Candidates bring different take in race for Doolittle's seat

WASHINGTON – The campaign trail is lined with the political wrecks of the unknowns and the unknowables who have fallen along the way in their own personal quest for a seat in Congress.

This year, three candidates are hoping to avoid a similar fate as they seek a spot on the ballot in the red-hot campaign for the seat being vacated by Rep. John Doolittle.

School district legal analyst Suzanne Jones of Citrus Heights, Cedar Ridge artist Theodore Terbolizard and legal philosopher John Wolfgram will be campaigning in the shadows of Republicans Doug Ose and Tom McClintock and Democrat Charlie Brown – the heavy guns in what is likely to be one of the most closely watched congressional races in the country.

It's been a rough start for "Terbo," which is what Terbolizard said his friends call him.

Terbolizard has been distracted by a driving-under-the-influence charge, which he is now trying to turn to his advantage. He said the February citation in Grass Valley was based on fabricated evidence and may have been aimed at derailing his political career.

"If it's this easy to get rid of political candidates, we might just as well live in Estonia," said Terbolizard, 40, who said he lives in an abandoned building on an old horse farm.

Terbolizard changed his last name from Hommel many years ago for reasons having something to do with his daughter, now 11, and the girl's mother, who lives in San Francisco. He said people find it kind of catchy.

Terbolizard describes himself as a libertarian-leaning extreme fiscal conservative.

"I'm against government spending. Period," he said. He said he wants to ax the Internal Revenue Service and reduce the size of government commensurate with the loss of income taxes the IRS collects.

Terbolizard also doesn't trust banks, which he explained in the context of that box containing more than $10,000 in cash police found in his car on the night of the alleged driving-under-the-influence incident. That was his life savings to support himself during the campaign, he said. "I am really efficient at living," he said.

Terbolizard has filed for the Republican nomination. He'll be battling McClintock, Ose and Jones in the party's June 3 primary.

Jones thinks her timing is perfect.

She said she should be able to capitalize on the fact that she used to live in the 4th District. That's as much of a claim to residency as Ose, the former congressman for the adjacent 3rd District, can assert, and trumps McClintock, whose state Senate district lies in Southern California.

"I grew up in the area," said Jones, 53. Even though redistricting moved her home outside of the 4th District by about 5 miles, Jones figures past residency must be good for something in this race of arguable carpetbaggers.

"I know what it is like to live here," said Jones, whose politics run along the same conservative lines as Doolittle's.

"When I was a kid, Sunrise Mall was a cow pasture," she said. "I just think I have more of a feel for the community."

Jones has no political experience other than her term on a local neighborhood association. But she said she thinks she might be the candidate voters turn to out of frustration with the high-octane fight brewing between Ose and McClintock.

In the Democratic primary, Wolfgram wants to take on Brown because the Brown campaign shunned him when he offered himself up to be part of its brain trust.

Wolfgram describes himself as a left-leaning libertarian and legal philosopher. He is very focused on what the Constitution really means.

"The duty of Congress is to take the Constitution very seriously," he said. "Brown was not open to my ideas. That's why I am running."

Wolfgram's motivating principle is that the judiciary is out of control. Only judges get to interpret the Constitution, he says, and that leaves out the people and invites corruption.

In 1988, he said he ran for judge in El Dorado County – he calls it "el corrupto county" – on a platform of "freeing the jury to examine what the government was doing."

Later he was disbarred – he describes it as being rendered "forcibly inactive" – after a series of lawsuits he filed that were off-putting to the legal establishment.

Wolfgram, 63, admits that his thinking may be a bit "esoteric" for the campaign trail. But it has made him, as one anti-judiciary Web site termed him, "a national icon" in the movement.

Brown's campaign spokesman, Todd Stenhouse, said it's not that the campaign committee rejected Wolfgram's concerns. He said the campaign just didn't need the help.

"We have 550,000 campaign advisers – every man, woman and child in the district," Stenhouse said.

About the writer:

• Call David Whitney, McClatchy Washington Bureau, (202) 383-0004.