LaRouche Slate Finds Solace, if No Victories

His opponent may be celebrating a victorious write-in campaign for the Democratic nomination in Orange County’s 40th Congressional District. But Lyndon LaRouche candidate Art Hoffmann was not ready to concede defeat Wednesday before a hand-counting of the ballots.

“It ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” said Hoffmann, 30, a technical writer from Santa Ana, using NBA coach Dick Motta’s famous retort.

Even if he does lose, as has the rest of a slate of 150 candidates fielded by LaRouche’s National Democratic Policy Committee, Hoffmann and committee strategists say the LaRouche slate’s “20% to 40%” showing in Tuesday’s California primary makes them a political force to be reckoned with.

“There’s a voters’ rebellion going on and they’d better wake up to it,” Hoffmann said of the Democratic Party nationally and in Orange County, where Democrats conducted an all-out effort to defeat him with a write-in campaign led by party’s county chairman, Bruce Sumner.

“These were our best vote totals yet in California,” added Khushro Ghandhi, West Coast coordinator for the NDPC organization that many consider a political fringe group.

“What it means is between 20% and 40% of the Democratic Party electorate are fed up with the present party leadership. That’s why Democrats haven’t won a presidency and are having so much trouble nationally,” Ghandhi said Wednesday from the committee’s regional headquarters in Los Angeles.

“And in Orange County, where the strongest campaign against us was run, that’s where we got our strongest vote,” he said, referring to Hoffmann’s 47.7% showing in a highly publicized campaign that culminated Monday in an acrimonious debate via satellite between Sumner and LaRouche.

Hoffmann disputed Sumner’s analysis that the LaRouche slate’s defeat statewide and in Orange County, especially in his own against-the-odds write-in campaign, was a “message to Leesberg (LaRouche’s Virginia headquarters)” of the voters’ “total rejection of LaRouche.”

“That’s total baloney,” said Hoffmann. “We’ve got 40% of the vote now. What are we going to look like in two years?”

Previously, Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. garnered less than 1% of the vote in three well-financed campaigns for the presidency and was generally dismissed as a political force.

But the 64-year-old former Marxist theoretician, who has promised a fourth run for President in 1988, grabbed national attention in March when LaRouche candidates won the Illinois Democratic primary nominations for lieutenant governor and secretary of state.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Adlai E. Stevenson III resigned to run as an independent rather than appear on the same ticket with LaRouche’s people, denouncing their leader as a “neo-Nazi” and “a bizarre and dangerous extremist who espouses hate-filled folly.”

Orange County party regulars were equally stunned to find that Hoffmann was the only candidate seeking the Democratic nomination in the 40th Congressional District. Although the district, considered the wealthiest and most Republican in the nation, has been written off by Democrats as unwinnable, the idea of a “LaRouchie” as party standard-bearer prompted Sumner to launch the uphill write-in campaign.

Thirteen other LaRouche candidates appeared on Tuesday’s Democratic primary ballot in Orange County, including 39th Congressional District candidate Maureen Pike and state Assembly candidates Peter Dimopoulos of Fullerton and Marion E. Hundley of Yorba Linda and 10 people running for seats on the party’s central committee. All lost in unofficial final tallies.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Al Olson said Wednesday that all 16,342 write-in votes must be hand-checked before Sumner can be declared the victor. But he added that Sumner’s victory was certain even if his 1,459-vote margin was eroded in the hand-count.

“I’m sure it’s going to show that Sumner is the winning candidate by a very comfortable margin,” Olson said.

Hoffmann has not ruled out a request for a recount. But should he lose, the boyish-looking, bespectacled writer of computer manuals said, “I’m still alive and kicking; I’ll still be around in two years. And the fact is, they (Democratic Party regulars) are going to have to start taking us seriously.”