Pro-Choice Group Targets 9 Politicians

In a tactical shift, the political arm of the pro-choice movement announced plans Saturday to target selected anti-abortion politicians for defeat in the 1990 elections as the centerpiece of a broader bid to gain legislative support for abortion rights.

Among nine elected officials nationwide targeted by the National Abortion Rights Action League is first-term Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove), the only Californian on the group’s hit list. Pringle was described by the organization as a “vitriolic” and vulnerable candidate whose defeat could restore a pro-choice majority in the state Assembly.

The adoption of the negative campaign tactics by the powerful abortion rights group reflects a new confidence among pro-choice activists that candidates opposed to abortion lack public support on the controversial issue and are ripe for defeat.

“If you are out of touch, you are out of work,” NARAL executive director Kate Michelman warned legislators across the country as about 500 pro-choice activists at a national gathering in Washington plotted their political strategy for upcoming elections. The change in course unveiled at the session came in reaction to the Supreme Court’s Webster decision in July that gave state legislatures greater latitude to enact laws limiting the right to abortion.

As a result, abortion rights leaders said, the league was compelled to shift its focus from efforts to assist individual pro-choice candidates to a broader campaign to create pro-choice legislatures by choosing key races and targeting vulnerable anti-abortion candidates.

The 350,000-member group hailed as its model a successful special election campaign this summer in which Southern California activists helped pro-choice Assembly candidate Tricia Hunter, a Bonita Republican, defeat five anti-abortion rivals.

By including the little-known Pringle on a hit list featuring such national figures as Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the group called attention to the narrow margin by which the Garden Grove Republican won election last year, and to the allegations of voter fraud that clouded his victory after his supporters stationed uniformed security guards at the polls in heavily Latino precincts.

It also pointed out that the taut balance between pro-choice and anti-abortion forces in the state Legislature could make any shift a momentous one. “If we could defeat (Pringle),” Michelman told the conference, “we could move the Assembly in California to a pro-choice Assembly.”

The other state legislator on the league’s list was Republican Stephen Freind of Pennsylvania, the leader of anti-abortion forces in that state’s Legislature.

In addition to Pringle, Freind and Helms, whom the organization described as “an outspoken anti-choice hard-liner,” other members of the “NARAL nine” are Connecticut Gov. William A. O’Neill, an anti-abortion Democrat; Florida Gov. Bob Martinez, a Republican who called a special legislative session on abortion in his state last week, and Atty. Gen. Tom Miller of Iowa, who is campaigning for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination on a pro-life platform.

Also targeted are Rep. Tom Tauke (R-Iowa), a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1990; Rep. Craig T. James (R-Fla.), a first-term lawmaker who has said that pregnant women often are too confused to make a rational decision about whether to have an abortion, and Rep. Denny Smith (R-Ore.), an abortion opponent who won by a narrow margin in his most recent race.

The pro-choice activists were clearly emboldened by an unexpected pair of triumphs last week providing solid evidence that the perceived new urgency of the abortion issue had driven wavering politicians into the abortion rights camp.

In Florida, the state Legislature soundly defeated the governor’s effort to tighten the state’s abortion laws. In Washington, the House of Representatives voted for the first time since 1981 to permit federal funds to be used to pay for the abortions of poor women made pregnant by rape or incest.

The victories, Michelman said, represented the “first claps of thunder that signal an approaching storm.” She said the organization would energize its effort in the coming months through “the most hard-hitting, sophisticated pro-choice election campaign in American history.”

In launching that effort Saturday, the group denounced the nine officials on its first hit list as “among the most strident and vitriolic opponents of choice in America.”

“They stand out for their anti-choice assaults on women,” NARAL said in a statement. “We intend to make them political casualties of their anti-choice views.”

Pringle’s 900-vote victory in Orange County last November attracted unusual attention after it was revealed that the Orange County GOP chairman and Pringle’s campaign manager had hired uniformed security guards to appear at heavily Latino precincts in Santa Ana.

Republican officials said the guards were hired in response to anonymous tips about a Democratic plan to bus illegal aliens to the polls to vote. But Democrats charged that the deployment of the guards was part of a plan to intimidate Latino voters, and Latino plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit contending that Pringle violated their civil rights. Pringle has denied the accusations.

Contacted by telephone Saturday, Pringle said he believes he was targeted because of his perceived vulnerability in Republican-dominated Orange County’s only swing legislative district, not because of his anti-abortion position.

“I’m pro-life, but not actively involved at all,” Pringle said. “I have known for a while that I was probably going to be targeted by the Democratic Party in California as one of the key seats here in 1990 . . . but I don’t believe it will have much of an impact. My constituents are very independent and don’t take too kindly to special interest groups in Sacramento or Washington telling them how to vote.”

Staff writer Jean Davidson in Orange County contributed to this story.