Dornan Out of Office but Still Not Out of the Picture

There is no place to sit in the reception area of the office of Rep. Robert K. Dornan; the movers have taken away all the chairs. The telephone is on the floor. A mountain of boxes are stacked outside the main door that has been stripped of his name.

There used to be a plaque in the entryway saying, “This office belongs to the people of the 46th District of California.” But the people of the 46th District have decided that someone else will occupy this office for the 105th Congress.

Dornan has until today to pack up and move out. And this nine-term legend of conservative idealism has decided not to go gently into that good night.

While other defeated lawmakers are long gone, Dornan has spent the month since the election throwing himself into the cause of saving his seat.

He has asked for a recount of the election he lost by 984 votes to Democrat Loretta Sanchez, shelling out his personal funds to pay for one. And on Wednesday the California secretary of state’s office officially opened an investigation into possible voter fraud.

Not until Thursday did he so much as set foot in the Washington office, now reduced to a jumble of boxes, scattered papers and furniture in disarray.

“I ran this time having realized I’d been around too long,” Dornan told C-SPAN in what may be one of the last television interviews of his political career. “I never planned to stay around Capitol Hill more than 20 years . . .”

But he is not ready to leave. Not yet.

“If God said to me this morning, ‘OK, Bob. You’ve got the power. What do you want?’ I’d take my seat back,” Dornan says softly.

Glancing out the television studio window toward the majestic Capitol, Dornan blames the news media, illegal voters and seemingly everyone else but himself for his stunning election defeat.

“I don’t want to be the first person in history, man or woman, House or Senate, voted out of office by felons, by people voting who are not U.S. citizens who are felons . . .” Dornan said.

He wants to stay in office for one “last, last, last” two-year term, he pleads, because of “unfinished business for the Vietnamese-American community; for my Republican Party.”

It is common knowledge on Capitol Hill that moving from Public Servant to Average Joe can be quite a jolt.

The world of a member of Congress is self-contained, with its own barbershop and beauty parlor, three federal credit unions, several restaurants, a gymnasium and a post office--a privileged place where the Capitol Police control the traffic lights during votes so lawmakers always cross on the green and passersby nod and murmur, “Good morning, Mr. Chairman.”

Some people call it Mt. Olympus, the Big Womb. You can practically live there and never leave it--until the voters say you must. And then you must.

And when it’s unexpected, it isn’t pretty.

“It’s like somebody died. This gloom comes over the place,” one Hill staffer said, stopping in the nearly empty halls of one of the House office buildings where gray dumpsters filled with discarded plaques and papers are stationed outside the offices of the losers.

A seminar was held this week to help lawmakers who lost or retired transition back to a world where people don’t always return your phone calls. Dornan didn’t go.

He is the one who wore a wristwatch during his ill-fated 1996 presidential campaign that “counted down” the days until President Clinton would lose his reelection. Instead, Nov. 5 proved to be the day Clinton won and Dornan lost.

“He’s concentrating on the recount; we’re concentrating on the packing,” a staffer said before Dornan arrived on Thursday.

As the boxed-up mementos of an 18-year congressional career were rolled out on dollies, Dornan was ensconced in his office that was locked to keep out reporters, sipping champagne with his staffers and his son Mark.

“Toasting the future, you know,” Mark Dornan says, hoping Sanchez’s election victory can still be overturned. “In the end, my father is going to go down in history as the father of the fair vote.”

Dornan himself says he “could go nuts,” trying to figure out what went wrong on election day. At one point, he adds to his blame list GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole. “Do you get the picture, of Dole, like an ankle anchor around my legs, pulling me under the water?”

None of the Republican congressional leadership has contacted him since two days after the election, he adds.

As he leaves his office to treat his staff to lunch at La Lomita’s--a “good Hispanic-American restaurant,” he notes--Dornan embarks on a two-minute oration that encapsulates his opponent’s campaign, his political career, and what he hopes will be his legacy.

He talks about Sanchez’s mailer that falsely implied Dornan supports abortions and about another that equated Dornan’s lifestyle to that of a former Austro-Hungarian monarchy “that my dad helped end; he had three Purple Hearts in World War I.”

Dornan’s oral summation then hopscotches to his chairmanship of the military personnel subcommittee; to an Orange County Republican who endorsed his opponent; to “liberals or corrupt people,” “pornographers,” and “people who run abortion mills,” or promote a “lifestyle” that leads to AIDS.

“People who are objective and will listen . . . know what I am about, know that Bob Dornan stands for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, especially for those who don’t want to hear it. And that is what supposedly makes me controversial,” he says, quickly adding one parting shot for the man he loves to hate.

“The sitting man in the White House is a criminal. He’s no different than a schoolyard flasher,” he concludes.

It’s a gray, frigid day. Across the street from the Longworth House Office Building where Dornan once reigned, some members of his small staff are rubbing their arms to keep warm as they wait for their turn to have their photographs taken with the boss they hold in high esteem.

He combs his hair, instructs the photographer to make sure the Capitol is in the background, and smiles as he puts his arm around each staffer, even the stiff, reluctant-looking one.

Dornan talks about having his own radio talk show. But he also reminds his staffers that he went through this ritual once before, in 1982, after losing a bid for the U.S. Senate. He returned to Washington two years later as a representative from Orange County.

No, he’s not ready to leave. Not yet.

Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Gebe Martinez.

* VOTER INDUCEMENTS: D.A. probing group’s reward offer for proof of voting. B1