Likely Candidates for Fiction

On the first page of former Republican campaign operative Tom Lowe’s debut novel, “Spin,” his antihero wakes up amid the shambles of the California Assembly speaker’s office and in a pool of his own vomit.

His character, GOP wunderkind Jim Asher, has destroyed an $1,800 Armani suit--and his future in politics.

The Dana Point author probably has done the latter with the novel, which weaves fiction and fact from recent California political history around a cautionary tale of a young man seduced by the twin aphrodisiacs of instant celebrity and unearned power. It was published this month in hardcover by Pocket Books.

Lowe, 26, is quick to caution that it is a work of fiction that merely draws on real events as “backdrops” for the action. For example, both Lowe and his fictional counterpart launched their careers by volunteering for U.S. Senate candidates (Lowe for millionaire Michael Huffington’s campaign) and went on to become the youngest communications directors for Assembly speakers.

Despite the disclaimers--similar to those slapped on “Primary Colors,” reporter Joe Klein’s roman a clef on the 1992 presidential race--it’s easy to theorize who’s who, and who’s going to be mightily miffed at the inevitable guessing games over what really happened amid page after page of booze, sex, sellouts and self-indulgence.

As his book hit stores last week from Orange County to Washington, Lowe was about as far from his former life as possible--holed up in his uncle’s cabin at Lake Tahoe working on a rewrite of his third novel, a literary fable set in Africa, in which the main character is a chimpanzee.

He does plan to hit the promotions circuit, though, with an appearance Saturday to sign copies of “Spin” at a Newport Beach bookstore.

State Democratic Party official Bob Mulholland said the book has sold out in Sacramento, where Lowe attended a book signing this week. “I think everyone’s curious how close it hits to home,” Mulholland said.

Lowe’s second novel also borrows on personal experiences--about a soldier in the waning days of the Gulf War. Lowe served four years in the Army and is an Operation Desert Storm veteran. The second novel has yet to be grabbed by a publisher.

Though still a registered Republican, Lowe considers himself a Libertarian. He hasn’t voted in two years, he said, because of extended writing sabbaticals in Belize, Africa and Spain.

Like his “Spin” alter ego, Lowe eventually purged himself of politics, walking away in 1996 from his job as communications chief for then-Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove). Lowe said he returned to Orange County, grabbed his laptop computer and wrote the first draft of “Spin” in 23 days.

“Party politics is totally dead for most people, and I don’t think it’ll change until another party, maybe the Libertarian Party, is driven by my generation,” he said. “People my age, the so-called Gen Xers, are just totally not interested in politics at all unless they’ve been brainwashed by one side or the other. They just want to be left alone. I didn’t want to spend the next 20 years . . . worrying about where my place was in any given situation.”

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Writing has become a replacement obsession for Lowe. He wants to tell stories, important stories, like the ones immortalized in American fiction by great authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain and Jack London.

He acknowledged that “Spin”--which Kirkus Reviews called a “frothy, sex- and caffeine-fueled ‘How to Exceed in Politics’ ” in its July edition--was merely a first step toward what he hopes will be a serious writing career.

“There are 297 F-words in the book, about one per page, and that doesn’t exactly lend itself to gracefulness,” he said. “The lead character is completely screwed up and out of control. But that’s the voice of the book. That’s what’s going to connect with people.”

Among the central characters is the wife of the millionaire U.S. Senate candidate for whom young Jim Asher works. Mariella Winston is described as a “shrewd, enchanting, beautiful blonde from Buenos Aires” and the brains behind her husband’s campaign.

Other than hair color and birthplace, the character resembles Arianna Huffington, for whom Lowe worked in Michael Huffington’s unsuccessful Senate bid in 1994. One scene in the book has Asher and the vivacious Mrs. Edward Winston enjoying a cosmopolitan nude massage.

Arianna Huffington, now divorced and a political commentator, said this week that she hasn’t read the book, adding, “I really have nothing to say about it.”

Pringle, now the Republican nominee for state treasurer, is equally mum, saying only that it is “a work of fiction.”

In the book, youthful Orange County Assemblyman Brett Alexander is maneuvered into the speakership with the help of a decoy Democratic candidate in a crucial special election--a tactic executed by Asher, who hopes to ride Alexander’s coattails to the White House.

