Fein, Kesterson, Sharp vie for GOP spot
It has, in years past, been difficult for Republicans to rouse more than a single candidate to run for what has amounted to the biannual political slaughter otherwise known as running against Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman.
But this year, three candidates are vying in the GOP primary: Peter Kesterson, a Redondo Beach resident and president of Beach Cities Republican Club; Mattie Fine, a Venice resident and longtime political and public relations consultant; and Andrew Sharp, a Long Beach resident and “Tea Party” enthusiast running an outsider, long-shot campaign.
Candidate Mattie Fein
Republicans are emboldened to run against Harman, an eight term incumbent, for a couple of reasons. First, she is believed to be under consideration for appointment as the nation’s chief intelligence officer; and secondly, the GOP believes many politically moderate areas such as District 36 – which reaches from San Pedro to part of West LA and includes the entire South Bay – are vulnerable to change in an anticipated voter backlash against President Obama and his Democratic allies.
“We are going to take on a giant, David versus Goliath, perhaps – Jane Harman being very well entrenched, obviously, and running a pretty strong machine,” Kesterson said. “But I thought if you follow your heart, follow your passion, this is where I think needs the most help. One thing I know for sure is you can’t win if you don’t play.”
Candidate Pete Kesterson
Fein has taken strong aim at a Harman both politically and ethically, claiming that the congresswoman has financially benefited from her time in office. Most specifically, she drew attention to Harman’s recently acknowledged financial ties to Toyota.
“When I see the type of representation Jane Harman has given the 36th District for the last 16 years, several things come to mind,” Fein said. “One is what I call the disconnect between Washington and Main Street. And for me, spending months visiting businesses large and small and seeing constituents and talking to groups, there is a great feeling that she just hasn’t been here. Second is the fact that so much of her representation has involved gaining for herself. When someone is in office, it isn’t about self-service – it’s about serving your constituents.”
Candidate Andrew Sharp
Sharp’s aims are somewhat more constrained. He acknowledges that his chances are slim – he is his campaign’s only contributor, at $1,840, according to his most recent filing statements. Fein leads the financial race, with campaign coffers of $117,000 ($108,000 self-financed), while Kesterson has raised $37,000, almost entirely from individual contributions.
Sharp is running, quite literally, an outsider’s campaign – he actually lives outside District 36, in Long Beach, which is unusual but legally permissible. He notes that he has lived in the state his entire life, whereas his opponents both arrived within the last decade. But his larger intention is to be an outsider to the establishment itself and to at least make sure his and voices like his are heard.
“I want to make all the incumbents and all the established politicians pay attention to a more average citizen, if you will,” Sharp said.
Feuds
Fein and Kesterson are the clear frontrunners. Both candidates say they would rather take aim at Harman than at each other – each citing Ronald Reagan’s “11th Commandment” not to speak ill of another Republican. In broad terms, Kesterson and Fein have political similarities – each calls for a flat tax rate to replace the current tax system, each urges repeal of the recently passed health care reform, and both are a strong advocates of increased spending on national defense.
But not far below the surface of the race the candidates bitterly oppose one another.
Fein’s ex-husband, Bruce Fein, has sued Kesterson for defamation of character, alleging that the candidate has attempted to damage Fein’s campaign by spreading allegations among fellow Republicans that the Feins are connected with the Sri Lankan terrorist group known as the Tamil Tigers. The lawsuit seeks $2.1 million in damages, which the Fein says he will donate to charities.
Kesterson said the lawsuit would be dismissed.
“I’ve got $9,000 spent and we haven’t see the light of a courtroom yet,” he said. “And it’s a frivolous lawsuit…It’s disgusting that her husband filed a lawsuit against me. It’s a lawsuit they know they can’t win, but it costs them nothing because he is a lawyer. It’s the ugly side of politics.”
The allegations set forth in the lawsuit center around statements Kesterson allegedly made at a Republican organizing event at the Doubletree Hotel in Torrance on Jan. 9. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, claims that Kesterson and another member of his campaign, speaking to another Republican candidate, made “defamatory assertions accusing [Fein] of terrorist crimes with spite or ill-will, or with reckless disregard of whether they were false or not.”
Kesterson, in his legal declaration, said that he was contacted by a Sri Lankan who informed him of Bruce Fein’s involvement with a number of “front groups” for the terrorist Tamil Tigers. Fein, who was a former associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Administration and a well-known constitutional lawyer with a bent for international law, has served as counsel for a U.S. based group called Tamils Against Genocide. Fein has written a 1,000 page “war crimes” indictment against a former member of the Sri Lankan government. But he strenuously denied any link to any terrorist organization and noted that if such a connection existed, he would indeed be breaking the law and would be prosecuted by the federal government.
