Bruce Herschensohn

Stanley Bruce Herschensohn
Born	September 10, 1932(1932-09-10) Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Residence	Washington, D.C.
Nationality	United States
Ethnicity	Jewish American[1][2]
Spouse	Bunny Domenic, March 8, 1963
Parents	Herbert Lawrence Herschensohn Ida Esther (Erlichman) Herschensohn
Notes [3]

Stanley Bruce Herschensohn (born September 10, 1932) is an American political commentator and senior fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy in Malibu, California.

Herschensohn quickly rose to prominence in the Republican party, becoming a consultant to the Republican National Convention in 1972 and joined the Nixon administration on September 11, 1972. He served primarily as a speech writer.^[4] He left following Nixon's resignation, but served on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Transition Team and as an official in the Reagan administration.

Previously, Herschensohn has been a Distinguished Fellow at the Claremont Institute and a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has taught politics at the University of Maryland, Whittier College and at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy.^[5]

Contents 1 Political campaigns 1.1 1986 U.S. Senate primary election 1.2 1992 U.S. Senate primary election 1.3 1992 U.S. Senate general election 2 Career 3 Authorship 4 Awards 5 References 6 External links

Political campaigns

1986 U.S. Senate primary election

In 1986, Herschensohn unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for the United States Senate held by Democrat Alan Cranston. He did well in the Central Valley and Orange County,^[6] but finished second to U.S. Representative Ed Zschau of the Silicon Valley, who won the nomination by plurality.

In the general election, Cranston barely defeated the moderate Zschau to secure his fourth and final Senate term in what was by far Cranston's closest Senate election. Zschau, considered a moderate to liberal Republican later left the party and became an independent.

1992 U.S. Senate primary election

In 1992, when Cranston retired, Herschensohn won the Republican nomination narrowly defeating U.S. Representative Tom Campbell, a more moderate Republican who had been on the faculty of Stanford University. Herschensohn received 956,136 votes (38.2 percent) to Campbell's 895,970 (35.8 percent). The remaining 417,848 ballots (16.7 percent) went to Mayor Sonny Bono of Palm Springs, also a relative moderate. During the primary campaign and afterwards, Herschensohn became a close friend of Bono and encouraged his former rival to seek election to the United States House of Representatives in 1994.

1992 U.S. Senate general election

Herschensohn, the Republican nominee and a Los Angeles area conservative radio and TV personality, lost the 1992 general election to the Democratic Party nominee Barbara Boxer, following a bruising campaign that included an eleventh hour revelation that Herschensohn had attended a strip club, which some Republican operatives later blamed for Herschensohn's loss.^[7]

Four days before Election Day polls showed Herschensohn had narrowed a double digit deficit, trailing by 3 points. Political operative Bob Mulholland disrupted a campaign appearance with a large poster advertising a strip club shouting "Should the voters of California elect someone who frequently travels the strip joints of Hollywood?" Herschensohn admitted he had visited a strip club once, with his girlfriend and another couple. With press coverage of the story, Herschensohn spent the waning days of the campaign denying related allegations. When the votes were cast and counted, Barbara Boxer won the election by five points.^[8] Although Republicans have blamed the defeat on the underhanded tactics of the Boxer campaign, evidence of the connection between Mulholland's outburst and the campaign never surfaced. ^[9][10][11]

Career

• RKO Pictures, Los Angeles, CA
  • Studio messenger, 1950–51
  • In art department, 1953–55
• General Dynamics Corp., Convair Division, San Diego, CA, film maker and director, 1955–56
• Self-employed film director, producer, and writer in Los Angeles, CA, 1956–68
  • Director, John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums (1964)
• Member of board of trustees of American Film Institute, 1967–
• U.S. delegation to International Film Festival
  • Chairman of delegation, Czechoslovakia, 1968
  • Member of delegation in U.S.S.R., 1969
• U.S. Information Agency, Washington, DC, director of Motion Picture and Television Service, 1968–72
• Instructor for "U.S. Image Abroad" at the University of Maryland, 1972
• Member of board of governors of Charles Edison Memorial Youth Foundation
• Consultant to 1972 Republican National Convention
• White House, Washington, D.C. (Richard Nixon administration)
  • Staff assistant to president, 1972–73
  • Deputy special assistant, 1973–74
• Self-employed film director, producer, and writer, 1975–76
• Freelance writer, 1976–
• Ronald Reagan Presidential Transition Team, 1980
• Political commentator for Los Angeles KABC-TV radio and TV stations, 1978–1991
• Senior Fellow, School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, 2006-
• Chairman of the Board, Pepperdine University
• Nonresident Associate Fellow, Nixon Center
• Board of Directors, Center for Individual Freedom

Authorship

Herschensohn has written a number of books on foreign policy, his most recent being Taiwan: The Threatened Democracy.

• Herschensohn, Bruce. (1976). The Gods of Antenna, Arlington House.
• Herschensohn, Bruce. (1994). Lost Trumpets: A Conservative's Map to America's Destiny, The Claremont Institute Press,

Claremont, California.

• Herschensohn, Bruce. (1999). Hong Kong at the Handover (Editor), Lexington Books, Lanham, Maryland.
• Herschensohn, Bruce. (2002). Across the Taiwan Strait: Democracy: The Bridge Between Mainland China and Taiwan (Editor), Lexington Books.
• Herschensohn, Bruce (2003). Passport: A Novel of The Cold War (1st ed.). New York: I Books. ISBN 9780743479844. 
• Herschensohn, Bruce (2006). Taiwan : the threatened democracy. Los Angeles: World Ahead Pub. ISBN 9780977898428. http://lccn.loc.gov/2006933774. Retrieved 2008-12-07. 
• Herschensohn, Bruce (2008). Above Empyrean : a novel of the final days of the war on Islamic terrorism (1st ed.). New York: Beaufort Books. ISBN 9780825305160. http://lccn.loc.gov/2008015698. Retrieved 2008-12-07. 
• Herschensohn, Bruce (2010). An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of South Vietnam and Cambodia. New York: Beaufort Books. ISBN 9780825306327. 
• Author of films:
  • "Tall Man Five-Five", (Strategic Air Command)
  • "Karma", International Communications Foundation
  • "The President", U.S. Information Agency
  • "Bridges of the Barrios", U.S. Information Agency
  • "The Five Cities of June", U.S. Information Agency
  • "John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums", U.S. Information Agency
  • "Eulogy to 5:02", U.S. Information Agency
• Contributor of stories to, among others:
  • Conservative Digest
  • Newsday
  • Newsweek
  • Human Events
  • Saturday Evening Post
  • newspapers

Awards

• Arthur S. Flemming Award, 1969
• Academy Award from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1970, for short documentary film "Czechoslovakia: 1968"
• Academy Award nominations, 1969 and 1972
• distinguished service award from U.S. Information Agency, 1972
• award from Council Against Communist Aggression, 1972

References

External links

• Brief Bio on Pepperdine University website

Party political offices
Preceded by Ed Zschau	Republican Party nominee for United States Senator from California (Class 3) 1992	Succeeded by Matt Fong

Persondata
Name	Herschensohn, Bruce S.
Alternative names
Short description	American television personality
Date of birth	1932-09-10
Place of birth	Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Date of death
Place of death