Thinking back on Orange County Republicans

I once lived in Orange County, California - a bastion of conservatism.

James Boyd Utt was my Congressman at the time. He served in Congress from 1953-1970. Wikipedia reminds me:

Utt was an outspoken conservative; one of his unachieved goals was to remove the United States from the United Nations.

He voted against the Civil Rights Acts of 1960, 1964, and 1968, and against the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In 1963, he claimed that "a large contingent of barefooted Africans" might be training in Georgia as part of a United Nations military exercise to take over the United States.

In 1963, he also claimed that black Africans may be training in Cuba to invade the United States.

As I recall, he also regularly introduced legislation in the Congress to repeal the income tax.

Utt was succeeded in the 35th Congressional District by fellow conservative Republican John G. Schmitz, a prominent member of the John Birch Society. Schmitz served in the House of Representatives from 1970 to 1973. Again, Wikipedia informs us:

Early in 1982, John George Stuckle, an infant born on June 10, 1981, was treated at an Orange County hospital for an injured penis. A piece of hair was wrapped so tightly around the organ "in a square knot," according to one doctor--that it was almost severed. The surgery went well, and the baby suffered no permanent injury. However, the baby's mother, Carla, a 43-year-old Swedish-born immigrant and longtime Republican volunteer, wasn't allowed to take John George home, since some of the attending doctors were convinced the hair had been deliberately tied around his penis.[3]

Detectives threatened to arrest Carla and take John George away permanently unless she identified the father. In a shocking development, Carla said that Schmitz was John George's father.[4]

During a custody hearing, Schmitz acknowledged fathering John George out of wedlock. He'd also fathered Carla's daughter, Eugenie.

Moreover

In 1997, Schmitz's daughter, Mary Kay Letourneau, was arrested for the statutory rape of a teenaged boy with whom she had an affair and a child. Newspapers reported that Letourneau's father had attempted to find a loophole in United States treaties with Samoa in order to find out if his daughter could be excused from trial (the boy victim in the case was of Samoan extraction).

The Letourneau case was the subject of endless media coverage for a decade.