Campaigning in the SLO Lane

Larry Houlgate is a university professor from California’s central coast who is presently on a sabbatical leave in the south of France. He and his wife have been living in the Provence region since September, in a quaint rented house. Their village is so small that it appears on few maps.

Houlgate spent two years preparing for this getaway. He is writing a book and won’t return to his San Luis Obispo home until the end of March.

A month before they left, the Houlgates were in attendance at a Democratic Central Committee meeting in their home district. He and his wife, Torre, are politically active. They co-chair the committee.

One of the urgent orders of business was to find a Democrat willing to run for a seat in the California State Assembly. No one was volunteering.

The filing deadline for candidates was only a few weeks away. It was looking like a lost cause.

Houlgate finally joked: “Put my name in for the election. I’ll run for the primary from France.”

His phone rang in Provence a couple of weeks ago. That was when citizen Houlgate was told that he is a candidate in the March primary.

Which he will win, unopposed.

Without ever leaving Europe.

*

California has surely had its share of unorthodox elections. It wasn’t too long ago that Sherman Block was a candidate for another term as L.A. county sheriff, in spite of the serious disadvantage of being dead.

Now we have another peculiar California campaign shaping up.

Absentee voters we’ve heard of, but absentee candidates?

“It’s a wonderful way to campaign,” Houlgate, 61, admits from his, uh, campaign headquarters in the hamlet of Le Paradou.

It sure is.

No speeches. No debates. No stumping through San Luis Obispo to press flesh with the voters.

The only way Houlgate will be able to challenge Abel Maldonado, his presumptive opponent in next November’s general election, before the March 3 primary is by e-mail. Or maybe speaker phone.

Having never run for office--if you don’t count being president of a fraternity-like club at Pasadena City College once--this is a strange way for Houlgate to throw his hat in the ring. Or have it thrown in for him.

He is well aware of why no one could be persuaded to run.

“The reason is, no Democrat has won the seat in the past 30 years. The district in which we live has a rather huge Republican registration edge over the Democratic. And the Republican who now holds the seat will run as an incumbent, and he has buckets of money.

“Although our committee had been trying to find someone--anyone--to run, the words ‘sacrificial lamb’ were frightening off most of our good prospects.”

Then he opened his own mouth.

He suggested he could change his initials to S.L. Houlgate--for sacrificial lamb--and issue all his future press releases in French.

It was a joke. His wife understood it was a joke. They figured everybody there did.

“But the chairperson of our district was also at the meeting,” Houlgate says, “and he wasn’t joking. He took me seriously.”

Allan Cooper, the party chief for the 33rd Assembly District, waited until a few days before the Nov. 14 filing deadline. Then he had to act or forfeit the primary. He dialed his French connection. Cooper, according to Houlgate, told him: “You gotta do this.”

A fan of Anne Tyler’s popular novel “The Accidental Tourist,” and the film thereof, Houlgate says that was when he first began to think of himself as the accidental candidate.

*

His filing fees ($990) were paid by party supporters. His name was formally submitted for election.

Before anything could be done officially, however, Houlgate had to sign a campaign form personally and have his signature verified. This meant driving to an American consulate--the closest one was in Marseilles--to have the document witnessed and stamped. And time was of the essence.

In a pounding thunderstorm, Larry and Torre Houlgate climbed into a little Renault and navigated the hazardous southbound roads, most of which were better conceived for pony-drawn carts. They got lost searching for the consulate. Arriving without an appointment, harried and wet, they had to talk their way in without being mistaken for a couple of San Luis Obispo terrorists or something.

The document got signed. Houlgate was in the race, even though Torre realized the party didn’t even have a proper photo of him. “It looks like Larry will be not only the accidental candidate,” she concluded, “but the invisible one.”

Professor Houlgate’s field of expertise at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and in the books he authors is ethics and law in family relationships. He will return to campus when the spring quarter begins in April, having already won a California primary without setting foot in California.

Keeping politicians as far away from the voters as possible . . . you know, this might not be such a bad idea.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com.