Top Democrat Promises Full Effort in GOP-Dominated Orange County

Democratic National Chairman Ron Brown said Friday that Democrats “don’t concede any turf to anybody”--even in Orange County, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by a 3-to-2 margin.

“There’s no reason in the world Democrats can’t prevail in this county they way they do in other counties,” Brown said as he cut the ribbon on a new headquarters for the Orange County Democratic Party.

Brown also pledged the national party’s support in winning races in Orange County, a place which now has only one Democratic legislator in Sacramento and none in Congress.

About 175 people cheered Brown’s pep talk at the opening of the new headquarters at 207 W. 2nd St. in Santa Ana.

Both with reporters, and later to the Democrats gathered in the late afternoon sunshine in front of the office, Brown took swipes at Republican campaign tactics last fall, which he called “dirty” and “underhanded.”

He said the tactics were prevalent on the national level and also in Orange County’s 72nd Assembly District, which Democrats narrowly lost last November. The election has been challenged in court because of the hiring by the Orange County Republican Party of uniformed security guards at 21 largely Latino precincts in Santa Ana.

Republicans have defended the hiring of the guards, saying that they were needed to prevent rumored voter fraud by Democrats. Democrats claimed that the guards were meant to deter voters, especially first-time Latino voters, from voting in the bitterly contested election in the district.

Referring to the incident as he talked with reporters, Brown said:

“If it wasn’t for the unconscionable intimidation of voters, we could have won that race.” Later, speaking before the crowd, he pledged, “We’re not going to be intimidated by security guards or security forces trying to keep our voters away from the polls.”

Brown was in California for a Democratic party finance meeting and to meet with Orange County Democrats. His appearance came just two days before another Brown--former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., who now is state Democratic Party chairman--also planned a visit to Orange County. Jerry Brown will appear tonight at an Orange County Democratic Party fund-raiser in Laguna Beach.

Earlier in the day, at a breakfast meeting with Southern California reporters, Ron Brown endorsed the campaign to move up the date of the 1992 California presidential primary.

“It is a good idea. I look on it favorably,” Brown said.

California votes at the tail end of the primary election season, and not since 1972 has it played a truly pivotal role in the outcome of a contested primary. In 1988 the state and its concerns had become all but irrelevant in the primary campaigns. The nominees were already determined by the time Californians went to the polls, and there was hardly any debate over matters of particular interest to the state--everything from immigration to federal water projects.

Local leaders of both parties came away from that perfunctory June primary vote expressing alarm about just how unfamiliar George Bush and Michael Dukakis were with the geography and political cross-currents of California.

Republican Gov. George Deukmejian, who previously opposed any rescheduling of the primary, suddenly changed course after the 1988 primary and said the state needed to strengthen its hand.

Now pending in the state Assembly Ways and Means Committee is bipartisan legislation to position California in the thick of things next election by advancing the date of the primary from the first Tuesday in June to the first Tuesday in March. That would put the state just after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, and before the consolidated Super Tuesday election of southern states, providing everyone else keeps to the 1988 timetable.

“It takes some of the emphasis off the early primary states,” Brown said about moving California ahead in the queue. “These candidates who have been spending 130 days in Iowa, for example, will have to spend a lot of their time in California. And some can argue that since California is much more important in electing a president you ought to pay more attention to California early.”

Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno) is the author of the pending legislation to move up the primary. He said it was a matter of increasing California’s voice on issues ranging from transportation to air pollution to immigration.

Costa said he could count on overpowering leadership support to move the proposal through the Assembly. But in the Senate, President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) continues to express reservations.

Roberti is concerned about how a March primary would affect Legislative races.

“He thinks it would add to the cost of campaigns, since there would be a longer period before the general election. And he is worried that voters already turned off will be further turned off by a still longer campaign,” said spokesman Robert Forsythe.

Forsythe added, however, “He is not at this point committed to stopping this on his own.”

Costa indicated he might be willing to compromise and split the difference, moving the primary from June to the second Tuesday in April in consolidation with municipal elections in some communities.