Fein said the allegation is anything but frivolous and that the case has proceeded thus far in his favor. He also said that he has a standing offer to drop the suit if Kesterson either issues a retraction or meets him for one hour of public debate on the issue. He said Kesterson has not taken him up on either offer.
“The idea that I would represent a foreign terrorist organization, or front, is absurd on its face….Because [Kesterson] has no money and nothing to campaign on, he is just throwing dirt around,” Fein said.
“These things happen in politics, but the bottom line is this goes beyond even what I have seen, and I have been involved in campaigns for 15 years,” Mattie Fein said. “Anything is game… But to accuse someone of criminality on this kind of scale – that is something else. He will say anything, and he will do anything.”
Kesterson said that he heard that fellow candidates were considering sharing a building with Fein and he simply advised them to do some research on both Fein and her husband and their involvement in Sri Lanka.
“I just said, ‘Do your homework before you do business with these people,” Kesterson said. “Make sure you know who you know who you are doing business with.”
Kesterson suggested that the Feins were overly litigious and noted that they are involved in more than 30 lawsuits.
“I don’t know very many people that are involved in that many suits,” he said.
Fein said that Kesterson has cited these lawsuits in attacks on her aimed at key supporters. She said the lawsuits are mostly involving horses. She is a horse enthusiast and said such quarrels are not uncommon.
“I love that the big smoking gun of his entire campaign – with all the issues of the 36th District – are some lawsuits that are related to two horses,” she said. “The smoking gun is two brood mares and whether one got pregnant or not. Brilliant. Amazing. It happens that my family had horses, and the reality, unfortunately, in the horse business, kind of like old horse traders, is that this is commonplace. So the punchline to Pete Kesterson’s campaign is over two brood mares.”
Kesterson’s run
Kesterson is largely credited with revivifying the Beach Cities Republican Club, transforming it from a somewhat sleepy organization into a genuine political force in the three years he has been its president. The organization came fully to life during the last presidential campaign. According to Kesterson, several weeks during the campaign the club lead all Republican groups nationwide in volunteer activity, making up to 16,000 calls a day.
It was during this experience, Kesterson said, he felt a calling to run for office.
“There was quite the connection with these folks,” he said. “I’ll never forget the tears of election night. I stood in front of these folks and said, ‘As sad as it is not to win, let us celebrate the effort.’ Just think if they didn’t do what they did how they might feel. At least they gave it their all to make a difference. I had a special connection with these folks and I felt like I needed to do something.”
Kesterson, a Florida native, had spent 18 years in Washington D.C. He worked mainly selling musical products – particularly pianos and organs for the Roland Corporation – but volunteered for Republican presidential campaigns, including both George Bush senior and junior. He arrived in California as a national sales manager for Roland in 2003 and in Redondo Beach in 2005.
He said the politician that animated his passion the most was Ronald Reagan. His campaign platform echoes Reagan’s themes of less government, less taxes, and commitment to a strong military. And though he recognized taking on an incumbent such as Harman represented an uphill fight, Kesterson said it was the race that he most compelled to enter.
“Really the crux of this entire race is that Jane has always run as a conservative and governed to the left,” Kesterson said. “98.6 percent of her votes have been with the Democratic Party.”
Kesterson priorities include a simplified, flat rate tax code and a reemphasize on national defense.
“Everybody pays the same rate and everybody has skin in the game,” he said. “Whereas, we know now that 47 percent of people don’t pay any income tax at all. I believe we are in dire need of a stronger defense. We are cutting defense way too significantly. No question, there are efficiencies we need….But I go back to Ronald Reagan’s famous quote about peace through strength – it is a strong defense that keeps our enemies from going on the offense.”
He said that the local aerospace industry is a key part of that equation.
“The South Bay won WWII,” he said. “And Jane Harman was at a Democratic conference last month at which she said we need to raise taxes and cut defense spending…We have nameless, stateless, and fearless enemies around the world that want to blow us up on a daily basis, and we have to continue to develop the technology and resources to make sure we can defend ourselves and keep our place in the world. We are the beacon of freedom and hope.”
Kesterson said the most fundamental issue to him is keeping the nation true to its founding document, the U.S. Constitution, a small copy of which he carries in his pocket at all times. He believes that government intervention in health care and implementation of onerous taxation policies fall far afield of founders’ intentions. He quotes Daniel Webster’s admonishment that history shows those who have the most to lose do the least to save it.
