GOP Senate Hopefuls Offer Striking Contrast in Styles

From different paths and possessed of different temperaments, they have developed the same yearning to be the Republican nominee against Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.

For one, politics has always been part of life; for the other, it is a noxious necessity undertaken to save the republic by cutting taxes and hacking away at governmental red tape.

One has government experience and polish, the other has zeal and money and compares himself to the Jimmy Stewart character in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Both are 44, genial, ambitious, good company on an airplane flight.

Car alarm entrepreneur Darrell Issa never thought about running for office until he concluded in midlife that the “Beltway mentality”--that cloistered view of the world from tiny Washington--is ruining America with taxes and regulations. He does little to hide his disdain for “career politicians.” He is a self-made millionaire with some rough edges.

State Treasurer Matt Fong is following in the footsteps of his mother, politician March Fong Eu, who ran briefly for the Senate in 1987. As a teenager, he learned the art of politicking by working in his mother’s many campaigns. He grew up in affluence and learned to be cordial on cue.

“For Fong, politics is the family business, and he has the cautious, calculated style of a lawyer,” said San Diego financier Tom Stickel, chairman of the California Chamber of Commerce political action committee, which is unaligned. “Issa is the classic businessman who has made his millions and now is going to tell everyone how things should be done. His approach is ‘Ready, aim, fire.’ ”

A conversation with Issa can be a gusher of ideas, half-formed philosophy and references to what he sees as governmental incompetence (Head Start teaching children in Spanish) or favoritism (the Department of Commerce opening foreign markets for businesses owned by political contributors but leaving others to fend for themselves).

A talk with Fong can become a policy wonk’s tutorial on investment strategies in the age of multinational corporations, foreign policy, trade and taxation. “In some ways Matt may be too cerebral to be a politician,” said Michael Gagan, a former chief aide to Fong’s mother.

Similar Views on Economic Issues

Personalities aside, the two are GOP peas in a pod on economic issues--Reaganauts, supply-siders, bottom-line budgeteers.

No less an expert than Arthur Laffer, creator of the Laffer Curve, which defined the Reagan administration’s view that lowering taxes is the key to prosperity, said he has no doubt that both candidates are true economic conservatives, and their votes in Washington would be identical.

On social and cultural issues, Issa is bold where Fong is reticent. Both oppose abortion but only Issa wants a constitutional amendment outlawing it. Both oppose bilingual education, but only Issa makes a point of it.

Issa favored Proposition 187, intended to outlaw public benefits to illegal immigrants, and was a co-chairman and financial backer of Proposition 209, which ended preferences in hiring for state jobs. Fong was neutral on Proposition 187 and endorsed Proposition 209 only late in the campaign, when its passage seemed certain.

“Matt wants to be liked by everyone; I want to be respected for doing the right thing,” snorts Issa. Issa is a loose-talking extremist who cannot beat Boxer, replies Fong.

“Each has a style that works for him,” said Dan Schnur, a California GOP advisor. “When it comes to challenges, Issa seems to like to dive right in, while Fong prefers to study the situation before committing himself.”

Politics a Tradition for Fong Family

If Fong has the ease of the political professional, it is because he learned from a master: his mother, the colorful and very liberal March Fong Eu, four times elected to the Assembly from Oakland, five times elected secretary of state before retiring in 1994.

“My job after school, beginning in junior high, wasn’t sports, it was ringing doorbells for my mother,” Fong said. “I literally rang every doorbell in Oakland twice. It was good training.”

One of Fong’s mother’s political gambits was to jump on a city bus, brashly talk to the riders and leave leaflets on each seat, then get off and catch another bus--accompanied all the while by her only son, the honor student, the straight arrow, the dutiful lad who took 12 years of saxophone, bass, and classical organ lessons.

Fong does not have much time to make music these days, but sometimes his upbringing gets the better of him.

While delivering a standard taxes-crime-education speech to a dozen residents at a senior citizens’ home in Manteca, Fong spied a slightly battered Conn organ in the corner of the recreation room. The normally smooth delivery of his stump speech was interrupted as he began reminiscing about his years of study under a taskmaster who spoke German.

“I took German but it didn’t seem to help,” Fong said.

