State’s GOP Delegation: Just Color It Orange

Along with the red, white and blue, there will be a decidedly orange tinge to the Republican National Convention that begins Monday in New Orleans.

Partly because Orange County’s percentage of GOP voters is among the highest in the nation--Republicans outnumber Democrats by 54.2% to 35.4%--the county has a special role in the national proceedings.

Three Orange County residents will be among the speakers on nomination night Wednesday: Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, Rep. Robert K. Dornan of Garden Grove, who will among those seconding Vice President George Bush’s nomination for the presidency, and the Rev. Robert H. Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, who will give the invocation.

Dornan is co-chairing the 175-member California delegation with state Sen. William Campbell (R-Hacienda Heights), whose district includes portions of Orange County.

Besides the regular delegates and alternates designated from each congressional district, a fourth of California’s at-large delegates are from Orange County. The committee that chooses the delegates has the discretion to pick at-large members from anywhere in the state.

The county also is heavily represented on the roster of about 100 honorary delegates, a third of whom are from Orange County. Honorary delegates may attend all events except floor sessions but do not vote.

“The group that is going back (to New Orleans) is representative of the many elected officials and volunteers as well as financial supporters of the party,” said Thomas Fuentes, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party.

Greg Haskin, executive director of the Orange County Republican Party, said, “In Orange County, it’s very difficult to choose delegates because there are in fact so many big players and so few positions.”

Eileen Padberg, a Laguna Niguel political consultant who ran Bush’s campaign in the Western states until Gov. George Deukmejian took over the state’s GOP effort after the June 7 primary, said the delegates were selected by a 15-member committee headed by Gordon Luce of San Diego and former U.S. Atty. Gen. William French Smith of Los Angeles.

“The first slots all went to early George Bush supporters,” Padberg said. “Then when we ran out of those spaces, we considered (Republican) activists.” She said there was also an effort to bring in certain leaders of the campaigns for Bush’s major rivals for the GOP nomination, television evangelist Pat Robertson, Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole of Kansas and New York Rep. Jack Kemp.

Padberg said the committee also “made an effort to adhere to the vice president’s concerns that we are ethnically balanced with blacks, Hispanics and Asians.” Efforts were also made to balance the delegation among women and men, she said.

The various rosters of regular, alternate, at-large and honorary delegates are filled with many of the major players in Orange County’s business, development and political communities. Among them are many of the county’s legislators and all five of its members of Congress: Dornan, William E. Dannemeyer of Fullerton and Robert E. Badham of Newport Beach, as well as Ron C. Packard of Carlsbad and Daniel E. Lungren of Long Beach, whose districts include portions of Orange County.

Orange County developers who will be in New Orleans include Donald Bren of the Irvine Co. and George Argyros of Arnel Development Co., who were among Bush’s earliest and most ardent supporters. Other developers who will be attending convention events will be William Lyon, Willard Voit, Don Koll, Kathryn Thompson, Tim Strader and Gus Owen, president of the Lincoln Club, a prominent GOP support group.