CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / ASSEMBLY : Infighting Dooms GOP’s Bid for Control

This is the year the Republicans in the California state Assembly were hoping to rise up and seize control from the Democrats for the first time in two decades.

Once in power, they could begin to chip away at years of Democratic deeds. They would try to give the death penalty new teeth, and free business from onerous regulations. Health and welfare programs for the poor would be kept in check. Taxes and state spending would be cut. California schools would get new energy, if not new money.

But a strange thing happened on the way to a conservative majority.

Instead of controlling the Legislature’s lower house, Republicans are on the run. They are disorganized and disaffected. Bickering and back-stabbing, they are a party divided, sniping at each other as much as at the opposition.

Needing 41 seats to hold a majority in the 80-member house, the GOP has only 33. And the party is struggling to maintain that number.

So bleak is the prognosis today that some Republicans fear they could lose several more seats in this year’s elections, leaving them perilously close to the point where the Democrats would wield an unstoppable two-thirds majority. Such a margin would allow the Democrats to pass appropriations bills and override gubernatorial vetoes without needing a single Republican vote.

“We’re in the doldrums,” said conservative Republican Assemblyman Gil Ferguson of Newport Beach. “We’re in disarray.”

The Republicans have fallen short in the Legislature even as California voters have been choosing Republicans for President and governor in every election since 1980. The voters, who as a group have become increasingly Republican during the last decade, also ousted three Democratic-appointed Supreme Court justices, elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate and just barely reelected Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston, who had won two previous races by landslides.

But year after year, the electorate sends a majority of Democrats to both houses of the Legislature.

Various Republicans in the Assembly blame their plight on at least half a dozen factors.

Some say that district lines drawn by the Democrats in 1982 have unfairly kept Republicans from ever mounting a serious challenge. Others note that a campaign finance initiative co-sponsored by Assembly Republican Leader Ross Johnson may have backfired on the party. The initiative stripped legislative leaders of their ability to transfer political funds to their allies, making the statewide political party operations more important in legislative campaigns.

The Democrats, with former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. as chairman, were able to out-raise the Republicans by more than $300,000 in 1989, and they spent much of their money on a plan using computer technology to target voters and generate absentee ballots in record numbers. Republicans, meanwhile, are still using campaign methods developed 20 years ago.

But any mere listing of symptoms risks overlooking the illness: The Assembly Republican Caucus--as the group of 33 is known--is a body at war with itself.

Personal and philosophical divides cut across the caucus at different angles. Some members who should be ideological soul mates hardly speak to each other. Others who disagree on many issues find themselves united only in their opposition to the current leadership.

These overlapping factions have weakened the party’s defenses against a Democratic majority led by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, the guileful San Francisco Democrat who has held his post since 1980. In Brown’s 10 years as Speaker, the Republicans have elected four different leaders to do battle with him.

During that time, the Assembly Republicans have been most noteworthy for their ability to get Gov. George Deukmejian to veto legislation they opposed. Last year, the Assembly GOP began to work actively with Democrats, the Senate and the governor and produced several compromises on major policy issues that left lawmakers from both parties patting themselves on their backs.

Now, ironically, a leading challenger to Republican Leader Johnson portrays these deals as failures rather than successes.

The compromises at issue set the stage for a ballot measure that, if approved by the voters in June, would double the state gasoline tax and raise the constitutional limit on state spending. Another deal enacted a temporary quarter-cent sales tax increase to pay for earthquake relief.

Republican Assemblyman Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks, who has tried to oust Johnson as Republican floor leader, argues that these bipartisan deals--while applauded by editorial writers--were bad for Republicans because they blurred the distinction between the two parties.

Rather than raise taxes, McClintock argues, the Republicans should have insisted on paying for the $800 million in earthquake relief from the rest of the state’s $50-billion budget. And rather than advocate a gas tax increase, McClintock favors boosting the highway fund by using the present sales tax on gasoline purchases.

“Republicans have failed to give the public a good reason to vote Republican,” McClintock said. “That’s a shame, because the polls tell us that they are with us on virtually every issue there is.”

