A sign is displayed on a desk inside the office of Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010. The sign sits prominently on top of a desk as you enter the office of the 56-year-old San Diego area congressman.

Associated Press

By LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON Anyone who's spent much time near parked cars has likely heard Rep. Darrell Issa's stern voice: "Protected by Viper. Stand back." After next month's election, Americans may be hearing a lot more from the millionaire congressman and car alarm inventor.

Already President Barack Obama's chief antagonist in Congress, Issa, R-Calif., would take over the main House investigating committee and control its probes of the White House and the federal bureaucracy if Republicans win back the House.

One liberal Democrat, Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, predicts that Issa (pronounced EYE'-suh) will use subpoena power as chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to conduct a "witch hunt in an effort to bring down the Obama administration."

Issa already is the bearer of daily anti-Obama sound bites on cable TV. Over a 10-day period in July, for example, his schedule showed 14 written statements and 11 television appearances.

The 56-year-old San Diego-area congressman is one of the wealthiest members of Congress. His annual financial report shows holdings worth a minimum of $161 million. He's probably worth more since only ranges of assets are listed.

He's also generous with his money. He asks staff members to identify their charities so he can contribute, and he raises money for military families at Camp Pendleton in his district and the local Boys and Girls Clubs.

Much of his wealth comes from inventing the Viper car security systems, which have sold more than 35 million units. When someone nears a Viper-equipped car or truck, it's still Issa's voice that warns them away before sounding six changing siren tones.

Issa is a computer expert with a hankering to fix breakdowns. His congressional staff won't tell him about technical troubles for fear he'll get too involved and blow through scheduled meetings.

His criticisms of Obama focus, in part, on the affordable mortgage program, financial bailout policies, preservation of White House records, correspondence with lobbyists and the president's political appointees to a stimulus panel.

A sign in his office, presented by his staff, says, "The corruption stops here."

Issa's in the habit of wielding whatever political power he can muster. In 2003, already in Congress, he spent nearly $2 million of his money on the successful recall of Democratic California Gov. Gray Davis. He vaulted over eight Republicans to become his party's senior member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"I still have a tendency to say, 'If not me, who? If not now, when?'" Issa said in an interview. "Do you seize opportunities when they come? Yes."

It's hard to imagine the tall, immaculately groomed conservative with his expensive suits, driving a hand-painted, Volkswagen bus-truck combo as a young man. Yet, there it is, with its peace signs as the background on Issa's office computer.

As a teenager of Lebanese descent, Issa grew up in a Jewish neighborhood near Cleveland delivering Kosher chickens for an orthodox rabbi who sold them as a business. The juice would leak into his station wagon. "I never closed the windows," he said.

Twice, in 1972 and eight years later, Issa and his brother were indicted on felony car theft charges. In each instance, the charges were dropped.

"We rode cars my brother 'borrowed,'" Issa said, making it clear who he thought was at fault. Ironically, one of Issa's first products in the car alarm business was a key pad that required a code to start the engine.

After leaving the Army in 1972, Issa pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for carrying a semiautomatic pistol and bullets. He was fined and got three months' probation.

He met his wife, Kathy, when she locked herself out of her apartment on a Sunday night. Issa, then a neighbor, climbed to her second-floor balcony and broke in.

"It's just been one adventure after the other ever since," she said.

The warehouse of his first business, in Cleveland, had a fire - destroying an inventory of bug zappers. "We were insured but devastated," Issa said. "But we were not down."

Opportunity beckoned when car thefts were soaring. The Issas started manufacturing their car alarms as a small business in Vista, Calif. They became multimillionaires before selling the business a decade ago.

Glenn Busse, senior vice president for sales at Issa's former company, Directed Electronics, said his old boss continues to come around, usually with a Diet Pepsi in his hand. Still a director of the company, Issa is constantly challenging ideas or pushing new directions for a product, Busse said.

"He's like a machine gun. 'What's going to happen with this? What about that?'" Busse said.

Dale Neugebauer, Issa's chief of staff since his election in 2000, recalls going to Issa's business office in 1998 when the congressman was in the midst of a losing campaign for the Senate.

"He was sitting there with a giant pile of boxes of counterfeit car alarms, counterfeits of his product," Neugebauer said. "He had a cordless drill, and he was opening each one to see where the parts were made."

Polished like few others in Congress, Issa knows how to deliver a sound bite on TV that gets right to the point. Every issue is an opportunity to react.

Any new administration comment about Obama's stimulus program, for example, triggers new Issa charges of wasteful spending.

Issa says he's only following the playbook of Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, a fellow Californian who made a name for himself as the hard-hitting senior minority member of the investigating committee and later its chairman during George W. Bush's presidency.

Waxman, who needled the Bush administration endlessly, cringes at suggestions that Issa is just like him.

"These are not the kinds of things I did in the minority or majority," Waxman said of Issa's badgering of Obama. "He's raised questions of presumed scandal which are all political."

Waxman said the subpoena power that Issa would inherit if he becomes chairman can easily be abused. "Subpoenas ought to be very, very rare," he said. "It's a backup."

Issa, unaware of Waxman's comments, made a similar point.

"This is not Dirty Harry," Issa said, referring to Clint Eastwood's movie cop who takes the law into his own hands. "You have to know your limits."