Upon hearing that former Rep. Frank Riggs, R-Calif., died December 20 at age 73, a collage of memories resurfaced of the policeman-politician Newsmax had covered for decades.
Riggs was, to use a phrase Lyndon Johnson used in 1966 to characterize Richard Nixon, a "chronic campaigner." LBJ meant it as a put-down (and it got citizen Nixon equal time on national TV to respond to then-president), but in Riggs' case, it was an accurate description. He kept on campaigning for office — after being defeated and after relocating to Arizona, but he always learned from errors and improved as a candidate.
His original passion was law enforcement. A career day at San Rafael High School in Northern California hooked the young Riggs on becoming a policeman. During his student days at St. Mary's College (Calif.), he worked as a dispatcher for the San Rafael Police Department. Following a stint in the U.S. Army as — you guessed it — a military policeman, Riggs earned a criminal justice degree from Golden Gate University.
He then joined the Santa Barbara Police Department and transferred to the department in Healdsburg. Riggs fit into law enforcement as much as the Golden State lawmen in TV's Adam-12 and CHiPs. On a routine assignment in Santa Rosa, he met Cathy Ann Maillard. She was the lone woman on the city's police force and it was only a brief time before they married. He soon transferred to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department, and after three years, went into real estate development. Soon, he and Cathy opened their own firm.
Riggs got his first taste of politics in 1983 when he ran for and won election to the Windsor Unified School District. It was in this position that what would become Riggs' life-long passion for charter schools was born.
In 1990, he launched a seemingly hopeless challenge to four-term Democrat Rep. Doug Bosco. Riggs' moderate Republicanism and well-organized volunteer organization quickly made the race competitive. But what put him over the top was a true X-factor: Darlene Comingore, candidate of the leftist Peace and Freedom Party, polled a never-expected 14.8 per cent, and Riggs edged Bosco by 43.3 to 41.3 percent.
Rep. Riggs lived up to his promise to be a centrist Republican. Rated 65 percent by the American Conservative Union in 1991 and 74 percent in '92, he opposed a measure to cut off federal funding for abortions, and supported tax dollars for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
In what could be called Riggs' "15 minutes of fame" in Congress, President George H.W. Bush invited him to the White House for breakfast in 1991 seeking his vote for the resolution authorizing a U.S. strike against Iraq in what would become Operation Desert Storm. But Riggs, always cautious about committing U.S. troops anywhere in the world unless absolutely necessary, became one of the three House Republicans to oppose the Gulf War resolution.
When the news broke that members of both parties were grossly overdrawn at the House Bank and being covered for their overdrafts, Riggs was part of the "Gang of Seven"—Republican lawmakers demanding the names of those abusing their privileges at the House Bank be made public.
With Bill Clinton leading a Democratic sweep of California in 1992, Riggs was unseated by Democrat Dan Hamburg. In planning his 1994 comeback, Riggs, as onetime staffer Beau Phillips recalled to us, "learned you can't 'out Democrat a Democrat' and in his 1994 race, he did, indeed, tack to the right. He signed the Contract with America, joined the Gingrich revolution, and embraced and got support from the National Rifle Association, and as he said to me often, "you dance with the one who brung ya." This time, he defeated Hamburg.
This time in Congress, Riggs was a staunch fiscal and cultural conservative. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich told Newsmax that "Frank was convinced that government was out of control and had a rural Northern California sensibility which was a huge contrast with the San Francisco types."
Narrowly reelected in 1996 but by 1998, he could see how his 1st District was trending Democratic and stepped down. Following a brief flirtation with a U.S. Senate race, Riggs pulled the plug on it and returned to the real estate business in Northern California. Three years later, he moved to Arizona and started a statewide online charter school known as Arizona Connections Academy.
The political bug never went away from him. He sought the Republican nomination for governor in 2014 and drew about 4.5 percent. Riggs actually did win the GOP nomination for superintendent of public instruction and actually beat incumbent Diane Douglas by 249 votes. In November, however, he lost a close race to Democrat Kathy Hoffman.
"2018 was a bad year across the board for Republicans," former Arizona GOP Chair Randy Pullen told us, "It's a shame Frank didn't win because his election would have been a big win for charter schools. And it might have set the stage for him to run for higher office in a few years."
Maybe. But Frank Riggs was also an inspiration to any potential office-seeker not to be discouraged by odds or defeat. He was a chronic campaigner who never gave up.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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