Local Elections : Despite ‘Goofs,’ Wieder Still Leads GOP Race

The race for the Republican nomination in the 42nd Congressional District has not been exactly what Orange County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder had in mind.

“I knew it was going to be rough, but with my goofs and everything that is happening . . .” she said, her voice trailing off.

Wieder, 67, is the acknowledged front-runner among eight Republican candidates in the campaign to succeed Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach), who is leaving office after 10 years to pursue his legal struggle for confirmation as state treasurer. The district, which straddles the boundary between Orange and Los Angeles counties along the coast, is staunchly conservative, so winning the June 7 Republican primary is tantamount to winning the general election in November.

Wieder is the only major candidate from Orange County, which has about 45% of the district’s registered GOP voters. Her major opponents are outgoing Cal State Long Beach President Stephen Horn, 56; ex-presidential speech writer Dana Rohrabacher, 40, of Palos Verdes Estates, and Andrew Littlefair, 27, of Torrance, a former White House advance man.

All three have focused most of their fusillades on those Wieder “goofs” rather than on each other. Unfortunately for Wieder, she has provided them with plenty to shoot at.

What proved the most inviting target was Wieder’s claim, maintained for 25 years, that she had a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Wayne State University in Detroit, where she grew up. In what Rohrabacher described as a routine check of her background, he discovered that Wieder never went to college.

Wieder explained that she fibbed out of shame that she had been unable to enter college because of her family’s finances. She emphasized that she did not claim the degree in her current campaign literature.

However, her explanations rang hollow after it was discovered that Wieder, in April--well into the campaign--had reaffirmed the accuracy of a sworn deposition that she had given earlier stating that she had a college degree.

A volunteer press aide to Wieder made the credibility problem worse later by claiming, falsely, that he was a news reporter in order to obtain information from a group plotting Wieder’s ouster as a supervisor.

But falsehoods are not all that plague Wieder. As a member of the Board of Supervisors, of which she is chairman this year, she also is identified with growth and development in the county at a time when Orange County residents are fed up with traffic congestion. If polls are accurate, voters are about to pass a slow-growth initiative that ties development in unincorporated areas directly to efforts to prevent further congestion on county roads. Wieder also is one of two supervisors who are targets of recall efforts over development issues.

In an attempt to take advantage of the anti-development fever that has gripped the county, Littlefair and Horn have come out strongly in favor of Measure A, as the slow-growth initiative will be designated on the June 7 Orange County ballot. Littlefair has dubbed Wieder “the Growth Mother of Orange County,” and Horn has among his backers several key people in the measure’s campaign. Rohrabacher has not taken a position.

Littlefair and Rohrabacher, both of whom worked in the Reagan Administration, are trying to outdo each other on who has closer ties to the President.

Rohrabacher has some key endorsements from the conservative right, including commentator William F. Buckley and former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. His campaign piece de resistance is expected to be a daylong appearance by former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver N. North, who has called the charges against him in the Iran-Contra affair a “badge of honor.”

North, whom Rohrabacher knew in Washington, will appear at several events for the candidate on June 1. The candidate, who had raised $123,000 for his campaign as of May 18, hopes to add that much again and more to his campaign treasury as a result of North’s appearance.

Littlefair has the endorsement of Donald T. Regan, the former White House chief of staff, and got a mention in Regan’s controversial kiss-and-tell book, “For the Record,” but he probably could have done without the mention. Regan wrote that during the 1985 Geneva summit, Littlefair was dispatched by the President to buy goldfish after Reagan inadvertently killed fish that he fed at the request of the son of his host, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV.

Littlefair, whom Wieder had already dubbed a “pencil-sharpener for the President,” says he sent one of his staff people to get the fish.

Despite the fish story, however, Littlefair has developed a credible base in his home area of Torrance and was the first to challenge Wieder on the slow-growth issue. He said he has raised $164,000, enough to finance a mail campaign in the last days before the primary.

As for Horn, he is well-known in the Long Beach area, where he has a strong base. He had raised a total of $193,000 as of May 18 for his campaign, which is being managed by veteran GOP political consultant Bill Roberts. Roberts guided Reagan into the governor’s mansion in 1966 and has handled numerous other high-profile campaigns.

Forced Resignation

But Horn is hampered by his well-publicized forced resignation from the Cal State Long Beach presidency, where his 17 1/2-year tenure came to an end amid budgetary problems, low faculty morale and a public political brawl with Cal State University System Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds. In a letter that was supposed to be private, Horn accused Reynolds of “unconscionable and unprofessional” treatment of former President Richard Butwell of Cal State Dominguez Hills, who died of a heart attack two weeks after Reynolds suggested that he look for another job.

“He attacked the king and missed,” said one Cal State Long Beach faculty member.

Horn said recently, “No president could avoid doing what I had to do and I would do it again tomorrow, and I’d do it again in any similar situation.”

Front-runner Wieder has raised more than $270,000 for her effort, and she should be aided by an expected last-minute endorsement by Lungren. But it remains to be seen if her own mistakes and the attacks by her opponents have wounded her enough to deprive her of the seat.

Other candidates in the Republican primary in the district are former Palos Verdes City Councilman Robert Welbourn, 50, of Torrance; Thomas Bauer, 34, of Torrance, an aeronautics engineer; carpenter Jeffrey Burns, 33, of Huntington Beach, and lawyer Don Davis, 44, of Palos Verdes Estates.

In the Democratic primary, the candidates are political science and history instructor Guy Kimbrough, 43, of Huntington Beach; Ada Unruh, of Torrance, daughter-in-law of the late state Treasurer Jesse Unruh, and writer Dan Farrell of Huntington Beach.

The Peace and Freedom Party candidate is Richard D. Rose of Long Beach, a community services consultant.

The district includes Seal Beach, Cypress, La Palma and parts of Huntington Beach, Westminster and Garden Grove in Orange County and the Palos Verdes Peninsula area, Signal Hill, Rossmoor and parts of Long Beach and Torrance in Los Angeles County.