-Caveat Lector-
An interesting tidbit is that this guy is the father of Mary Kay LeTourneau, the
school teacher who has a
sexual proclivity for little boys...
June
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Thursday, January 11, 2001
>
> Fiery O.C. Ultraconservative Schmitz Dies
>
> Obituary: Colorful political career saw him battle his own GOP along
> with liberals. It ended in personal scandal.
>
> By DAVID HALDANE, JEAN O. PASCO, Times Staff Writers
>
> John G. Schmitz, the ultraconservative Orange County politician
> whose fiery rhetoric and flamboyant antics defined right-wing Southern
> California Republicanism for nearly two decades, died Wednesday. He
> was 70.
> "Congressman John G. Schmitz played a significant role as a state
> senator and a member of the House of Representatives during a very
> colorful era of politics in the Orange County community," Thomas A.
> Fuentes, Orange County Republican Party chairman, said in a statement
> released late Wednesday. "His sense of humor, intelligence and
> enthusiasm will long be remembered by his Orange County friends."
> Schmitz, who associates said had been suffering from cancer for
> some time, died about 1:45 p.m. in Washington, D.C., where he had
> lived for many years, according to a statement from the local party.
> Schmitz led a colorful life during his political career, which
> ended in scandal when it was divulged that he had a mistress who bore
> two of his children. Years later, his daughter was also embroiled in
> scandal when she was convicted of having a sexual relationship with a
> 13-year-old student.
> Schmitz first made the headlines in 1962 while stationed at El
> Toro as a Marine officer teaching other Marines about the dangers of
> Communism. Using nothing more than the sheer authority of his voice,
> he disarmed an assailant who was stabbing a woman by the roadside near
> the Marine Corps base. Although the woman died, Schmitz's reputation
> as a hero--and the roots of his political career--were made.
> The next time his picture was on the front page was in 1964 as
> Orange County's newest Republican state senator, a position to which
> he was reelected in 1966.
> By then, Schmitz had attracted the support of such wealthy
> conservatives as fast-food magnate Carl Karcher, sporting goods heir
> Willard Voit and San Juan Capistrano rancher Tom Rogers. So when the
> county's longtime conservative Rep. James B. Utt died and local
> Republicans needed a successor, Schmitz--by then a national director
> of the ultraconservative John Birch Society--was a natural choice.
> Using such slogans as "When you're out of Schmitz, you're out of
> gear," a parody of a well-known Schlitz beer commercial, the Wisconsin
> native who had grown up scrubbing beer vats won easy election in 1970
> and moved his family to Washington.
> Schmitz soon established himself as one of the country's most
> right-wing and outspoken congressmen and just as quickly enraged his
> most famous constituent, part-time San Clemente resident President
> Richard Nixon.
> Of Nixon's historic visit to China, Schmitz, whose political hero
> was Sen. Joseph McCarthy and who considered the visit a sellout,
> quipped, "I have no objection to President Nixon going to China. I
> just object to his coming back."
> The congressman's fellow Birchers laughed, but the president was
> not amused. By election day, neither was Schmitz, who lost his seat to
> a more moderate candidate.
> But his political career was far from over. In 1972, after
> Alabama Gov. George Wallace was seriously wounded when shot by a
> would-be assassin while campaigning for president, Schmitz was drafted
> by Wallace's American Independent Party to run against Nixon. He
> collected more than a million votes but lost much of his longtime
> Orange County support.
> "He was operating on a higher level of politics than any of us
> had the guts for," recalled former Schmitz campaign treasurer Tom
> Rogers. "His philosophy was unbending, even for his fellow
> Republicans, and he never doubted his own abilities and was never
> humble . . . until it was too late."
> In 1978, Schmitz won a second state Senate seat, representing
> Newport Beach as a Republican. By then, though, caustic remarks about
> Jews ("Jews are like everybody else, only more so"), Latinos ("I may
> not be Hispanic, but I'm close. I'm Catholic with a mustache") and
> blacks ("Martin Luther King is a notorious liar") had grown so
> outrageous that he was beginning to lose the support of even the John
> Birch Society, which eventually dumped him.
> He also got into trouble with feminist attorney Gloria Allred
> after criticizing her support of abortion rights by calling her a
> "slick, butch lawyeress." A lawsuit she filed resulted in a $20,000
> judgment against him and a public apology. Schmitz drew fire as well
> by issuing a press release referring to the audience at a series of
> hearings he chaired on abortion as consisting of "hard, Jewish and
> (arguably) female faces."
> But the scandal that ultimately brought his downfall was the 1982
> revelation that the politician who so loudly espoused family values
> also had a secret life that included a pregnant mistress and a
> 15-month-old son. "It was an unimaginable shock," Santa Ana lobbyist
> and former Schmitz aide Randy Smith later told The Times. "It was
> simply unbelievable."
> When Schmitz's mistress, a 43-year-old German immigrant, was
> charged with neglecting their son, the former congressman stepped
> forward to defend her and to identify himself as the father. Although
> the neglect case was eventually dropped, the damage to Schmitz's
> political career was permanent.
> Schmitz moved back to Washington, where he purchased a house once
> owned by McCarthy, and worked part time at Political Americana, a
> memorabilia store in Union Station.
> But there was to be yet another scandal involving his family. In
> 1997, Schmitz's 35-year-old daughter, Mary Kay LeTourneau, a teacher
> in Washington state at the time, was convicted of carrying on a sexual
> relationship with a 13-year-old student whose child she ultimately
> bore. LeTourneau, married and the mother of four children when she
> became pregnant by the boy, served a six-month jail sentence in 1997
> after pleading guilty to second-degree child rape. After her release
> on probation, she became pregnant by the teen a second time, drawing a
> seven-year prison term which she is still serving.
> Schmitz is to be buried Monday at Arlington National Cemetery.
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