A moment later the residents asked Fong to play. He demurred and then struck a political bargain, “If you all agree to call up your son and daughter and tell them to vote for Matt Fong, I’ll do it,” he said.

Ultimately he obliged, playing a rusty version of “Farewell.”

On the campaign trail, Fong works a room like a pro, hopping from table to table, making eye contact, remembering names, shaking hands and leaning in close. He has no trouble asking for votes or for donations.

Without flinching, he suffers the small indignities of the cold-call salesman. He arrives at press conferences to find no reporters, he talks to small-town newspaper editors who never heard of him, he spends time talking to voters who then admit they are not registered.

Fong’s persistence may mirror his mother’s, but his political views are different. And the leave-taking from his mother’s staunchly Democratic views was not easy.

It began in 1987, when he ran his mother’s short-lived Senate bid, a race she quit rather than disclose details about her second husband’s wealth (she had married Henry Eu, a citizen of Singapore, after divorcing Chester Fong, a dentist).

“I had found myself thinking like a Republican but not really knowing it,” he says. “I never did anything about it because my loyalty was to my mother and her political career.”

Like millions of other Americans, Fong found himself attracted to Ronald Reagan’s views on bolstering the military and also appalled by the high inflation and economic stagnation under the liberalism of President Jimmy Carter. “I was one of those Reagan Democrats,” he said.

Only after his mother’s Senate campaign collapsed did Fong, age 34, tell her he planned to drop his Democratic registration and re-register as a Republican. His mother argued against the idea, brought in her advisors to bolster her arguments and then withheld approval of her son’s show of independence for months.

“Finally, after several months, she gave her ‘consent’--not that it was necessary--and sent me a registration form,” Fong said.

From the moment he changed party affiliation, Fong was touted as a rising star in a party eager for minority candidates. After losing a 1990 bid for state controller to Gray Davis, who is now California’s lieutenant governor and a candidate for governor, he was appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson to the Board of Equalization, which enforces tax policy.

Fong has the dubious distinction of being the only prominent Republican politician to be swept up in the controversy over Asian political contributions. He returned $100,000 from the family of Indonesian businessman Ted Sioeng after it was revealed that Sioeng is not a U.S. citizen.

As a speaker, Fong is detailed and professorial--and also dry and careful. He often talks without notes and provides long, if sometimes elusive, answers to questions.

In Bakersfield recently, he gave a five-page, single-spaced speech on agriculture, complete with references to the importing of flour from Chile to California in 1854, a summation of state water issues, an analysis of the International Monetary Fund and a quotation from O. Henry. But he declined to take a stand on the proposal for a canal looping around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a major issue among farmers.

He prefers consultation to confrontation and thinks firebrand rhetoric is counterproductive.

“I’m the quiet diplomacy type,” he said.

Issa Emphasizes His Business Success

Fong entered politics because of family ties, but for Issa it was money that set him on a path to his candidacy.

Issa’s journey from hard-driving businessman to would-be senator began with being a financial backer for Republican candidates (he even gave $2,000 to Fong for his 1994 treasurer’s race).

Like many Republican hopefuls in the 1990s, Fong met Issa by coming to him to talk about money. Some of the aspirants who sought his money and counsel are taken aback that Issa decided to run for office.

Issa says he decided that government had become so destructive that it was time for a man of action, a businessman, to go to Washington and straighten things out, to get government off the back of private enterprise.

“I want to go to Washington and give those of us who sign the front of a paycheck--not just the back--a fair shake, for once,” Issa said.

Issa is from the “mad as hell” school of rhetoric, as in, “Government never does anything well” and “The only thing that happens when you give government more money is that it causes more mischief” and “Barbara Boxer is not against drugs.”

(The Boxer allegation, which brings an angry response from her camp, stems from her support of former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders at a time when Elders’ son was facing drug charges and Elders seemed to minimize the seriousness of those charges, which outraged conservatives.)

Issa knows his take-no-prisoners rhetoric can be startling and seems to revel in the fact. In Sacramento, a waiter dropped a tray of dishes just as Issa was beginning an after-lunch speech. “I have that effect on everyone,” he said.

When diverted from his prepared text or when answering questions, he is prone to gaffes: He called President Clinton a “slut,” displayed ignorance of the important Auburn Dam project and exhibited confusion about federal aid to education.

On at least one occasion, he committed what can best be called a fib about his charitable involvement.

