Tim Whitacre, a committee member who supported Hunt, is similarly critical. "Carona has been a fiasco and he needed to go," Whitacre said. "But for too long, folks just went along with Schroeder."
Cunningham, who has commented on the feud on Orange County political blogs, believes that those who disparage Schroeder are frustrated by his success. "He's smarter than them and he's better at politics, so they say he must be breaking the rules," Cunningham said.
Schroeder and his wife, Susan Kang Schroeder, declined to talk to The Times, accusing the paper of bias. Schroeder followed up his refusal to talk by sending out an e-mail asking the couple's friends and political allies not to talk to The Times for this story.
Repeated attempts to reach Carona and Rackauckas for comment went unanswered .
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Schroeder came of age in the 1970s, just as the Republican Party was consolidating its grip on Orange County public offices. Politics has been his passion since he was a teenager, associates say.
He worked on Richard Nixon's presidential campaign and volunteered for local Republican organizations while in high school, stepping up his involvement while getting a law degree at USC.
Schroeder owns a thriving chiropractic insurance firm in Santa Ana, using his legal talents as necessary, associates say. His political work is an unpaid hobby, something he does for the thrill of the game.
"He's sort of a political chess player," Boyd said. "He thinks things through several steps ahead."
Besides volunteering on individual campaigns, Schroeder worked in the California Republican Assembly, a conservative faction that gained power statewide in the 1980s and '90s.
During that time, he was co-chairman of a successful recall campaign targeting Doris Allen, a former Republican assemblywoman and first female speaker of the Assembly, who was considered disloyal for working with Democrats.
Schroeder has acknowledged that he plays hard but says he always stays within the rules.
Not everyone agrees.
Wylie Aitken, a Democratic operative, said Schroeder went beyond hardball politics in 1996 while serving first as a campaign strategist, and then attorney, for former Rep. Robert Dornan (R-Santa Ana).
Dornan's campaign alleged voter fraud in Democratic challenger Loretta Sanchez's victory over him, said Aitken, who represented Sanchez during the 15-month legal fight that ensued.
