Kovic Asks for Help in Candidacy Decision

LOS ANGELES —  Ron Kovic, the Vietnam veteran whose life story is told in the current film “Born on the Fourth of July,” appealed to residents in Rep. Robert Dornan’s (R-Garden Grove) congressional district Monday to help him decide whether he should run for the office.

Kovic, who became a leading anti-war protester in the 1970s after he returned from Vietnam as a paraplegic, said in interviews and on a Los Angeles radio talk show Monday, “I am ready to serve my country again, but I cannot make this decision alone.”

“I am asking people to write me, to call me, to come up to me on the street; I’m not a professional politician, if I ran it would be as a citizen-representative, an everyday person,” Kovic said in an interview. “I am someone who learned from my experience and turned that tragedy into a triumph. I would like my life and what I’ve done with my life to be an inspiration.”

Kovic said he would decide whether to run for Congress by the end of February when he returns from a film festival in Europe.

As his associates disclosed last week, Kovic said he was approached in the fall by House Speaker Thomas Foley (D-Wash.) and other national Democratic leaders who urged him to run against Dornan in Orange County’s 38th Congressional District.

“If I were to run in that district, the distinction between me and the current incumbent could not be more clear,” Kovic said. “I feel he appeals to people’s fears, while I would appeal to their hopes and dreams for a better America.”

Dornan responded Monday that “the fear (Kovic) represents is the fear of naivete.” He criticized Kovic’s call for more U.S. support of changes in the Soviet Union and a “ perestroika in America.”

“My hope for the future is a future without the communism that put Ron Kovic in a wheelchair,” Dornan said. “He was shot by a bullet made in Russia, that’s the irony of it.”

Dornan also said he was upset that Kovic planned to travel to Eastern Europe for showings of “Born on the Fourth of July.” He said the movie “slanders the service Americans did in Vietnam.

“It says, ‘Look at what bastards we were in Vietnam,’ ” he said. “The people there will look at it and say, ‘Gee, we thought you were heroes.’ ”

The movie, directed by Oliver Stone and starring Tom Cruise as Kovic, portrays Kovic’s life as he grew up to become a gung-ho Marine who volunteered to serve in Vietnam and was paralyzed below the chest during a combat mission in 1968.

The movie follows Kovic’s personal struggle when he returns from the war as a decorated and disabled veteran who then receives cruel treatment in a government hospital and is alienated from his family and former friends.

Political strategists say they think a race between Kovic and Dornan would be close, volatile and highly visible. It’s a race that has the potential to involve both sides of the leadership in Washington--including President Bush--as well as a parade of Hollywood celebrities.

“A Dornan-Kovic race would be a guaranteed E-ride,” said Darry Sragow, a California Democratic political consultant. “You’d have a contest between two highly visible, highly articulate, strong-willed men with firm beliefs who could draw substantial resources from outside the district.”

Sragow said the movie would help Kovic, especially at first. But he also noted that Ohio Sen. John Glenn’s 1984 presidential bid never got the political boost it expected from the release of the movie “The Right Stuff,” which portrayed Glenn.

Republican strategist Stu Spencer, an Orange County consultant who worked on President Reagan’s presidential campaigns, also said Kovic would be helped by the movie.

“But that’s just the first blush,” he said. “He starts way ahead in name identification over the mayor of Garden Grove or something; but after that, it comes down to who is a better fit with the philosophy of the district.”

Kovic heard some of the feelings he might face in a campaign on KABC Radio’s Michael Jackson show Monday. He was praised by one Vietnam veteran and then criticized by another who said he didn’t believe Kovic’s war record and charged that it was actually a Hollywood fable.

“There are people who even wonder if I’m in a wheelchair,” Kovic told the caller. “And I am, I woke up this morning and got in my wheelchair.” Kovic invited the caller to lunch to show documention of his record.

“I don’t believe it,” the caller said. “I thought Mr. Kovic and the other sit-ins gave the Vietnam veterans an image they should not have.”