Last Best Hope For Congress
Jerry Doyle on politics, aliens and Babylon 5.
      by Rachel Hyland

Would you vote for this man?

11th: So before you started acting, you were on Wall Street?

Doyle: Yeah, I was ten years on Wall Street. Basically, I traded stocks and bonds.

11th: And from there you thought: Hey, acting!

Doyle: Yeah, well, I did it for ten years, and I was looking for something really new, and I sat down and thought: 'So what am I qualified to do?' and the answer was, well, not a lot. (laughs) So I thought, hey, actor. It looked like a fun job for a good amount of money, and there I went. And I got lucky.

11th: You were first on The Bold and the Beautiful, is that right?

Doyle: I was, yeah, I did The Bold and the Beautiful for about a year.

11th: So what do you think? Should Ridge be with Brooke or Taylor? Time for the hard-hitting questions, you see.

Doyle: Yes.

11th: Yes?

Doyle: Well, that's the soap opera answer, yes. 'Cause eventually they end up with everybody anyway... they're like a show full of Garibaldis. People who aren't happy with anything. Or only happy for a very short while.

11th: And they have single conversations that last for weeks...

Doyle: (laughs) Yeah, and they have those endless stares...

11th: (laughs) Did you ever master that endless stare?

Doyle: (laughs) I don't think so. I've looked at the tapes.

11th: Hey, I also saw you on Beverly Hills 90210, which I find particularly impressive. Did you get to meet Luke Perry? My one ambition in life...

Doyle: Uh... nope. I really worked on location with that one girl on the show, the brunette...Vanessa something?

11th: Vanessa Marcil.

Doyle: I worked with her. And her, I guess, boyfriend... the guy with three names. Err...

11th: Brian Austin Green.

Doyle: Yes! That's the one.

11th: Will you keep doing guest shots like those, and like on Renegade?

Doyle: (laughs) Yes, and I did Sliders. Sliders was pretty good. We had a great location and I got to blow a lot of stuff up. I think I set a single season record for most... most ammunition used... God, they just let me go nuts. It was great... a lot of stunt guys blowing stuff up, flying through the air... a lot of fun.

11th: So, speaking of ammunition, where do you stand on gun control?

Candidate Doyle, cozying up to the geek electorate at Trek Expo '98.

Doyle: Well... I believe that we have the Constitutional and Second Amendment right to have guns. But I think we need to be smart enough to say if you've got kids in the house, don't be stupid. Put it away, put a trigger lock on it, make sure silly things aren't going to happen with tragic consequences. Like those which occur when kids get a hold of these things and accidentally shoot each other, or worse, horrific acts of violence like Columbine. I think we should really go after the felons who try and purchase them, throw them in jail. I think if they try to use prison overcrowding as an excuse, I'd rather see a guy who smokes pot on the street than a felon with a gun. If you wanna go huntin', fine -- you don't need something that spits out three thousand rounds a minute.

11th: Do you have a gun?

Doyle: No, I don't. I grew up with them, my Dad obviously had a gun, he was a cop. Everybody who came to the house had a gun. But when he got home he took his gun and gunbelt off, he took his second gun out, he put them on the shelf in the coat closet in the kitchen... he took me to the range, he showed me what the gun could do, he shot something up and showed me what kind of power the thing had, and I had an idea what it was all about. I never had a desire to climb up and take the gun out.

11th: So, your opponent [incumbent Democrat], Brad Sherman. He won't debate you. What's that about?

Doyle: He's afraid. He knows I can take him to task for votes where he flip-flopped, changed in order to get union money to pay off his campaign debts. He obviously doesn't want to engage me in a debate because there's nothing he can say about me. He needs to be a politician in order to have an identity. I don't. I'm doing this because it's something that I believe passionately about, there are issues that need to be addressed, people need to stand up and let their voices be heard. I need to take the desires, the needs and the wants of the individual to Washington, to bring them back those things they think they need.

11th: What are the polls saying? Do you take polls?

Doyle: I don't take polls. Unfortunately, the Clinton/Gore administration has existed on polls. They don't do anything without a poll. They don't take a poll without a poll. And they let polls dictate their policy, they let polls dictate their philosophy. And I'm not going to let a poll dictate what I think, feel or say. I'm going to tell you what I believe, I'm going to tell you the things that I'm passionate about, I'm going to tell you what I'll fight for and do for you as your congressman. If that's enough to get elected, so be it.

"That's Congressman Garibaldi to you, pal!"

11th: What happens if you are elected, and someone offers you your dream role?

Doyle: I'll already have my dream role. I'll be a Congressman.

11th: Good answer. What about if Babylon 5 hadn't ended after five years; if it was still on now? Would you leave to run for Congress?

Doyle: I was going to get involved politically in 2004, or 2006. I didn't know if it'd be a Congressional seat, I didn't know what it would be. I hadn't really fleshed that all out. [But] the candidate that the Republicans put up... he's a former Sixties and Seventies radical, and he's billing himself as a Republican. And I thought, "This is wrong. This is so wrong. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let the Republican party give this... incumbent... a free ride." So I was shooting a movie in Canada, but I flew down, filled out the forms, and I qualified. March 7, I'm the guy, Republican nominee, and that's where we're at today. Sure it would be easier -- a lot easier -- to go shoot a movie for two or three weeks and make, maybe a couple hundred thousand bucks. It's a lot easier to do a TV series, you know: someone asks you what you want for breakfast, gets you lunch, takes you home at the end of the day, pays you good money, and you don't necessarily have to do it right the first time. I've taken myself out of the workforce to campaign full-time, and I've put my own money into the campaign.

11th: Do you think your campaign is worth the money?

Doyle: Yes. Y'know, people come up and say: "How much are you gonna put in the campaign?" And I say I don't know. And they say, "Well, we hear you have this $3 million house, and you got all this stuff, and you got a Ferrari, and you got a plane..."

11th: You've got a Ferrari?

Doyle: Yeah. So, I go, "What's the point?" They go, "Uh, so how much are you gonna put in the campaign?" and I say: "I dunno." And they say "Well, maybe you should put, like, a million bucks in..."and I go, "A million bucks? Are you out of your fucking mind?" I said, "This isn't about ego, pal." (laughs) I said, "If you think I'm going to run as a fiscal conservative, spending a million dollars to get a job that pays a hundred and thirty-five grand a year, you're nuts!" You spend a hundred and thirty-five grand to get the job that pays a million. That's how you run as a fiscal conservative.

11th: So what happens if you fail? Will you try again?

Doyle: Yeah. Y'know, I was talking to a reporter the other day and he said "Well, this isn't an easy thing, what if you lose?" I said "What if I lose? I'll go to my house in Florida in the middle of November, I'll play tennis, I'll go fishing, I'll have a ball. I'll come back and tell my agent that we're back in business, I'll go get another series, I'll go back and make fifty grand a week." That's my downside. I just want people to know that this is not something that is just a whim. I thought long and hard about it. People say: "Well, why should I take you seriously?" Because you want me to make in a year what I can make in a month, where you gotta wear a tie, be on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and be completely responsible for everything that you do. Every minute of every day. You have your personal life taken apart. You spend your days dialin' for dollars, going to the district, going to lunches, going to dinners, having four, five, six events a day, just to get the job. To take yourself out of the workforce, to not have income for seven or eight months, to pass up work that potentially makes you much more money down the road... if that's not a serious commitment to a campaign, I don't know what is.

< Previous Page | Next Page >