Pressed by a member of the audience at a speech in Sacramento to give an example of his involvement in the kind of nonprofit charitable groups he prefers to government-sponsored programs, Issa said he was very active in San Diego’s St. Vincent de Paul program. Later, he was contradicted by the Catholic priest who runs the program.

Issa’s campaign makes a good deal of the fact that he succeeded in the “real world” where Fong did not: in starting a business that continues to thrive, creating jobs, finding markets, and fending off lawsuits, competitors and government regulators.

Fong’s entrepreneurial efforts--selling Air Force ashtrays, miniature planes and other souvenirs, and peddling snack food at Pepperdine--never soared. “I was looking for that one product that would catch the public’s attention, but it never happened,” Fong said.

Issa likes to stick to five punchy points during his speeches: Government is too big, taxes are too high, criminals should be punished, America must remain a military superpower, and government should trust the individual to solve his or her own problems.

On topics he has encountered in his business career--taxes, export rules, currency exchange rates--he is knowledgeable and passionate. On topics newer to him, he is often vague and impatient. And he promises to become more knowledgeable if he is elected--but no less candid.

“I’m not interested in looking like every talking head on the Sunday morning talk shows,” he said.

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Darrell Edward Issa

Political Party: Republican

Born: Nov. 1, 1953. Cleveland, Ohio to William and Martha Issa. Father was a truck salesman and x-ray technician.

Family: Married to Kathy, who helps run the family car alarm business. Son William, 17, attends public school. Lives in Vista in northern San Diego County.

Education: Associate’s degree, Kent State University (Ohio). Bachelor’s degree, Siena Heights College (Michigan).

Background: Dropped out of high school to enlist in the Army. Rose to rank of captain, attended college while in the service. Left active-duty in 1980, joined electronic firm that created an electronic bug-extermination device. In 1982 started his own Directed Electronics Inc. to make car alarms and moved business to Vista in 1985. Firm has annual sales of $75 million and employs 95 workers in Vista.

Career Accomplishments: Received Entrepreneur of the Year Award from Inc. Magazine in 1994. Organized volunteers for 1996 GOP convention in San Diego and served as chairman of GOP’s Victory ’96 campaign. Served as co-chairman of winning Proposition 209 campaign.

Strategy: Brand government as the enemy of personal freedom and economic growth. Ignore Matt Fong, bash Barbara Boxer.

Quote: “[Voters] can re-elect a senator who embodies big government, high taxes and less opportunity, or they can send me to Washington to be a voice for smaller government, more freedom and trusting the individual to do the right thing.”

Matthew Kipling Fong

Political Party: Republican

Born: Nov. 20, 1953. Oakland, Calif. Adopted at 5 months by March, a dental technician, and Chester Fong, a dentist. Mother later elected to state Assembly and as California secretary of state and appointed U.S. ambassador to Micronesia.

Family: Married to Paula Fong, a “Goldwater Republican” and certified public accountant. Lives in Hacienda Heights. Children Matthew II, 17, and Jade, 14, both attend public school. Matthew is set to attend Pepperdine, where his father is a trustee.

Education: B.A., U.S. Air Force Academy; M.B.A., Pepperdine; J.D., Southwestern University School of Law.

Background: In Air Force, was a computer data processing officer. Now a lieutenant colonel in the reserves. Involved in minor business ventures while in business and law schools. Helped his mother’s political campaigns. A lawyer with Los Angeles firm of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton from 1985 to 1991. Ran unsuccessfully for state controller in 1990. Appointed to the Board of Equalization by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1991. Elected state treasurer in 1994.

Career Accomplishments: On the Board of Equalization, is credited with fashioning a settlement of a lawsuit that kept cash-poor county governments from having to retain nearly $1 billion in tax refunds. As treasurer, has helped boost the state’s credit rating, put pressure on Swiss banks to return funds to Holocaust survivors and relatives, used tax credits to help rural hospitals, a homeless shelter and to provide other benefits.

Strategy: Stress his experience in government and his conservative fiscal views. Call Darrell Issa inexperienced and ill-informed and challenge him to debate. Bash Barbara Boxer.

Quote: “As the new century unfolds, we must knock down the remaining barriers that prevent every American from holding a piece of the American dream.”