GOP Women Discuss Path to Power: Appointive Posts

Mary Jane Forster shared a secret with 80 Republican women from Orange County on Saturday--how to get Gov. George Deukmejian to appoint them to state office.

“You are qualified for one of these appointments--never doubt,” said Forster, who serves on the state Regional Water Quality Control Board, San Diego region.

Brandishing a list of 2,500 appointive posts ranging from seats on the state Cemetery Board to the Race Track Leasing Commission, she promised that “if you sold Girl Scout cookies, you are qualified.”

Of course, she said, applicants should make sure they have strong letters of recommendation and equally strong credentials in Republican Party politics.

Still, as they are women and party activists, their chances of securing an appointment from California’s Republican governor are good, Forster said.

“They (other public officials) are always always saying to me, ‘You’re a breath of fresh air!’ Well, of course,” she said. “They’re all 80-year-old men.”

Most of the women who gathered at UC Irvine for this Republican Women’s Leadership Conference had long ago met the requirement for involvement in party politics.

As members of Republican women’s clubs from San Clemente to La Habra, they had years of experience in registering voters, staffing campaigns and, in some cases, running for office.

Still, at a seminar coffee break, dozens of women crowded around the speakers’ table, picking up Forster’s application forms and her 10-page list of potential gubernatorial appointments.

“I just might apply. I think I might,” said Dorothy Summerhays, a past president of the San Clemente Republican Women’s Club who has been active in Republican politics “since Eisenhower,” but who has never sought an appointment.

Lisa Pritchard, a UC Irvine freshman who is a member of College Republicans, was also interested. “I could see myself on a water board some day,” she said.

Encouraging Republican women to consider public office was one of the goals of this daylong seminar sponsored by the Washington Group, an Orange County women’s group of 40 Republican activists. Their five-hour session included talks on international affairs, Republican politics and the role of women in party politics.

At the moment, many speakers conceded, Republican women have far to go. Supervisor Harriett Wieder offered some statistics: Of 40 state senators, only four are women; of 80 Assembly members, only 11 are women; of 130 city council members in Orange County, only 30 are women, and of 26 Orange County mayors, only seven are women.

“I do truly believe women are afraid of power,” Wieder said, adding that she hopes a “new Republican woman” will emerge, one in “a non-traditional role, out from behind the table serving or licking stamps” but in charge of her own campaign.

“Why are you here? To further your own leadership? Do you really want the power?” she challenged her audience.

Ingrid McGuire, who two weeks ago won election to the South Coast County Water District, complained that when she sought support from Republican women, it wasn’t there. Citing rules of its statewide organization, her local Republican women’s group had refused to endorse her for the nonpartisan post, she said, and also forgot to mention her race in its newsletter.

“Women should assume the power and not be afraid,” she said. “Women can do more than just lick stamps and sign up voters. They should be willing to use the power they have.”

Even when a woman becomes a public official, she is often treated as an outsider, warned Carolyn Ewing, a former Yorba Linda mayor who is now deputy director of the California Department of Transportation.

“Are you part of the old-boy network? No,” Ewing said. “You are little Mable at the end of the table, and they don’t hear you at all at first.”

When she is introduced to professional audiences, speakers often don’t use her Caltrans title but instead refer to her as “Mrs. Ewing, mother of two,” Ewing said. “But we can manipulate that,” she added. “We are the women who’ve been spanking the bottoms of the guys who grow up and run public policy.

“And by golly we’ll have something to say about those inner-sanctum issues and those platform issues before the end of the century,” she predicted.

Added Barbara S. Stone, a Cal State Fullerton political science professor who is president of the Washington Group, “Women will have arrived when the important conversation takes place in the ladies’ room.”