If Nerves Were Votes, He’d Be a Shoo-In on Election Day

After all these years, Jerry Patterson was back where he’d been so many times before on the first Tuesday in November--facing another election day. He had to admit it was good to have that old feeling back, even while confessing good-naturedly, “I thought I’d be much calmer.”

These first Tuesdays used to mean much more to Patterson, a former five-term U.S. congressman from Orange County who went into hibernation after losing his congressional seat to Bob Dornan on election day 1984.

After being on one ballot or another since 1969, Patterson, a 62-year-old lawyer specializing in municipal law, has been a spectator since 1984. That changed this July, when he decided to run for a nonpartisan seat on the Coast Community College District Board of Trustees. “I had to think if I wanted to risk having my name on the ballot and losing again,” he said. “But I think enough time had passed to where I could accept a loss as well as a win.”

When we talked Tuesday afternoon, he liked his chances and mused about getting some of those old election day jitters back again.

“I’m tense,” he said. “More than I should be. I look at my watch every now and then, looking for 8 o’clock to come [when the polls close]. And this is a much easier race, nothing like some of the races I went through.”

The ones most vivid are the bookend elections for Congress--the one that got him in in 1974 and the defeat that ousted him in 1984.

He was Santa Ana’s mayor in 1974, the post-Watergate year that swept lots of Democrats into Congress. Patterson ran against David Rehmann, a former Vietnam POW, and remembers awaiting results while eating dinner election night with family and friends.

Around 9 that night, Patterson started getting antsy. He told the others he was going upstairs to a restroom but instead went to make a phone call. “I called the registrar of voters and found out I was losing. I came down, everyone looked at me, and the expression on my face either told them I was getting sick or I had made a phone call.”

He wound up winning handily that night, beginning his 10-year run as a Democratic congressman from Orange County. But he would never match that margin of victory again.

In 1984, his streak ended in a race that, for a time, deadened him.

“The last 12 days of the campaign were like a nightmare in many ways. In every other election, I always had good feelings right to the end. In that one--I’d say the last 10 to 12 days--there were so many dirty tricks and nasty things going on.”

Despite President Reagan’s presence on the ballot, Patterson still thought he could beat Dornan, the Republican challenger.

The defeat--Patterson conceded around midnight--and its aftermath lingered for at least three years, Patterson said.

Just like that, everything changed. After 10 years as a congressman, “now I had 58 days to pack my bags, get out of Washington and find another job. But that night, I didn’t think about all those things. I felt I’d let people down, let my constituents down.

“I guess you blame yourself. You say, ‘Maybe if I worked a little harder, spoken a little better.’ A few thousand votes, I would have won. You kind of take it personally, and I also felt like I had been rejected and not necessarily for someone who was a better person than me.”

Patterson remembers being “stunned” the entire night. “I took my staff out to breakfast the next morning, then started returning phone calls and thanking people. It was kind of mechanical, hard to do. I felt like I was just basically adrift.”

After all the victories on election day, does it matter that he lost his last race? “It makes a lot of difference,” he said, “because the thing I always wanted to do was go out a winner.”

He ran for the trustee seat because he’s maintained an interest in education over the years (he still teaches public policy at Cal State Long Beach) and because he thought his name recognition might help. He raised $14,000 for the race. In his last race against Dornan, he raised $200,000.

I asked if, over the years, he developed a fondness for election day.

“There’s something very awesome about it,” he said. “Here we are in the Free World and our country, which is so great, and the switch turns and tomorrow there could be new leaders and new people elected. And all done without a revolution.”

All right, tell us the rest of the story . . .

“I hate election day,” Patterson said, laughing again. “I didn’t think I’d be fazed this time, until I woke up at 3 this morning. I’ve been awake since 3:30, worrying, what-iffing. I was at the polls at 7:15 to vote.”

No, it’s not the same as running for Congress. But in some ways, it seemed like old times to Patterson.

“Even today,” he said, laughing, “I’m sitting here, thinking, Why am I doing this?”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.