<p> Michael Huffington campaigns sparingly, and he prefers sterile,
controlled environments. On this bright September morning, the
G.O.P. Senate candidate is visiting the neonatal unit of the
Long Beach Community Hospital. He makes the smallest of small
talk, marveling at how big the monitors are and how tiny the
babies. Well over 6 ft. tall and thin as his pinstripes, with
a smile that never seems to reach his eyes, Huffington manages
to escape without having a real conversation with anyone. At
his next and last stop, he thanks volunteers and ticks off his
reasons for trying to wrest away the seat of California Senator
Dianne Feinstein. He says she is for Big Government, high taxes,
socialized medicine, a weak defense and special interests. He
is not.
</p>
<p> Others have tried, but Huffington may be perfecting campaigning
as an out-of-body experience. Although he has no other appearances
on his schedule for this day or the rest of the week, his staff,
only three of whom are allowed to speak to the press, insists
he will have no time to sit for a real interview to explain
what he is for. This is not surprising. Huffington, 47, did
not go from political virginity in 1991 to a dead heat with
Feinstein (the latest Field poll has them at a 42-42 tie) by
providing his unscripted musings to print journalists. He did
it with an outsized pile of Houston oil money ($5 million in
his congressional race and more than $10 million so far this
year) and a team of high-priced packagers--Ken Kachigian and
Lyn Nofziger (both political consultants to Ronald Reagan),
the formerly disgraced Ed Rollins (who claimed, then later denied
that he paid black ministers for their indifference to help
his New Jersey gubernatorial candidate) and admaker Larry McCarthy
(of Willie Horton fame). They have made him virtually tamperproof.
Republican Congressman Robert Lagomarsino couldn't crack his
veneer when the tall Texan appeared out of nowhere to beat him
in 1992. Nor could Huffington's Senate primary opponent, former
Congressman William Dannemeyer. Huffington sent his wife Arianna
Stassinopoulos to debate Dannemeyer--six times--instead
of going himself. "Campaigning against Huffington," says Dannemeyer,
"is like running against a missing person."
</p>
<p> When you do catch up with him, he still doesn't seem to be there.
With his glazed tranquillity, he is reminiscent of the old Dan
Quayle. His most satisfying moments in Congress? He pauses.
"It's such a corrupt institution, it's hard to get anything
done," says Huffington, who has introduced no major legislation
except a bill to expand the deductions for charitable donations.
He continues, "I guess I would have to say, one, being sworn
in; and two, hearing Richard Nixon give a speech on foreign
affairs." One of the few times he's said anything on the Banking
Committee was when he scolded White House counsel Lloyd Cutler
for taking fees from his law firm while working for the President.
Cutler doesn't, and the press went on to point out that as a
Reagan appointee in the Pentagon, Huffington accepted $95,000
from Huffco, his father's company. "Mrs. Feinstein wants government
that does everything; I want a government that does nothing.
What's great is what's private." He concedes there are some
things Washington should do: "It should maintain a strong defense
that keeps jobs in California--Mrs. Feinstein has lost us
179,000 jobs with her defense cuts--and a space program that
can also do things like warn us about the weather." He would
replace the welfare state with volunteers who have tapped into
their spiritual side. He would make everyone get a job, although
he does not explain what he would do about the fact that there
are not enough jobs to go around. On the death penalty, he says,
"I'm for it," then, perhaps remembering that Feinstein is as
well, he adds, "ever since I was a little boy."
</p>
<p> Lucky for Huffington, his wife, 44, a past president of the
debating society at Cambridge University in England, is eminently
coherent. On a day when she has to tape her own one-hour cable
show Critical Mass, appear on Mary Matalin's Equal Time and
sit for two other TV interviews, she has lots of time to talk.
A best-selling author of two biographies, Stassinopoulos was
much better known than her husband before he went on his political
spending spree. She began her climb in England at age 23, writing
The Female Woman, an antifeminist book. She became an indefatigable
networker, giving dinner parties on two continents, charming
such British literati as Bernard Levin and Lord George Weidenfeld
and American real-estate mogul Mort Zuckerman. She bonded with
established social X-rays like Selwa Roosevelt, Mercedes Kellogg,
Francoise de la Renta and Ann Getty. Getty arranged a date for
her with Huffington in 1985, and the two were married in a lavish
ceremony (an $18,000 gown, a $100,000 dinner paid for by Getty,
Barbara Walters in a pastel bridesmaid's dress and a floppy
hat). Guest Henry Kissinger remarked that the event had everything
but a "sacrificial Aztec fire dance."
</p>
<p> The marriage is, at the very least, a merger of purposes: hers
to be famously successful, his to find something to do. According
to the Wall Street Journal, Huffington was not the business
success he makes himself out to be. In 1976 the Harvard graduate
joined the already successful family business, Huffco, formed
when his father Roy Huffington discovered an immense gas field
in Indonesia in 1972. On Michael's watch, however, several ventures
lost millions of dollars. In 1985 Huffington, whose family and
company PAC had given $300,000 to Republicans, sought a Reagan
Administration job. But his initial nomination--as an assistant
secretary of commerce for trade administration--was pulled
the next year. Afterward it came out that Huffco had been fined
for selling shock batons to the Indonesian regime. The next
year Huffington was appointed to a lesser Pentagon post that
did not require Senate confirmation. He made no mark there and
returned to Houston in 1987 and persuaded the family to sell
a chunk of the business. He bought a $4 million mansion in Montecito,
California, but did not officially change his residence from
Texas--which does not have a state income tax--until he
decided to run for Congress in 1991.
