Running Against the Tide

Sally Alexander, 82, is up before it gets light. She always is, but this is going to be a particularly busy day.

Let’s see: Meet newspaper reporter at 7:15, then go meet President Clinton. Rendezvous with German TV news crew. Meet Associated Press photographer and pose for pictures. Address senior citizens. Start volunteers handing out leaflets in Huntington Harbour. Pose with Boogie board down by the pier.

Alexander, a great-grandmother, is the oldest candidate for the House of Representatives this year. And though, she says, she’s running mainly because no other Democrat would, she’s taking it seriously.

If nothing else, she says, she can talk about the things she feels are threatened by Republicans--Medicare and the environment and job security. If she can embarrass the four-term incumbent, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), that would be reward enough for a lifelong, traditional Democrat, she says.

Because of Alexander’s age, “she’s been getting terrific publicity,” says her husband and campaign manager, Chauncey Alexander, who’s 80.

There have been older members of Congress. The oldest in the House was Charles Manly Stedman of North Carolina, who died in office in 1930 at age 89. Strom Thurmond, also of North Carolina, is the oldest senator of record. He’ll be 94 on Dec. 5.

Alexander has not been shy about her age. One of her campaign buttons states, “If you’re lucky, you’ll grow old, too.” The media coverage that has resulted is going to affect independent voters, her husband says.

Conventional wisdom casts Rohrabacher as unbeatable in his 45th District. It has nearly 20% more Republicans than Democrats. Rohrabacher drew 69% of the vote last election.

But Chauncey Alexander figures conventional wisdom is obsolete. Nowadays about 12% of the district’s voters are independent voters. Get half the independent votes, he figures, and the Democrat wins.

“In your heart of hearts, you wish the underdog would win sometimes,” says Santa Ana political consultant Dan Wooldridge, “but the reality is, an election is a test of money and voter registration. Conventional wisdom has always been my best friend.

“What makes her different from previous Democratic opponents is she’s a feisty candidate willing to go up against Rohrabacher face-to-face.”

So far, that hasn’t happened. In March, Rohrabacher, 48, a surfer, quipped to the Wall Street Journal that “I usually challenge my opponent to a debate and a surfing contest, but I think I’ll have to refrain from the latter.”

Alexander responded by challenging Rohrabacher to a surfing contest.

“Everything in me still works, and I mean everything,” she says. She still rides a bodyboard, a sort of short, soft surfboard, in the Huntington Beach surf. But Rohrabacher didn’t show up for her surfing challenge.

Rohrabacher, through a spokeswoman, declined to be interviewed about the current campaign and has forbidden his staff to discuss it with The Times.

“He pretty much ignores us,” Alexander says. At a televised debate among local candidates, Rohrabacher “talked more about Clinton than about me,” she says.

So she campaigns and hopes that even if she is defeated, her campaign will have helped generate votes for President Clinton.

Last Thursday, the day she was to meet Clinton at his rally in Santa Ana, her car was in the garage for repairs. Heading to the rally in a loaner, Chauncey Alexander is driving as he usually does--like a New York cabby. “It’s got some pep,” he says.

Sally Alexander, in her dark blue campaigning suit and a golf cap she got at the Democratic National Convention, leans back from the passenger seat to answer questions.

Seven years after she was born, Alexander’s family moved from Seattle to Los Angeles, then to Palmdale, where her father, Roger Coffin, a traveling macaroni salesman, switched to chicken ranching and fruit growing.

By high school, she was a politician, running for office with the slogan “Rest in peace with Coffin at the helm.” She married, and eventually divorced, a man destined to be an automotive executive and had two daughters.

Sherry Curtis, one of her daughters, remembers at age 4 1/2 walking the block with her mother during World War II blackouts as a Civil Defense worker.

And she recalls seeing her mother constantly working on community projects where they lived. “I remember her stopping a golf course being built next to our school in Los Angeles. Then she worked to get a drag strip built in Pomona to get the kids off the streets.”

Says Sandy Hester, the other of Alexander’s daughters: “I remember they opened a park and my mother was up there as one of the people who’d made it happen. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, Mom helped with this!’ She was always engaged in the world around her. It’s a character trait.”

