Which Way After Reagan Poses Dilemma for California GOP

From outside its borders, California is seen as a dependable Republican state. It has voted that way for 20 years of presidential elections. Democratic voter registration is at a 50-year low.

But in truth, Republicans in California are still a minority party. And a self-absorbed one, too, judging by the gathering of 1,800 activists in the capital for the GOP’s off-year convention this weekend.

With a 1988 campaign already under way, leaders here urged presidential candidates to stay away. It seems that, except for brief reflections on its future, the California GOP is preoccupied with a lively internal battle over the selection of a new, corporate-style board of directors to run the party in the future.

“Given the battles for party offices at this convention, this is not the place for presidential candidates to be,” said Steve Kinney, regional political director for the Republican National Committee.

The weekend of looking inward also meant little time for debate over what many think is the question for the GOP--what direction the party should go after President Reagan leaves the White House.

Ed Zschau, the former congressman who last November came closer than any Republican ever has to defeating Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston, was the only one who attempted to address this question.

“As we move into this next election cycle,” Zschau said, “we Republicans have to have ideas, a vision. We have to provide positive Republican solutions to the real problems people see and feel . . . poverty, the homeless, toxics.”

Zschau, a moderate who was embraced only half-heartedly by the party’s strong conservative wing in his losing Senate race, said: “We will be doomed to be a minority party if we make the portals of the party so narrow that only a few can get in, if we make the litmus test to be a good Republican so difficult. Let’s reach out to people for whom our message has such strong appeal.”

California’s two most important Republican officeholders paid only perfunctory attention to the conventioneers.

Gov. George Deukmejian telephoned the convention long distance.

“I feel like the guy in the commercial, calling home to say I love you,” the governor said from Washington, where he was attending the National Governor’s Conference.

California’s Sen. Pete Wilson flew in to deliver a Saturday night speech, but was in attendance for only a couple of hours because he first had to attend a social function in Washington.

“For four decades, both we and the Soviets have held a nuclear hammer. Today, we are in a race to obtain a shield against that hammer,” said Wilson in his address on foreign policy. “It makes all the difference in the world who wins that race.”

Wilson criticized “those who, with the best intentions,” would require the United States to honor its anti-ballistic missile treaty with the Soviets and prevent the United States from early deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

State voter registration figures in October showed Republicans at a 16-year high with 38% of the electorate and the Democrats down to their lowest point since 1934 at not quite 51%. But I. A. Lewis, director of The Los Angeles Times Poll, said in a recent interview that Republican gains may be peaking.

‘Neither on Ballot’

“One of the factors in the past that has made this state Republican is Reagan,” Lewis said. “And before that it was Nixon, who was from California, too. Now neither Reagan nor Nixon is on the ballot so the state may not be as locked up for Republicans as people think.”

For the short run, the convention was urged by White House Communications Director Patrick J. Buchanan to support Reagan during the unraveling of the Iran- contra arms scandal: “Whatever your views of the wisdom or folly of that episode, recognize and remember this: You and I owe this President an immense debt of gratitude. . . . It is Ronald Reagan alone who can give us the right answers to some of the most vital questions and issues of our time.”