Dornan Loses Officially, but Is Not Giving Up Fight

He’s been a legend on the political landscape of Orange County and America for two decades. And now, he’s about to be history.

Robert K. Dornan, a nine-term Republican congressman from Orange County, has lost his bid for reelection. The final death knell came Friday afternoon, 17 days after the polls closed, as the last scattered ballots from the 46th Congressional District were tallied.

Dornan fell by 984 votes to upstart Democrat Loretta Sanchez, a 36-year-old Latina whose candidacy was boosted by President Clinton--who once suggested that the GOP bulldog needed “a rabies shot.”

Sanchez called on Dornan to concede and help her office with the transition. But, characteristically, he refused to give up. Instead, the fiery congressman huddled with civil attorneys and girded for what may be a protracted battle on his charges of vote fraud. He also said he would seek a recount and is trying to raise money to pay for it.

“I’m full of fun and life,” he said soon after hearing the final vote tally. “This is fantastic.”

With that assessment, his quirky, sometimes quixotic political career is about to enter a civilian phase--and Congress without him will never be quite the same.

An erstwhile Air Force pilot, Dornan was “B-1 Bob” to foes and even some friends. The nickname stuck after he became a top pitchman for the 1980s-era jet bomber. He was a conservative icon to legions of Republicans across the country who caught his late-night C-SPAN act from the floor of Congress or mercurial fill-in appearances on the Rush Limbaugh radio show.

Dornan gained a national following in part with his single-minded stands against abortion, gay rights and liberalism and his fervent support of the military, anti-communism and gun rights. He was electric, a 10,000-volt dynamo, and sometimes just flat outrageous.

He once jostled with a congressional Democrat after accusing him of being a draft dodger; Dornan explained that he was just straightening the man’s tie. During his successful 1992 reelection campaign he opined that “every lesbian spear-chucker in this country is hoping I get defeated.” Dornan claimed to have nearly drowned trying to swim the waters off Chappaquiddick to disprove Sen. Edward Kennedy’s infamous story. He called Clinton a wimp who jogged in “girlie-girlie” shorts exposing “white doughboy thighs.”

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Despite such antics, Dornan hated being considered colorful, figuring it boxed him in and trivialized his pursuit of what was honest and right. Even bitter foes begrudgingly admitted Dornan called it as he saw it.

“Bob Dornan was fearless in taking on any issue no matter what the political tide,” said Brian Bennett, a former top aide for a dozen years. “He has an unbridled passion for speaking out on what he believes in.”

Bennett said Dornan was “more than a bit player in helping lay the groundwork for the Reagan Revolution,” almost single-handedly saving the B-1 bomber and hundreds of aerospace jobs in the Los Angeles basin. And he fought for funding of “freedom fighters” in Cambodia and Nicaragua.

Dornan also was a formidable fund-raiser whose nationwide direct-mail operation torpedoed “ultra-left liberals” and “radical feminists” while raising millions from an adoring coterie of conservative contributors. Over the years, Dornan said he raised at least $13 million from the operation, much of it from mom-and-pop donors.

But in the race against Sanchez, he scrambled for dollars. From the beginning, Dornan was off his game. A disastrous longshot presidential bid--he failed to get more than 1% of the vote in any primary--distracted him and drained his campaign bank. He failed to send out a fund-raising letter for his congressional reelection effort until August. By election day, he had raised less than $400,000 and boasted that it was all the money he would need to win.

Politics, however consuming, wasn’t everything to Dornan. Family has always been important. He loved to talk about his five children and 10 grandchildren.

There were problems. His wife, Sallie, filed for divorce four times, claiming Dornan had physically abused her. But they always reconciled, and today the family unanimously contends that the violence never happened. Sallie Dornan says the allegations were the result of her own past problems with alcoholism and prescription drugs.

In this year’s campaign, the grandchildren were a feature of brochures. The children ran the fund-raising operation and coordinated his campaign. Sallie Dornan was the campaign manager.

Dornan is also a devout Catholic who once built a shrine to the Virgin Mary in his backyard.

Born in New York, Dornan moved west with his family as a child. His mother was a Ziegfeld showgirl. Dornan’s father, a strict disciplinarian known to his three sons as “Harry the Rock,” was a former military man, New York haberdashery owner and West Los Angeles real estate entrepreneur.

An unbridled showman, Dornan was trained in the theater arts when he was growing up in Beverly Hills. He sharpened his acting and oratory skills at Loyola Marymount University and in community theater. Long before his political ventures, he appeared in the 1960s TV series “12 O’Clock High” and had his own TV talk show.

Dornan broke into politics by sweeping into Congress in 1977, representing West Los Angeles. When the district disappeared in reapportionment in the early 1980s, Dornan moved to his Orange County district and was elected in 1984.

He is an inveterate history buff, and his oratory can be long-winded and rife with minute detail. And he wears his causes on his face: The eyebrows arch, the face turns as bright as his red hair.

Dornan cautions that no one should confuse his passion with anger.

But to those who have observed him over the years, it’s hard to see the distinction.

His dislike for President Clinton was spawned during the 1992 presidential race. Dornan was one of many to push former President Bush to attack Clinton on character issues. And the congressman took it upon himself to personally carry the sword against Clinton.

Dornan has called him a womanizer, a liar, a triple draft dodger, a drug abuser and someone who gave comfort to the enemy during the Vietnam War. The latter comment, made on the House floor this year, led to his loss of privileges for the balance of the day.

Clinton’s interest in the campaign against Dornan wasn’t lost on the Republican incumbent. “If somehow or other the great upset took place,” the congressman said right before election day, “Bob Dornan’s scalp would be sitting on Bill Clinton’s desk.”

Dornan also had a tiff with House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Dornan angered the speaker by backing an antiabortion congressional candidate in a GOP primary in New York state against incumbent Rep. Sue Kelly, who was supported by Gingrich.

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His relentless attacks on abortion and gay rights played a role in his loss, as opponents of his stands on those issues joined other groups to coalesce against him. David M. Smith of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay and lesbian lobby group in Washington, D.C., said, “It’s no secret that Bob Dornan is the most vitriolic, mean-spirited, anti-gay member of Congress.”

Now that he has been denied a return to Congress, there are murmurs of a possible talk show on one of the big Los Angeles radio stations. Some supporters suggest that Dornan ought to run against Barbara Boxer for the U.S. Senate. And there are rumblings of a rerun against Sanchez in 1998.

Even foes fear this isn’t the end. Said Tricia Primrose, spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: “I don’t think for a minute that we have heard the last of Bob Dornan.”

Times staff writers Gebe Martinez and Nancy Cleeland also contributed to this story.