CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / U.S. SENATE : Huffington’s Wife Runs Campaign, Ex-Aides Say : Five former staffers in the election bid claim they quit due to disagreements with her. She insists that they were fired and that her role in the race is minor.

Several former top staff members in Republican Rep. Mike Huffington’s U.S. Senate campaign say the candidate’s wife, Arianna, is essentially running campaign operations, despite her contention that she has been playing a minor role.

Five former Huffington employees told The Times that they were among eight staff members who quit their jobs in the campaign during a three-week period in August because of disagreements with Arianna Huffington’s decision-making at the Orange County headquarters.

“I did not think it was in the best interest of the Republican Party, the state of California and--given her ambitions--the nation for that matter, to elect her to the U.S. Senate,” said Lauri Shirck-Twomey, who served as statewide finance director for Huffington. “And that’s essentially what we were doing.”

Another added: “She is the campaign manager in the traditional sense of the word. Whatever anybody else tells you, she is running the place. Nobody makes a move without telling her.”

Arianna Huffington’s role in the Senate campaign has been an issue since the primary, when Republican challenger William Dannemeyer accused Huffington of avoiding public forums and sending his wife instead.

The issue has heightened recently since she became the subject of several national media stories--including a week of “Doonesbury” comic strips--about her participation in a controversial worldwide religious group, John-Roger’s Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.

Arianna Huffington, a noted author, socialite and national lecturer, has bristled at the scrutiny, saying she does not think her personal beliefs should be an issue because she is only a minor helper in her husband’s campaign.

“It is a tremendous reach . . . to try and give it some legitimacy (by) saying I am involved in the campaign,” she said in a lengthy interview last week at the couple’s Westside apartment. “I mean, I am involved in the campaign, but I don’t know many campaign wives who are not involved in their campaigns. I am not involved with the day-to-day running of the office.”

During a debate last week, Mike Huffington, locked in a close race with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, also sharply criticized the attention his wife has been given. “I’m the candidate; my wife is not the candidate,” he said.

Both Huffingtons declined to comment Sunday on the statements by former campaign employees. The campaign issued a brief statement saying: “Disgruntled ex-employees are notoriously unreliable sources for what’s happening where they were formerly employed, and this occasion provides no exception to this rule.”

It is not uncommon for campaigns to undergo staff turnover during a heated race. But it is rare for ex-staff members to speak out about their former employers. The community of California Republican consultants is not large, and loyalty is highly regarded by future employers.

In this case, however, Shirck-Twomey and former campaign manager Bob Schuman said they decided to speak publicly after hearing Arianna Huffington’s contention that the former staff members did not quit, but were fired.

“Nobody quit the campaign,” Arianna Huffington said last week. “Everybody who is no longer there was let go--and that’s an important distinction. . . . There is no doubt in this campaign that Michael’s is the final word. . . . If somebody wasn’t performing, the easiest excuse is that they were not getting along with the wife. . . . But the fact is that there was no performance.”

But Schuman, who is still on the payroll as an adviser to the GOP effort, said, “That is just categorically untrue regarding everybody who left the campaign.”

Schuman, who served as campaign manager for about five months until August, declined to discuss his own experiences at the campaign or his reasons for leaving the manager’s post. He said he was only concerned about protecting the professional reputations of the employees who left the campaign.

Four former staff members spoke with The Times on the condition that their names not be used. They said that Schuman quit his job as campaign manager and returned to his home in San Diego because he could not work with Arianna Huffington. “He was supposed to be the campaign manager, and they would not let him manage,” one said.

Unlike Shirck-Twomey, most of the former campaign staff members said they maintained their support for the GOP candidate. They said, however, that his wife was steering the campaign at a cost to the candidate’s chances.

They said Arianna Huffington’s interest in promoting the ideas in her most recent book--”The Fourth Instinct, The Call of the Soul”--was sometimes perceived by staff members to be a higher priority than winning the Senate seat.

As a result, they said there were times when she would sacrifice what was considered most prudent for political strategy in order to gain a platform for her views. “To be honest, it got kind of confusing as to whether Arianna was going out as a public relations campaign for her book or for the political campaign,” said one staff member.

Shirck-Twomey, a 12-year veteran of state and national campaign finance operations, said the contrast between Arianna Huffington’s priorities and the political professionals was most apparent in August when the campaign began to highlight a plan to replace government welfare with private charity--an idea elaborated in her book.

Shirck-Twomey said the campaign spent $4 million on a series of television commercials on the subject despite advice from senior political consultants that it was a waste of money since the issue was not a priority for voters.

While Huffington has spent more than $10 million of his personal fortune on the campaign, Shirck-Twomey’s job was to try to raise money from other sources. She said Arianna Huffington insisted that the issue of volunteerism be highlighted in the letters she was sending to Republican contributors.

“We (professional consultants) concurred that a direct-mail piece calling on people to volunteer (to help the poor) would not raise money,” Shirck-Twomey said. “Primarily, there are some hot topics that get traditional Republican givers to give--crime, taxes and defense. Volunteering for your community is just not a salient issue. They were told this is foolish, you are going to lose money, don’t do it.”

Some also said their ability to work was hampered by a requirement from the candidate’s wife that some staff members donate their time at least twice a week to homeless shelters in the area.

Overall, Huffington’s campaign headquarters was described by the former staff members as a chaotic office with no clear lines of authority and a work force broken into hostile camps. They said their jobs became impossible because she frequently questioned their loyalty to the campaign and confused the staff by regularly second-guessing their decisions.

“She viewed everybody who came there as a future member in some social crusade that has something to do with the ideas she has in her book,” one ex-staffer said. “I felt this need from an individual to have total control over you and your function was just to execute her directions and orders. . . . But (they) were bringing in people who have experience; we’re not just kids starting out.”

Political Scorecard

29 days to go before Californians go to the polls

THE GOVERNOR’S RACE

* What Happened Sunday: Democrat Kathleen Brown had no public events. Gov. Pete Wilson planned to attend fund-raising events in Upland and Hemet.

* What’s Ahead: Neither Wilson nor Brown released advance schedules for today.

THE SENATE RACE

* What Happened Sunday: Rep. Mike Huffington was to attend a fund-raising event in Pebble Beach. Sen. Dianne Feinstein had no public events scheduled.

* What’s Ahead: Huffington was scheduled to meet with leaders of the Monterey County Farm Bureau in Salinas, address employees of the Anvahl Corp. in Silicon Valley and meet with a youth group in the San Francisco Bay Area. Feinstein was to give a breakfast address on the economy to the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, speak at a campaign lunch in Chico and attend a campaign dinner in Eureka.

DEADLINE AHEAD

* Today and Tuesday are the final two days for Californians to register to vote in the Nov. 8 general election. Registration officially closes at midnight Tuesday. Anyone who voted in the June primary is automatically registered for the general election. Anyone who has moved since he or she last voted needs to re-register under the new address.

NOTABLE QUOTE

“He’ll vote when he gets around to it.

“He hasn’t had to fight for it.

“It’s always been there.

“If there’s extra time. Later. Next Year.

“Later might just be too late.”

--From the poem “Later,” by Carina Joy Bender, a Rio Americano High School student in Sacramento, published in the official California ballot pamphlet.