Elections '88 : Orange County : Spreading the Word : Candidates Still Say It With Potholders, Stickers

By DIANNE KLEIN

May 31, 1988 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

What’s new, what’s interesting and what works?

How about a free safe-sex kit, complete with your candidate’s name imprinted on the condom package? That was a big hit recently for a Miami politician.

Not for your guy? Well, how about Indian headbands, festooned with feathers and the candidate’s name emblazoned across the front? That, too, has been tried.

Oh, sure--there’s always the button, T-shirt and baseball cap route. But will that really make a candidate stand out from the pack?

These are tough choices, and Orange County political candidates have made them. And guess what? In keeping with the county’s conservative political climate, they aren’t taking many risks.

Perhaps the most imaginative gimmick to come down the pike this election year is a magnetic bumper sticker, free for the asking from Irvine Councilman C. David Baker’s campaign for the Republican nomination in the 40th Congressional District. It’s ideal for no-muss, no-fuss post-election cleanup.

“That’s so people won’t mind putting it on their Mercedes, or their BMWs, or their Porsches or whatever they have,” explains John Nakaoka, Baker’s campaign manager. “Even with the Japanese cars, people here don’t like to put on bumper stickers.”

Nakaoka, of Cleveland, mixes the acumen of a political strategist with the awe of an anthropologist.

“We looked at the possibility of potholders,” he says. “But we weren’t sure about the dual-income families--whether they would be received positively by women. Plus, people are so picky about their homes here.”

But other political consultants note that the potholder, a bipartisan California favorite, is far from burned out.

“There were concerns some years ago that potholders were wearing thin, as they say,” says veteran politician consultant Harvey Englander of Campaign Management Inc. of Newport Beach. “There was talk in West Los Angeles: ‘Do you lose the feminist vote if you send out potholders?’

“Well, I used them as late as two weeks ago in a campaign . . . for Assembly in Los Angeles.”

One of the earliest political potholders was an asbestos number imprinted with a slate of local GOP candidates, distributed in Orange County in time for the election of Nov. 3, 1936.

And former Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) says he used potholders for every election in which he was involved between 1974 and 1986.

“There were some constituents that took pride in a complete set,” Robinson says.

This year, some 40,000 Orange County households in the 40th Congressional District found red-white-and-blue potholders in their mailboxes to let them know that Nathan Rosenberg wanted their vote.

“We did a nice one,” Rosenberg campaign manager Ted Long says of the potholders. Each has the words, “Conservative Republican, Nathan Rosenberg for Congress,” spelled out big and bold on both sides.

“This one people can actually use,” Long says. “A lot of times, guys will just grind these things out. . . . But I don’t really want to get into the whole science of potholders.”

Long would rather talk about The Book. He reckons that the 80-page mailer, entitled “A Conservative in Action: Nathan Rosenberg,” is a breakthrough in Orange County political campaign strategy.

“It wasn’t intended to be an intellectual masterpiece,” Long says. “It was intended to be read.”

But for Long, the book is much more than a quick read. It’s more like the culmination of a dream, an idea he says he has been carrying around in his head since 1974, when he was hoping to get an Assembly candidate to go for it.

“It is probably the most profound piece of literature in this campaign,” Long says. “Hemingway may not be sweating. Hemingway is not turning over in his grave, but Nathan is the only one who is saying something in this campaign.

“I love the book. I think it’s great. We go to a candidates forum and people want to talk and we whip out the book and say, ‘I haven’t got yours yet.’ I think it’s great. I love it.”

Not that the book concept is actually new. As Rosenberg’s political opponents are quick to point out, San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos fired off his own book in a 1987 campaign.

In 1960, according to consultant Englander, Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty wrote, “Why I Can’t Take Kennedy,” and later the city’s current mayor, Tom Bradley, wrote “Why I Can’t Take Yorty.”

“Actually, if you want to go back, probably Abraham Lincoln wrote the first book,” says Allan Hoffenblum, political consultant to Dana Rohrabacher, a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 42nd Congressional District.

Rohrabacher, for the record, is sending out neither potholders nor books.

“If Dana Rohrabacher had $450,000 to spend, then we would do something similar,” Hoffenblum says. “But he doesn’t.”

Political consultant Bill Roberts, working for another 42nd District GOP candidate, Stephen Horn, says the problem with most political gimmicks is “not getting the bang for the buck.”

“Rather than being socially unacceptable, it has become financially unacceptable,” he says. “Not that I don’t think that people won’t go for a reasonable gimmick.”

Horn’s campaign is indulging in some bumper stickers, however.

“These come right off,” Roberts says. “They are plasticized, and we guarantee that they will come right off--or we’ll give them a new bumper.”

Harriett Wieder’s campaign in the same race distributed a bunch of refrigerator magnets a couple of weeks ago, says Wieder political consultant Tony Marsh.

But Marsh and other consultants involved in Orange County campaigns say that with the cost of campaigning near the panic point, they are concentrating their persuasive efforts on direct mail.

Cable television, they say, isn’t widely viewed enough to be an effective way of getting a candidate’s message out. And who has the money to spend on Los Angeles-based TV?

“The whole campaign is going to be in the mailbox,” says Hoffenblum, of the Rohrabacher camp. “And the one who does the best job will probably win.”

And who does the best job?

“We like to believe that our’s (flyers) are more well done,” says Gary Huckaby, political consultant for C. Christopher Cox, one of the front-runners in the Republican primary in the 40th Congressional District.

Direct Mail

“I like to believe that my direct mail gets read,” says Baker consultant Frank Caterinicchio.

“We try to give them a feel for the candidate,” says Marsh.

Congressional races in such places as Orange County don’t necessarily generate the most interesting political gimmickry, says Lee Weatherford, who sells all types of political gadgets as an account executive with Mo-Money Associates in Pensacola, Fla.

“You’d be amazed with what people come up with,” Weatherford says. “Generally, if it doesn’t run away from us, and somebody wants to put their name on it, we’ll do it.”

And Weatherford should know. She sold those condoms to that Miami politician.