Republican Dinner Launches 1986 Voter Registration Drive

Gov. George Deukmejian, California Sen. Pete Wilson and other Republican luminaries gathered in Beverly Hills on Wednesday to raise an expected $500,000 to finance a voter registration drive for this year’s elections.

Gearing up for the 1986 elections, the GOP hopes to duplicate its recruiting success of 1984 when, for the first time in years, they gained more new voters in California than the Democratic Party.

Republican leaders plan to spend $1 million for their voter registration campaign, half of it coming from Wednesday night’s $1,000-a-plate fund-raising dinner at the Beverly Hilton.

“The Republican Party is now the party of young America--and that means it’s only a matter of time before our party is the majority party in California and across the country,” Deukmejian said in the text of a speech prepared for the dinner.

The Republican Party signed up about 125,000 more new voters in the state than the Democrats during the two-year period that ended in March, 1985, according to a spokeswoman for Secretary of State March Fong Eu.

At stake in the 1986 elections are all of the statewide elective offices, one U.S. Senate seat, 45 congressional seats and 100 of the state Legislature’s 120 seats.

Republican leaders of the Assembly and state Senate have both expressed optimism that their party will chip away this November at the Democrats’ majority in the Legislature.

Deukmejian, who is among Republicans facing reelection, took the opportunity of his dinner address to attack the Democratic Party as the party of the past and one beholden to specific constituencies.

“Only one party, our party, is appealing to the common interest rather than the special interest,” he said. “Only one party is seriously addressing the most important question facing free and prosperous people: What kind of investment do we make in our future?”