty--Khachigian volunteered for Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. In 1970, he accepted a job on the White House communications staff, working under Patrick J. Buchanan.

It may have been under the conservative commentator’s tutelage that Khachigian got the hang of getting under Democrats’ skin. He recalls being impressed by Buchanan’s “strength of conviction” and by the way “he didn’t question his own internal compass.”

He also emulated his mentor’s verbal style: “It was punchy, peppy, hard-hitting and he had a felicitation of phrase-making that I liked.”

When the Watergate scandal forced Nixon from office in 1974, Khachigian returned with him to San Clemente to help the ex-president work on his memoirs. Diane Sawyer, now with ABC, was also on the memoir team, and she recalls how Khachigian’s encyclopedic grasp of California politics drew Nixon to him. “He was really somebody the president could make assumptions with, because they knew all the players.”

After the memoirs’ publication, he and his wife, Meredith, remained in San Clemente with their daughters, Merissa and Christi, while Khachigian built his law and political-consulting practices.

It was during this period that Khachigian hitched his career to Deukmejian’s, the fellow Armenian from Long Beach whom he’d first met back in 1968 at the Republican National Convention. They proved a good team.

With Khachigian’s help, Deukmejian won the California attorney general’s race in 1978. In 1982, Khachigian was instrumental in creating the strategy that gave Deukmejian a razor-thin victory over Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley in the governor’s race. And he helped Deukmejian comfortably win reelection in 1986.

Those successes led to consulting jobs with Dan Quayle’s 1988 vice presidential campaign, Dan Lungren’s two successful attorney general campaigns and the losing U.S. Senate bids of Bruce Herschensohn in 1992 and Michael Huffington in 1994.

Even while putting in strategizing stints, Khachigian also honed his skills as a wordsmith. Some political observers think he will be best remembered for the so-called “blue-sky stuff” he crafted as a speech writer for President Reagan. For instance, Khachigian helped Reagan write his acceptance speech at the 1984 GOP convention, in which the great communicator waxed eloquent about the Olympic torch and the torch held aloft by the Statue of Liberty, concluding, “in the springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal. America’s is.”

Of course, if Dole pulls off a California miracle next month, that could serve as Khachigian’s most memorable legacy.

To make that happen, Khachigian has this plan, in which he sees Dole’s target as a giant “fishhook” of winnable GOP and swing-vote districts running from Redding to the Inland Empire, and then up through San Diego to Orange County. And nothing can deter him from the view that the proper campaign can make those voters see the light.

At least one consultant thinks that to be an effective salesman for his quixotic crusade, Khachigian has actually sold himself on Dole’s chances. But there are also whispers that he has let himself be set up for betrayal.

Says one source who worked closely with the Dole campaign: “They’ve allowed Ken to get pretty far out on a limb, and they have the saw.”

Times staff writers Dave Lesher and Maria L. La Ganga contributed to this story.

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The Players

A periodic look at the behind-the-scenes aides, consultants, media members and others shaping the 1996 presidential campaign.

Kenneth L. Khachigian

Age: 52

Personal: Married to Meredith, a University of California regent, two daughters, Merissa, 26 and Christi, 25.

Education: Political science degree, UC Santa Barbara; law degree, Columbia University.

Background: Joined President Nixon’s White House communication’s staff in 1971; helped the ex-president work on his memoirs in San Clemente in the mid-1970s. Speechwriter for President Reagan in the early 1980s. Key advisor to California Gov. George Deukmejian, 1982-90. Maintains law practice in San Clemente, and law partnership in Los Angeles.

Downtime: Smokes Jamaican cigars, drives a Jaguar convertible, and gardens at his San Clemente home, specializing in tomatoes and Armenian cucumbers.