Ex-Politicians Never Can Say Goodbye

They are like ex-smokers who never lose the craving, jilted lovers who keep calling, former quarterbacks who come back for all the high school football games. They leave Congress with grand denunciations of how gawd-awful government is, then pirouette like ballerinas at the first chance to jump back in.

Take Jay Kim, ex-Republican congressman booted out of office by voters in his Diamond Bar district last year. It would be hard to leave Washington under a darker cloud than the one that hung over Kim last Christmas.

After pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, he served two months of home detention with an electronic bracelet strapped to his ankle. He begged his constituents’ forgiveness and still got kicked out of office.

Now, he wants to run again, this time for the San Bernardino seat held by Democrat Rep. Joe Baca. Switching districts is probably a good idea; the people of Diamond Bar have not likely forgotten that Kim closed up his offices one month before his term expired, leaving his constituents with no representation in the middle of an impeachment.

“Maybe I’m crazy,” Kim told a Times reporter last week.

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If so, he’s not alone. This must be chemical, some uncontrollable tick triggered in Washington exiles whenever the election filing deadline approaches. This year it’s Friday, so various expatriates have been in spasms for weeks.

It was only last Christmas that Torrance Democrat Jane Harman was sipping coffee in a Capitol cafeteria and musing eagerly about the fresh start awaiting her back in the South Bay.

She bade Washington farewell with these words: “I won’t miss the partisanship or the food.” Her tastes have apparently changed, as she leans toward challenging her Republican successor, Rep. Steve Kuykendall, for the seat she gave up to run for governor.

Even Norm Mineta, the venerable San Jose Democrat who bolted midterm in 1995 to take a high-paying defense lobbying job with Lockheed Martin, toyed with a run for his old spot. He decided against it after the San Francisco Chronicle reminded voters that his hasty departure cost them $1 million for a special election.

What is it about this place?

“Norm is frustrated and so is Jane. Nobody listens to them anymore. She’s a millionaire lady and who knows who she is? They disappear with this gigantic federal pension,” said Robert K. Dornan, who knows whereof he speaks, having lost his Garden Grove seat to Democrat Loretta Sanchez in 1996. He’s been talking about a comeback ever since.

Last week Dornan, who had his eye on the Oceanside seat held by retiring Republican Rep. Ron Packard, stepped aside to give his son, Mark, a crack at it. Dornan the elder says he’s happy doing cable TV and talk radio. For now.

“In a couple of years, if I don’t feel like I’m having enough effect on issues with my ratings, I might be back. And by then we’ll know whether the spineless leadership in the House has cost us the majority,” he growled.

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There is an allure about Washington with all its messy, gridlocked, smarmy, backslapping, civilized incivility that keeps them coming back for more, or forever thinking about it. And it isn’t just Congress.

“Politics is broken,” declared former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, three years before seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

“They won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” grumbled losing gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon, six years before he went on to be president.

These comeback candidates insist they miss the rewards of public service, the fulfillment of knowing they can influence national policy in a way no civilian can.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What they hardly ever mention is the hard fall from Exalted Ruler to Regular Joe--someone who has to pick up his own dry-cleaning and drive to Christmas parties alone. Someone who has to wear a “Hello My Name Is” tag at back-to-school night.

The realization sinks in: “Whoa! I gotta sharpen my own pencils!” says Robert McClure, professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, who co-wrote a book about who decides to run for Congress.

Washington can be a unique cocoon of power where members wield tremendous influence on the workings of the country while staying almost completely insulated from how things work.

“For four years I didn’t know what a cell phone bill looked like or what a pager cost or what the $7,000 laptop the government bought me was worth,” said Beau Phillips, former aide to Rep. Frank Riggs (R-Windsor). And he was just staff.

“All of a sudden they don’t have 25 little aides running around calling them Congressman and offering to clip their toenails at a moment’s notice. There is something addictive about that,” he said.

Evidently, life anywhere but Washington can pale in comparison--even when, in Harman’s case, it happens to be Manhattan Beach, where the ocean is not a mirage visited one week every summer, the temperature does not hit freezing and the trees don’t look like sticks in the wintertime.

Harman declined to discuss her inclinations, but when asked what she’d been up to for the past year, an aide stammered: “Miscellaneous, um, volunteer (pause) activities.”

Translation: nothing earthshaking.

No wonder the Hill beckons.