Simon Describes His Anchor

SAN DIEGO — It was the end of another long day on the campaign trail for Bill Simon Jr., at the end of what has been a very long month.

Over the course of four weeks, California’s GOP gubernatorial nominee has taken a beating about his tax returns and business dealings, his family investment firm has been hit with a multimillion-dollar fraud judgment, and Vice President Dick Cheney swung through California without publicly offering his fellow Republican a word of support.

For Simon, however, there was refuge late last week in a familiar ritual, one he rarely discusses but often practices. He prayed.

“If I didn’t have my wife and my kids and my faith to go home to, I don’t know what I’d do,” Simon said in an uncharacteristically personal interview Thursday evening, sipping a Diet Coke as he sat by a pool at his hotel. “I think I would feel very empty and depressed. Those are anchors for me.”

Reflecting on recent events in his campaign, Simon said that faith has helped sustain him, even as he has been pummeled up and down California with questions about taxes and lawsuits and GOP politics.

“I have a very, very strong belief in God, a very strong belief in human nature, and a very strong belief that if you try to do the right thing, that it’s not going to be like God’s going to pay you back, but you’ll end up in a good place,” he said. Simon added that he prays every day and reads the Bible regularly.

Those close to him say that Simon’s religious convictions have allowed him to put into perspective the series of frustrating turns in the campaign.

“I think it probably brings him back to what is really most important in life,” said Msgr. Lloyd Torgerson, Simon’s pastor at St. Monica Catholic Church. “Ultimately and finally, it’s not about prestige and power. What really matters is, he has a faith in God, and he has people around him who care about him.”

Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a fellow parishioner at St. Monica’s, was tough on Simon during the gubernatorial primary, once calling him a “sanctimonious hypocrite.”

Riordan Sympathetic

Last week, however, Riordan sympathized with Simon and said he believed his former rival’s faith was helping him: “There are things much more important in his life than all these grenades being thrown at him.”

For Simon, those grenades have seemed to keep coming. Just as he had appeared to conclude a round of questions about his personal taxes, which he reluctantly made briefly available to reporters, he was forced on the defensive again when a jury found that his family investment firm had defrauded a former business partner.

The subject dogged Simon on the campaign trail all last week, but he managed to look upbeat, patiently answering questions about the litigation at every stop. During a speech to the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, Simon spoke about the need for class-action reform, then added with a chuckle: “God knows I know a little bit about litigation recently.”

“I think he believes [the verdict] was unfair, and he believes it will be overturned, and that’s where his faith comes into play,” said a friend, Stephen Kaplan. “A lot of people might be depressed and say, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ Bill keeps moving forward.”

Simon said his conviction that there is a larger purpose at work has kept him from feeling dismayed.

“There’s a bigger plan, and it may be you don’t always know what the future will hold,” he said. “Not everything is bottled up in one event. If things don’t go well on Thursday, things could turn around on Friday.”

For Simon, those notions are deeply felt but rarely expressed, except to those closest to him. Indeed, several friends said last week that they were surprised he had spoken to a reporter about them.

Throughout nearly a year of campaigning, first in the Republican primary and now as the party’s nominee for governor, Simon has almost never mentioned his religious beliefs, except in response to direct questions.

In fact, he often seems to go out of his way to avoid the topic--perhaps in recognition that some tenets of his faith are at odds with the California electorate.

Abortion Question

Simon, for instance, shares the Catholic Church’s official opposition to abortion, but most California voters do not, and Simon has tried to neutralize that issue by saying, repeatedly, that he would uphold California’s legal protection of abortion.

Other issues with religious overtones periodically crop up on the campaign as well. At a reception with Latino supporters in San Diego on Thursday evening, he dodged a question from a woman who said she was upset about the recent appellate court ruling against the use of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and the prohibition on teaching religion in public schools.

“The best thing we can do is focus on the fundamentals,” Simon said, stressing the importance of reading, math and science.

But those who know him say it is evident that his faith shapes him profoundly, especially when it comes to his charitable giving, and that it is helping him weather the rigors of a political campaign.

‘Source of Strength’

“I have no question that it’s a source of strength for him,” said a friend and neighbor, John Morrissey.

As Simon reads and rereads the Bible, he said, he is particularly moved by Proverbs, the Old Testament collection of wisdom, much of it taken from Solomon, the son of David. In them, the faithful are urged to honor God, to learn justice and wisdom, to turn from evil and to resist pride.

Reflecting on those texts, Simon said he is continually struck by the range of life that they convey. Moreover, he said, he often reflects on the lives of David and Solomon, whose stories Simon said resonate strongly with him.

“There’s ones where he’s saying to God, ‘Boy oh boy, why did you do this to me?’ And then there’s other ones where he’s doing great,” Simon said. “You can kind of see the ups and the downs.”