Alexander entered public relations, eventually working for the Southern California Broadcasters Assn., Los Angeles Civil Defense and the Los Angeles County Heart Assn., where she met Chauncey Alexander, a social worker who was the association’s executive director.

They married secretly in 1965. “There was a rule against nepotism, and I couldn’t afford to lose her. We had a big campaign coming up,” Chauncey says.

She followed Chauncey to Washington, D.C., where as executive director he set up headquarters for the National Assn. of Social Workers “so we could be a player” in Washington politics.

In retirement, the couple looked along the Southern California coast and chose Huntington Beach as the place to live. The weather and surf were perfect, if not the prevailing politics. She is amused by the irony of their choice.

“When I lived in Los Angeles and we were in the peace marches, I’d see the Orange County groups. There would be 10 people bravely walking along with us. And I’d think, ‘Who would ever want to live in Orange County?’ ”

Now she’s on the Orange County ballot after party strategists asked her to run rather than have Rohrabacher run unopposed. “They called Sally,” her husband says, “because she’s been so active in the party.” She has founded Democratic clubs, been a delegate to national conventions and held several posts in the local party organization.

“I get discouraged a lot,” she says. “I would like to have had support from thousands more people here in my campaign.” The issues are important, she says, and she thinks a lot of Republicans are alarmed, too.

“We have 29 new billionaires this year, and workers’ wages are stagnant,” she says. “There’s something wrong with that statement.”

*

As she arrives at the Santa Ana rally, Alexander is herded to one side of the huge outdoor stage, where she huddles with other local Democratic candidates awaiting Clinton’s arrival. Then they will be ushered onto the stage where they can at least see his coattails.

Much of the time, she is surrounded by photographers.

One is taking pictures for a book on the elderly in America. Another is from one of Germany’s commercial TV networks, SAT-1. “No one in Germany would ever think of running for election at this age,” explains the reporter, Sabine Ulbricht.

“Sally’s a little more photogenic than we are, I guess,” a nearby candidate says. “She’s running for grand duchess,” cracks another.

Alexander stands in the sun for three hours awaiting the president’s arrival. During his speech, President Clinton mentions her name once. Afterward, he shakes hands with her and the other locals.

Afterward she connects with Chauncey and heads back to the car.

“He shook my hand and said, ‘Hello, Sally,’ ” she says, touching her name tag. “Shows he can read.”

The couple relaxes in a downtown Huntington Beach restaurant. The owner, a friend, seats them at the table near the window with the Sally J. Alexander campaign poster.

“He’s a Republican,” Chauncey says under his breath. “He puts it up when we come in.”

“Do you think it would be all right to have a beer?” Sally asks. Chauncey has no opinion. She decides it would be bad to have beer on her breath while talking to the senior citizens this afternoon.

“I think my life was changed a lot when I married Chauncey,” she says. Her daughter Sandy agrees.

“They are two peas in a pod,” Hester says. “They complement and support one another so well. It’s amazing to watch. Because of their relationship, it has enabled her to do a lot of this.

“What’s difficult to grab hold of is she’s not a stereotype. We’re more comfortable thinking of a grandmother in gray hair sitting in a rocking chair and knitting. That is not her, and that is not today’s woman.”

*

Both of Alexander’s daughters say their mother’s political activism led to their own, even though they led down different paths. Sandy Hester is a Democrat and Sherry Curtis is a Republican.

Hester has run, unsuccessfully, for the state Senate three times and now is managing another Democrat’s campaign. Like her mother, she lives in a Republican stronghold, this one in Claremont. “The next time I move, I’m going to check out the schools, the taxes and the voter registration,” Hester says.

Curtis lives in Mountain View near Sacramento and unsuccessfully ran for the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors. She is a paid consultant to the private, conservative Gann Commission on Fraud, Waste and Abuse in Government. Her differing views mean there are certain things not discussed during the family’s Thanksgiving dinners.

“I may not always concur with my mother, but I think she’s great,” Curtis says. “She was always involved, and she taught us that if you feel strongly about something, you’d better speak up.”

If Curtis lived in her mother’s district, would she vote for her mother?

“That’s a good question,” says Sally Alexander, laughing.

“I’m not down here researching the issues,” Curtis says, “and I never act without researching the issues.”

That was fielded pretty well.

“I’m my mother’s daughter,” she says.