</p>
<p> As Santa Barbara's new Congressman in 1992, Huffington moved
to Washington with his wife and their two young daughters. They
bought a $4.5 million mansion in Wesley Heights, and Arianna
set out to conquer the capital. But rather than cater to the
mindless glitterati chatter, as she did in Manhattan, Arianna
wanted to have a serious salon. Thus while bold-type names were
invited to these Critical Mass events--Ben Bradlee and Sally
Quinn, Norman Lear, Irving Kristol and every journalist she
could get her hands on--so were operators of soup kitchens.
And while some people snickered that the dinners were phony
set pieces (she had hired Pamela Harriman's cook and butler,
who have since quit), few people sent their regrets. Still the
buzz was hardly what she wanted. Bradlee called one dinner "a
disaster, and that was before I knew she was taping the damn
thing." Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen says of the
evening, "It had the potential to become like Leonard Bernstein's
party for the Black Panthers, famous for its silliness."
</p>
<p> More troubling are criticisms of Arianna's past involvement
with John-Roger, a cult operator whose credibility has been
challenged by an investigative series in the Los Angeles Times
and charges by staff members who have left in disgust. In 1974
she began a spiritual quest that led her to Roger Hinkins, a
former schoolteacher who assumed the name John-Roger in the
early '70s after the "Mystical Traveler Consciousness" entered
him after a kidney-stone operation. The Cult Awareness Network
classifies John-Roger's Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness
as "destructive," its most damning category. Author Peter McWilliams,
a former colleague of John-Roger's, has detailed in his investigative
book about cults, several instances of John-Roger's taking sexual
advantage of teenage male acolytes, harassing followers who
quit and using tax-exempt church donations to live luxuriously.
Through a spokesperson John-Roger refused to comment. Arianna
became a "Minister of Light" in MSIA, whose followers accept
John-Roger as a personal savior. She says the charges all stem
from disgruntled employees and have yet to be proved in court.
She also says she has not actively participated for eight years,
or given money. But MSIA records show that she has given $35,000
since 1990. Huffington denied in a radio interview that his
wife was ever a minister. Arianna calmly admits to the connection.
"John-Roger is my friend, and he is only one of many people
whose philosophies I have studied." But her latest book, The
Fourth Instinct: The Call of the Soul, is filled with his New
Age bromides, well meaning, probably harmless, but not the stuff
of governing.
</p>
<p> She describes as "hit pieces" articles about her ministering
to affluent John-Roger believers in Beverly Hills, and she doesn't
think she should have to answer questions about her private
life. In the next breath, however, she says the Clintons' reluctance
to turn over all their records suggests "they have something
to hide." At the same time, the Huffingtons stubbornly refuse
to release their own tax returns.
</p>
<p> The Huffingtons relieve themselves of the stress of politics
with Saturday Night Live-type skits for their friends, in which
they mock Feinstein. Says Arianna: "We had her pulling toy levers,
saying, `There crime goes down; there unemployment goes down.'"
Then someone mimics a grumpy judge in a courtroom, "Oh, let
me see, what kind of race are you? Oh, you're African American.
We are not going to sentence you. Our list is already full."
The latter refers to Feinstein's hope of finding a way to ensure
that convicted blacks aren't sentenced to death in numbers disproportionate
to whites convicted of the same crimes.
</p>
<p> Many Republicans in California have not embraced Huffington.
He got a lukewarm reception at a recent G.O.P. state convention,
although they appreciate his deep pockets. Many are suspicious
of his decision to run for the Senate after scarcely eight months
in the House and fear that he may grab at the presidency with
the same restlessness. So far, Dannemeyer has refused to promise
the usual endorsement of the winner. A month ago, Barney Klinger,
a wealthy Republican industrialist who has entertained Nixon
and Reagan in his house, held a fund raiser that made $100,000--for Feinstein. Says Klinger: "Michael fooled us once...He has no goal. She does, and she's about 10,000 times smarter
than he is, but her goals are to promote her cult, of which
she is a high priestess, and become First Lady. I'd like to
see him lose by 20 points to send a signal that you can't buy
a seat in our Senate."
</p>
<p> But this year no voter is more ticked off than those in the
Golden State, and stuck on the freeway listening to the radio
or watching television, there will be no way they can avoid
the $20 Million Man. And so the fall season brings back Seinfeld,
Roseanne and one new series on all channels, at every time of
the day, Huffington. After a while, he will be as familiar as
the most popular sitcom star and just about as real. If the
ads are successful, voters may think they know this person well
enough to vote for him. They really won't know him at all.
