Councilwoman May Challenge Gil Ferguson

In a move that could send shock waves through Orange County’s Republican Party, Newport Beach Mayor Pro Tem Evelyn Hart said Tuesday that she is seriously considering challenging Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) in the June 7 primary.

Hart said she will take out declaration-of-intention papers by the 5 p.m. deadline today. To be on the ballot, she must return the papers by March 11.

“I’m not real sure I will return those papers, but I do know I would not take them out unless I was serious about it,” said Hart, 57, a Republican. “I’m not doing this as a joke.”

Ferguson, who said he supported Hart’s election to the City Council, observed: “Just last week, she told me what a great, outstanding job I’m doing in Sacramento. I just can’t believe she’d run against me. . . . Normally, you don’t file against a sitting Republican unless they burned down an orphanage or raped a nun.”

Indeed, Hart’s candidacy would stun the Republican establishment in Ferguson’s district, which is heavily GOP, as well as the rest of the county.

“If she files, there will be this huge gasp in the political world because I don’t think it’s something people are prepared for,” said one person whom Hart consulted Tuesday. The person said that she “nicely told her she’d have a really tough time.”

Hart said, however, that she has been finding support for a possible challenge of Ferguson, who she feels has come up short in representing the district on transportation, tort reform and other issues.

“If I challenge him, I’d be challenging his voting record,” she said.

Hart, a member of the City Council for 10 years, said that those she has talked to have told her that she would need “lots of money” to challenge an incumbent. Asked if she had it, she at first laughed. Then, turning serious, she said: “I think I could get it.”

Orange County Republican Party Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes said he told Hart that the party leadership would be “very disappointed” to see a Republican run against Ferguson because it would divert the funds and support needed to try to defeat Democrats in other districts.

Specifically, Ferguson and other Assembly Republicans are concentrating on Project ‘90, the Assembly GOP caucus’s attempt to wrest the lower house from Democratic control by the time districts are redrawn in the 1990 reapportionment.

“A Republican like Mrs. Hart could cause me and the Republican Party to divert attention away from what is really important, which is Project ‘90,” Ferguson said.