In Detention, Kim Runs a Shadowy Race

It was not the room-temperature ham-and-cheese omelets that roused these political junkies to a City of Industry hotel banquet room at the otherwise ungodly hour of 7:30 one recent Friday morning.

What brought them out was the season’s first campaign forum in the 41st Congressional District and the candidates who would show up for it--or, more accurately, the candidate who wouldn’t.

“Due to unforeseen circumstances, Congressman Kim can’t be here,” an aide from Washington said cryptically. But everyone in the room knew what those circumstances were.

Republican Jay Kim--former mayor of Diamond Bar and the first Korean American elected to Congress--was in Washington with an electronic surveillance bracelet strapped around his ankle. A court order restricts his travel to the 17 miles between his one-bedroom apartment in northern Virginia and his Capitol Hill office.

The home detention imposed by a judge as partial punishment for Kim’s conviction for taking more than $250,000 in illegal campaign contributions six years ago has not only stained his career, but has also kept him from setting so much as a toe in the Diamond Bar district he dearly wants to give him a fourth term.

While his colleagues go home to brag about their triumphs and inquire about other people’s babies, Kim is reduced to mailing back three-minute videotapes of himself standing in front of a picture of the Capitol dome, taking credit for a proposed sound wall at an Anaheim trailer park.

“One of the reasons I can’t be with you today,” the videotaped Kim says, “is I am in Washington fighting to keep these projects on the table.”

One of the reasons.

Given that politics abhors a free ride for a scandal-tainted candidate, two fellow Republicans are campaigning vigorously to deny Kim renomination in the June 2 primary, reminding their audiences eagerly and often that the incumbent can’t be present on the campaign trail, courtesy of a federal judge.

“I am Gary Miller, honored to be here representing--Gary Miller!” the 49-year-old Republican Assemblyman from Diamond Bar cackled at a West Covina bowling alley banquet room, where about 60 mostly retired Republican women started to snicker over their steak and canned corn lunches.

“If I were in Jay Kim’s position,” Miller said later, “I’d be running for cover, not for reelection.”

Campaign by Surrogate

Kim’s virtual campaign is nothing if not strange. The congressman’s name appears on invitations promising constituents a chance to meet him, but what they usually get instead is a 43-year-old, red-haired ex-sheriff’s deputy named Pam Williams, who is both campaign coordinator and stunt double.

Williams walks Kim’s precincts and recites his legislative record. But no matter how hard she tries to accentuate the positive, the topic eventually rolls around to the congressman’s other record--the criminal one.

“Yes, he has made errors. He has asked forgiveness for those errors and he is paying for them dearly. . . . He can’t be here today because of those [errors], because he is following out his sentence,” Williams told the women at the bowling alley, who were by then putting their steak and corn into little plastic containers to take home. “However, we ask for your support June 2 so he can continue to do the work he has been doing for his district.”

One woman sympathized: “He should be out, but he’s paying his dues.”

“We need somebody with less baggage,” a second said.

“I’m confused,” said a third.

Also opposing Kim is Pete Pierce, a 37-year-old Orange County deputy district attorney who has similarly suggested that Kim throw in the towel.

“This is as screwy as they get,” said Washington political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, who surveys each of the nation’s 435 House races. “It’s very strange, wearing an ankle bracelet. How often does an incumbent member of Congress find himself unable to campaign, convicted and on the outs with the entire party establishment? That just doesn’t happen.”

Not a lot of people think Kim can win, even in this, the age of the political comeback. (Reference: Bill Clinton).

But perhaps even more intriguing than whether Kim will pull this one out is why he is trying.

His campaign is in debt; the California GOP political establishment is backing someone else; Atty. Gen. (and Republican gubernatorial hopeful) Dan Lungren has bluntly called on him to resign; the national party’s campaign committee broke its policy of endorsing incumbents by declining to support Kim; and a House ethics committee currently deciding whether he should be kicked out of Congress announced last month that it is broadening its probe.