“That is the most frustrating part of the campaign,” Kesterson said. “Even with all this going on, the apathy – it’s not left or right, but a lot of people out there are unengaged, and our nation is at a crossroads. We’ve got an election in November that either leads us towards socialism and tyranny or more towards liberty and freedom. And I’m running to bring us back to liberty and freedom.”
Fein’s cause
Fein made her decision to run for Congress after witnessing Jane Harman conduct a subcomittee hearing on Capitol Hill a little more than a year ago.
At issue were the “fusion centers” that Harman had helped establish that were intended to bring local law enforcement agencies and federal agencies together to share homeland security resources. Fein believed that the centers, though well-intentioned, had in some cases abused their powers.
“You were getting local law enforcement agencies who have no training in terrorism or homeland security and in some instances these agencies were like, ‘Well, if you like Ron Paul and Bob Barr, you may want to over throw the government,” Fein said. “This is the stuff that was going on last year. There was an incident in Virginia where an African-American in Richmond was targeted because he was outspoken against the government and suddenly he could be the new Black Panthers…These people had no idea what they were doing.”
Harman, Fein said, bristled at the notion that the fusion center required greater oversight.
“It was almost as if this was what I called the ‘Queen of Hearts’ version of a congressional hearing,” Fein said. “For someone who had such a long term in Congress as well as the key positions that she chairs, her role isn’t to cut people off because she doesn’t like their testimony or what they are saying….. This woman hates the word oversight. That is like her dirty word.”
Fein saw Harman’s behavior that day as consistent with the Congresswoman’s failure, as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, to provide real oversight on issues ranging from civil liberty abuses at home to intelligence failures abroad. Harman had supported the invasion of Iraq, Fein said, based on what she later said was bad information, and had failed to prevent torture abuses because she likewise claimed to have been lied to.
“It’s never her fault,” Fein said. “She’s always passing the buck.”
Fein also believes that Harman has benefited financially from her ties with such corporations as Toyota and said that she had failed to disclose her and her husband’s ties with the corporation.
“This seat for her has involved so many conflicts of interest in her persona finances that I am shocked, after 16 years, nobody has taken her to task for it until this year,” Fein said. “[Democratic candidate] Marcy Winograd takes credit for it, but I was the one hounding her on this. This was the first year she recused herself in Congress, over the Toyota hearings – not just because her stock portfolio, but their companies are top suppliers to Toyota, so obviously they have financial interests with what was going on in the company.”
“I think she is the type of representative who will sell her soul to the devil depending on the year and what the political situation is,” Fein added.
Fein, originally from Missouri, has been deeply involved in politics for much of her life. She worked as a consultant in Washington for more than a decade, working alongside such famed conservative political operatives as Roger Stone and Dick Morris. She has also worked as an associate producer for CNBC and has been a contributor to the Financial Times and CBS Marketwatch, according to the biography on her campaign website.
Her broad experience is part of what Fein believes she brings to the table as a candidate.
“I think I have had a very interesting career,” Fein said. “My work has ranged from the defense end to energy to telecom to democratic dispensation to human rights and constitutional issues. I believe because of my experience I am the viable candidate to have a shot at this district. There are so many important issues this country is facing now – the economy, jobs, security – the next person, whoever it is representing the 36 th District – this country doesn’t have time for someone that still has training wheels.”
Fein said she possesses the rare combination of not being a Washington insider while still understanding how Washington works.
“You have to be able to understand the important points of drafting legislation and being able to carry water for a purpose or a cause and form alliances to get something moving,” she said. “It’s about progress and moving forward. Congress is always stuck in what I call the potted plant syndrome of being stagnant. I am not into being the party of yes or the party of no. I am interested in moving forward.”
Her policy priorities include a simplified, flat rate tax code and removing what she describes as the red tape that has hampered California from retaining and attracting business. She also believes the new health care bill needs to be repealed. Fein said she recognizes that the health care system in this country is broken “but at the same time nowhere under the powers of Congress did it say health care was under its tutelage.”
Fundamentally, much of what she talks about comes back to what she sees as Harman’s greatest failure – providing oversight.
“Let me put it this way,” she said. “I’ll say that over the last ten years the previous administration and the current administration under Obama, in terms of significantly extending executive privilege and executive powers and the option to be able to use that at a whim, have continued to increase. This is the reason we have the House of Representatives and we have the Senate. That is why Congress exists.” ER