Running an uphill race

Paul Clinton

Edie Bukewihge’s campaign for governor has spent much more time in

other small towns dotting the state than in her hometown of Newport

Beach.

Bukewihge, who has never sought public office until now, is convinced

she can win. This confidence, she says, comes from the response she has

received traveling the state to rural gas stations, diners and other

off-the-beaten-track places to talk to the common folk.

She’s talked to truck drivers, supermarket cashiers and other

blue-collar workers pounding out their days for low wages.

Bukewihge, one of eight Republican challengers to Democratic Gov. Gray

Davis, calls herself a Populist. Her political role model isn’t Thomas

Jefferson or Franklin D. Roosevelt. It’s Ronald Reagan.

“Seventy percent of this state is never heard,” Bukewihge said. “The

way I look at it, I want to be a Reaganette. I see Reagan as a human

being who realized that power was corrupt and if you didn’t have a heart,

you were sunk.”

Despite her confidence, Bukewihge is clearly a longshot in a race for

the Republican nomination. Voters in the state’s closed primary will

decide who will represent the GOP on March 5.

The three front-running candidates seeking the party’s nomination are

former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, Secretary of State Bill Jones

and businessman Bill Simon.

As a political novice, Bukewihge has an uphill climb, said

Irvine-based political consultant Eileen Padberg.

“Her chances are slim,” Padberg said. “She’s either naive or just

wants to see her name on the ballot.”

Either way, the 51-year-old Bukewihge isn’t daunted.

She has lived in Newport Beach since 1991. She owned a Mariner’s Mile

flower shop for five years, before selling it in 1997.

Growing up in San Antonio in the 1950s, Bukewihge was an Air Force

brat, living with her father at Lackland Air Force Base.

When her parents divorced, she moved to San Francisco with her mother,

then to Central Los Angeles.

Bukewihge met and married her husband, Bill, a mechanic and engineer

who worked in the Newport Beach marine industry. She has a 31-year-old

son named Charles.

Bukewihge is pitching herself as an outspoken race crusader who

supports optional prayer in schools and a ban on the teaching of themes

involving homosexuality in schools.

“Politics has always been something I have adored because of the

history [of the U.S.],” Bukewihge said. “People don’t want to understand

the history, because then you don’t understand why we’re [a] racist

[society].”

Bukewihge said has been shunned by the Orange County Republican Party.

She has not been invited to several candidate forums and says she has not

raised much money.

She also criticized Davis for an energy policy that has led the state

into millions of dollars in new debt.

In particular, Bukewihge criticizes the energy deals Davis made last

summer to help the state out of the power crunch.

“These were games he played with powerful men that could get him

elected to the presidency,” she said.