On top of all that, June Kim, his wife of 36 years and co-defendant in the fund-raising case, has refused to campaign for him, publicly threatened to divorce him and suggested that resignation would be a nice way to apologize to his constituents.

Kim is not granting interviews. But his aides say that he is nothing if not contrite.

“He knows the seriousness of what happened,” Williams said. “Boy, does he know.”

In his first meeting with Williams to discuss running the campaign, Kim spent considerable time apologizing to her, his district and the people of the United States of America, she said.

This week, he mailed voters a glossy two-page campaign flier asking for mercy; it includes a photo of a dead woman and child from the Korean War, during which Kim’s family’s home was twice burned down by communist soldiers.

“The humiliation and embarrassment I have faced personally have been very substantial,” the mailer says. “I hope you will accept my pleas not only as an admission of guilt but also as a statement of contrition and that you will afford mercy to me in imposing my sentence.”

Almost daily, he calls his Upland campaign office by cellular phone to ask Williams if she thinks he can win. “I’m still very positive about it, congressman,” she reassures him with utter confidence. “Absolutely.”

Dogged Persistence

One recent morning in Washington, Kim sat behind the walnut wood door of his Washington office eating a pecan sticky bun. Most of his colleagues were out of town for spring recess, but Kim’s car had been parked in a House garage since before 9 a.m.

He was working on legislation, grateful there was nothing negative in the papers that morning. (An improvement over the day before, when a Capitol Hill newspaper ran a cartoon of Kim modeling 10 different styles of ankle bracelets.)

The Jay Kim the public has seen is tall and deferential in aviator glasses, a gentleman who pulls out chairs for his guests and seldom so much as raises his voice. What is not immediately apparent is the dogged persistence of a 59-year-old self-made man who was born to a poor family in South Korea and rose to be one of this nation’s most successful Korean Americans.

A fifth-degree black belt in taekwondo and a successful civil engineer who overcame sizable odds to get where he is, Kim isn’t about to give it up now.

With a district centered on the point where Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties meet, Kim came to Congress with a vision of what the Inland Empire would be--the second transportation hub for Southern California. His aides say almost everything he has done in Congress since has been toward that end.

A loyal GOP foot soldier, he formed a task force that united the normally splintered 52-member California House delegation to win more transportation money for the state. He was recently named the senior negotiator from California to help iron out the details of the multibillion-dollar public works bills currently working their way through Congress.

But his proudest achievements seem to be the local coups that rarely make headlines: new terminals at Ontario Airport; noise abatement at John Wayne Airport; a new post office in Chino Hills; $99 million in district highway improvements; $23.5 million for railroad crossings.

“He fought and struggled and kicked and scratched his way to the top, and he’s not just going to walk away now,” says press secretary P.J. O’Neil. “He feels a deep sense of responsibility to atone for whatever happened and to serve his constituents. It sounds corny, but he talks about it all the time.”

Aiding Challenger

Although officially neutral, some of Kim’s House colleagues have been working behind the scenes to assist Miller, his most threatening opponent. One California Republican member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said many in the GOP caucus wanted Kim to withdraw from the race, but consider it unseemly to embarrass a colleague since he decided not to. Anyway, the member said, why bother when they don’t think he can win the primary?

“We’re more concerned about dignity in the institution than the race,” the member said.

Still, there were some awkward moments in the House in March after Kim was sentenced not only to home detention but also to one year of probation, 200 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine.

“I ran into him in the cloakroom. He’s not a real huggy kind of guy, but he wanted a hug, you could tell,” the member said. “You can’t very well say, ‘Your life must be hell and, hey, get your ass out of town.’ ”

What party leaders worry about most is that his solidly Republican seat might be lost to a Democrat. No district is so secure that an ethics scandal couldn’t tip it on its ear. And waiting in the wings is Democrat Eileen Ansari, a former Diamond Bar city councilwoman who is running unopposed.

Political analysts say Ansari has just one hope of winning--if her opponent in November is Jay Kim.

Times staff writers Nicholas Riccardi and Jodi Wilgoren contributed to this story.