Business Isn’t All Serious at State GOP Convention

“I usually pour the booze myself,” Ed Davis, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, said with a laugh. “That way, you get to meet everybody .”

And serving the cheese is important too, Davis continued.

“You’ll find that my cheese is sliced thin to put it on a cracker,” he said. “Democrats and some Republicans cut their cheese into cubes. Have you ever tried to put a cube on a cracker?”

So went a weekend press briefing by the former Los Angeles police chief and good-natured state senator from Chatsworth.

You see, here at the three-day California Republican Convention, the serious business isn’t necessarily all that serious. Rather, the convention is a chance for candidates and would-be candidates to woo party activists with the close-in, personal politics of handshaking, story-swapping, wining-and-cheesing, chili-feeding and, of course, self-promoting.

Most of it is done in what they call the hospitality suites:

In the suite of would-be U.S. Senate candidate and Rep. Bobbi Feidler of Northridge, lights were dimmed in her mirrored, king-sized bedroom, and a crowd watched flickering images from a video cassette.

“It’s OK,” she said with a grin. “It’s the right kind of movie.”

Day and night, the eight-minute videotape, “The Bobbi Fiedler Story,” repeated itself. The concluding image was of the congresswoman sitting beside President Reagan as he told a crowd: “On Election Day, do me a favor. Send Bobbi Fiedler back to Washington!”

Fiedler said: “I am definitely planning to run (for the Senate). . . . I really have made the commitment. . . . I do not plan to run for Congress again.”

But unlike Davis, Fiedler said she would not formally declare for a while. This allows her the “very important” freedom to continue appearing on broadcast talk shows without giving other candidates legal grounds to demand equal time.

Similar concerns hold back an announcement by Arthur B. Laffer, the supply-side economist. He said that to give up his media appearances and writing “would be a killer.”

Laffer was one of the few would-be Senate candidates at the convention without a hospitality suite.

“It’s not a good use of money,” quipped Laffer, a money expert. “I just went to everybody else’s.”

Long Beach Rep. Dan Lungren, still another potential candidate, found elaborate means to get his name before the 2,000-plus delegates, guests and reporters.

“There’s a LUNGREN in your future,” read the cookie fortunes at the Saturday night banquet.

Seeking Yuppie Vote

At a hospitality suite and earlier at a breakfast for reporters, Lungren, 38, said he would contest Laffer and announced Senate candidate Robert W. Naylor, a Menlo Park assemblyman, for Yuppie voters.

“Age works for me,” Lungren said.

Davis, 68, said the hospitality suite was a happy solution to this age “issue.”

“People come in and say, ‘Hey, you don’t look as bad as I thought you would,’ ” Davis said.

Lungren seemed to take on another of those he may face in the Senate primary when he described himself as the second most conservative officeholder in the race behind fellow Rep. William Dannemeyer of Fullerton.

Controversial Gimmick

“And there are conservatives who scare the hell out of people,” said Lungren, in an apparent reference to Dannemeyer.

Replied Dannemeyer, “I’m always flattered when people attack me.”

Dannemeyer’s hospitality gimmick was one of the most controversial. He invited delegates to visit his suite and have their pictures taken with a mounted and stuffed turkey called Rosie, which he uses as a mascot in his campaign to oust state Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, who faces reelection next year.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich--who is mulling over possible races for either lieutenant governor or the U.S. Senate--moved up at the convention session Sunday from vice chairman to chairman of the state party for the next two years. There was no opposition to his election.

Attacked Cranston

Antonovich’s most-eligible-bachelor hospitality room, the hotel’s “Kennedy Suite,” included a hot tub for six--it remained unused--and smoked-mirror ceilings to set it apart from the others.

In his acceptance speech to the convention, Antonovich attacked Democratic incumbent Sen. Alan Cranston as “the epitome of the kind of worn-out philosophy of the left wing of the Democratic Party.”

But Antonovich saved his harshest criticism for Chief Justice Bird. Recounting several gruesome crimes in detail, Antonovich argued that “Rose Bird fought to save those killers.”

Not so smooth was the convention’s choice of Bakersfield businessman Bill Park as state GOP vice chairman, which puts him in line to be in charge of the party for the 1988 election.

Extra Meaning for Race

Obscure under normal circumstances, the race for the vice chair took on extra meaning when Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson, who is expected to be seeking reelection in 1988, sided with Park over some longtime activists who favored the candidacy of Sacramento County party worker Ingrid Azvedo.

At one point during Sunday’s convention floor session, Wilson controlled the gavel and tried to institute procedural rulings favorable to Park. He found himself confronted by shouting Azvedo supporters, including state Assembly Republican Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale, who swore openly at Wilson and accused him of “railroading” the convention.

Party leaders did manage to diffuse another potential hot spot, a proposed new reapportionment initiative package by maverick Republican Assemblyman Don A. Sebastiani of Sonoma.

Gov. George Deukmejian and other party leaders, after a private summit conference during the weekend, gave the cold shoulder to Sebastiani. And this quashed hopes by some Sebastiani backers to have the convention throw its support behind the proposition.

Deukmejian said the initiative campaign should be relegated to third place on the list of GOP reapportionment priorities behind bipartisan legislative negotiations and a renewed court challenge. Since 1982, Republicans have been fighting for a better deal in the drawing of district lines by the Democratic-controlled Legislature.