In reality, Pringle became speaker after a controversial November 1995 special election in which four GOP campaign aides pleaded guilty to placing a decoy Democrat on the ballot to assist the eventual win of Assemblyman Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach).

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The hopscotch between fact and fiction will be lost on most readers not steeped in the minutiae of state politics. But the thrill ride along the way is a universal rush.

As a savvy television reporter tells Asher after an all-nighter of body shots in a hot tub: “Mornings are like corners, you’ve got to accelerate into them.”

It was the fresh, edgy writing style that intrigued Pocket editor Daniel Slater, now with Penguin Books in New York. Slater, who is three months younger than Lowe, called the manuscript he picked up in 1997 “unlike anything I’d ever read before.”

More than a Republican “Primary Colors,” Slater said, the book connected with him as a “Catcher in the Rye” or “Bright Lights, Big City” for the ‘90s.

“The writing was so hip and compelling; it blew me away,” Slater said.

John B. Roberts, who worked in the Reagan White House communications office, met Lowe in 1995 during the latter’s brief stint as a researcher for the television round-table discussion show “The McLaughlin Group.” In a review of “Spin” for the conservative magazine Weekly Standard, Roberts said the book’s most accurate portrayal is of the hubris evident in most campaigns, especially in those with millionaire candidates in which money flows freely.

It’s a world of overnight intimacy and overhyped importance, in which values and ideology often crumble under the weight of winning.

Asher “gobbles each morsel with such gusto that even the most jaded insider can relive the appetizing moments of his or her own entrapment,” Roberts said.

Beverly Hills literary agent Mike Hamilburg said he too was entranced by Lowe’s first novel and sent it on to Pocket. As a writer, Lowe “didn’t fit the mold,” he said.

“I see so much material, [and] he grabbed my attention,” Hamilburg said of the novel, which he called bold and audacious. “As I got to know Tom better--what he did and who he worked for and the events that happened to him--the more exciting it became.”

Hamilburg said he is reading Lowe’s Africa novel.

“I love it,” he said. “He’s very mature in his understanding of people and what makes them tick. On the other hand, there’s a wonderful rawness about [his writing]. It’s not smoothed yet, and it makes you feel like you’re hearing something fresh. You know he’s going to have a bright career.”

* “Spin” is a Pocket Books hardcover, 287 pages, $23. Tom Lowe will sign copies of his book at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Barnes & Noble, Fashion Island Newport Beach.

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‘SPIN’S’ WHO’S WHO

First-time novelist Tom Lowe of Dana Point paints a frenetic view of political campaigns bulging with egos, cash and compromises in his debut novel, “Spin.” His main characters have unfamiliar names but seem to have lots in common with characters from recent California political history. Below is a look at Lowe’s central fictional players and possible real-life parallels:

Jim Asher: An Operation Desert Storm veteran who volunteers to work on a cash-rich U.S. Senate campaign after seeing a television commercial for the Republican candidate. That’s exactly how Lowe, an Army veteran who served in the Gulf War in 1991, came to join the 1994 U.S. Senate campaign for GOP nominee Michael Huffington, a Texas millionaire who spent $30 million on the failed race.

Edward Winston: A bland, multimillionaire businessman who decides to invest a chunk of his ample fortune in a campaign against a popular Democratic Senate incumbent, a la Huffington’s near-successful effort against Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Mariella Winston: Edward’s Buenos Aires-born wife and the brains behind the campaign is described with many of the same adjectives used in news stories to portray Greek-born commentator Arianna Huffington’s role in her now-ex-husband’s campaign.

Bud Raper: Winston’s hard-as-nails veteran political consultant, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Huffington’s colorful consultant, Ed Rollins, one of the men who helped get Ronald Reagan elected president. Raper, an ultimate ends-justifies-the-means guy, pops up again in a surprising way at the end of the novel.

Brett Alexander: An obscure but talented Orange County assemblyman who becomes speaker. He’s young and ambitious. Just don’t expect Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) to acknowledge any other similarities.

Samantha Gellhorne: This character could only come straight from the mind of a paranoid political operative--an influential TV reporter who not only has sex with Asher but also calls to give him information on how to tip the balance of power in Sacramento. As if.