GOP Wants to Be Sure Bush’s Win in County Is a Big One

It would be easy for Vice President George Bush to take Orange County for granted in his drive to win the presidency. Not even Democrats question that he will win the heavily Republican county.

But, as GOP leaders emphasized at the Republican National Convention that closed here Thursday, the more important question is the margin of victory.

Republicans do not want to repeat the mistake made in 1986 when Ed Zschau, the GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, went down to defeat when he carried Orange County by only 170,000 votes. Democratic votes elsewhere in the state easily overcame that margin and gave Sen. Alan Cranston a victory.

“We are determined not to make that mistake again,” state GOP chairman Robert Naylor said Thursday. “We’ve got to get the Orange County vote out to the max. It’s a big portion of our total strategy.”

3-to-1 Margin

In the 1984 presidential election, President Reagan won Orange County by an unprecedented 3-to-1 margin, capturing 75% of the votes cast. Reagan’s 414,622- vote margin was made possible by a substantial number of crossover Democrats, whose party then accounted for 37.4% of the county’s registered voters.

This year, however, Orange County Republican leaders have been concerned that the Bush campaign has been slow to get in gear.

They have been watching with some anguish the local voter registration efforts being made on behalf of Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, and they were discomfited by a rousing rally Aug. 5 for Dukakis on a cliff overlooking the ocean in Laguna Beach. Dukakis’ children and other political surrogates also have made repeated stops in the county, both before and since the Democrats’ national convention in July.

“The Dukakis effort in Orange County is going to be heavy and relentless,” warned Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), a delegate to the convention and one of Bush’s earliest supporters in Congress.

John Hanna, chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party, said at least five campaign offices will be opened here, the most since the 1960 presidential election. A central headquarters has already been operating part time in Santa Ana, he said, and satellite offices are to open next month in Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Anaheim and south Orange County.

Unlike other Democratic presidential candidates in recent years, Hanna said, Dukakis has excited party regulars because he is a “mainstream Democrat.” He said Democrats “smell a winner,” and he said that Dukakis should do well in Orange County because many Democrats who crossed over and voted for President Reagan “can’t stand Bush. . . . They are going to come home.”

As of July 1, there were 586,580 registered Republicans and 383,321 registered Democrats in Orange County, according to the county registrar of voters. In all, county voters make up about 9% of the statewide voter total of 12.8 million.

As for the Bush campaign, Eileen Padberg of Laguna Niguel, Bush’s western states coordinator through the primary, said that it is on track in Orange County. “I think the campaign will be in full swing by Sept. 1 at the latest,” Padberg said.

But the perception has been that the Bush campaign in the county has lagged.

‘Not Electric’

“Tremendous apathy” is how state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) described it last week. And C. Christopher Cox, the GOP nominee in the heavily Republican 40th Congressional District, said in an interview before the convention that “the atmosphere in Orange County right now is not what you call electric.”

Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach) said the local worries are part of a broader problem created when the Bush campaign reached federal spending limits. With his official nomination at the convention, however, he is now eligible for $46 million in federal funds.

“I think there have been complaints all up and down the local and national level that we’re not doing enough,” Lungren said. “People don’t understand that we ran out of money.” He said the lull caused by that “makes everyone nervous.”

According to some GOP leaders, the problem was compounded by the fact that there was very little campaign organization in place anywhere in California for the June 7 primary because Bush had already secured the nomination several months before.

Lungren, whose district encompasses portions of Orange and Los Angeles counties, said the job in Orange County is to “charge the troops up so you can maximize the vote” in the general election.

‘They Did Nothing’

That message was communicated loud and clear to Bush’s son Jeb at a meeting in Santa Ana last week. Over pasta and veal at Antonello Ristorante, a favorite hangout for politicos near South Coast Plaza, about 50 people representing a variety of ethnic, evangelical, civic and other GOP support groups told Jeb Bush that so far his father’s campaign and its leaders in Orange County could be assessed this way: “They didn’t do anything wrong--they did nothing.”

Angela Bay Buchanan of Irvine, a delegate and GOP political consultant who attended the meeting and offered that description of it, said that, among other things, there was some concern expressed that Bush had not moved quickly enough to solidify his support among active Republicans. Although many of these same people had supported Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, New York Rep. Jack Kemp or another candidate in the primary, all were now eager to turn their energies to helping Bush, Buchanan said. Left with nothing but their worries--exacerbated by post-Democratic convention polls showing Dukakis well ahead of Bush--”they started panicking,” she said.

Spirits brightened somewhat this week during the convention. Despite questions raised about the military record of Bush’s running mate, Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle, the GOP presidential team is viewed as one that is “going to play terrifically in Orange County,” said delegate Doy Henley of Orange.