Assemblyman Johnson brushes off McClintock’s criticism, blaming the discord within his caucus on “permanent malcontents” who will complain no matter what the leadership does.

“I feel supremely confident of my grip on the leadership,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s confidence stems in part from the factionalized nature of his opposition. Even members who oppose Johnson do not necessarily agree with McClintock’s alternative recipe for success. For example, Assemblyman Stan Statham, a moderate from Oak Run in Northern California, said he believes the party needs a broader focus, not a narrower one.

“Those new Republicans out there, their favorite television program is ‘thirtysomething,’ ” Statham said, referring to the weekly show popular with young professionals. “They are moderates. They don’t want to vote for a person who sets moral standards for them. We have to make it clear that we are middle-ground America, that we include all people and exclude no one.”

Other Republican dissidents say they want the GOP caucus to adopt a more moderate tone on abortion, although only a handful of the group’s 33 members support a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion. And they complain that on the environment, automobile insurance and other issues of concern to Californians, the caucus reacts to events without a coherent program to offer as an alternative to the Democratic proposals.

The problem, according to Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale), the former Republican leader and a Johnson ally, is that the issues with which Republicans have been identified “no longer impel the public to turn out and vote.” The death penalty and taxes, for example, are no longer effective for Republicans because the Democrats’ position is now similar to their own, Nolan said. The Democrats have “given up” on opposing the death penalty and other anti-crime legislation, he added, and rarely does a candidate for any office anywhere advocate a tax increase.

“People usually vote because they feel threatened or they’re angry,” Nolan said. “That’s what turns out the marginal voter. And we don’t have those issues anymore. So the party is going through a transition where we are searching for a message.”

But while the Assembly Republicans are looking inward, Democrats are seizing the initiative, going around Republican lawmakers to strike deals with a legacy-minded Deukmejian.

Last year, Democrats banned military-style assault weapons over the objections of most Republicans, and they recently passed a bill to create a 15-day waiting period on rifle purchases. Now Democrats and the governor are talking about requiring employers to provide health insurance for their workers, an idea that goes against the grain of the traditionally pro-business GOP.

This predicament contrasts sharply with the attitude of a few years ago, when Nolan was the Assembly floor leader and his troops were charging hard. In November, 1986, the Republicans gained three seats to give them 36 and put them within striking distance of the 41 needed to capture a majority. It was then that 1990 was set as the goal for taking control.

But the seeds of the effort’s disintegration may have already been sown.

By many accounts, the downfall actually began in the spring of 1986, when Nolan’s leadership cadre anointed several candidates in the primary elections, bankrolling them with money raised in an intense new fund-raising drive.

Three of Nolan’s candidates lost the primary elections to home-grown Republicans who went on to win the general elections. Two other candidates picked by the leadership also won seats. But the Republicans fell short in three other races by a combined total of about 12,000 votes, a gap that many believe might have been closed had Nolan not used scarce campaign resources on battles against Republican Party regulars in the primaries.

More determined than ever after these close defeats, Nolan cranked up the fund-raising effort another notch. He pressured the business community, philosophically aligned with Republicans, to quit giving so much money to Democrats. And he hired several consultants to serve dual roles as policy-makers and money-raisers.

One of these was Karin Watson, a former agribusiness representative. Watson, raising money for Nolan and Hill, was later snared in the FBI sting operation. She has pleaded guilty to extorting money for Assembly Republicans while she worked for the leadership, and she is cooperating in the ongoing federal probe of Nolan.

The cover on the federal sting was blown in August, 1988, just as the fall campaigns were beginning. Although Democrats also were targeted in the investigation, Nolan, as the GOP member in charge of raising money and distributing it, was vulnerable. The Democrats linked several Republican candidates to Nolan and the sting, and they went down to defeat.

“That really was a rock in the road to what might have been a pretty decent Republican year,” said Robert Naylor, who was state Republican Party chairman at the time and who in 1984 was defeated by Nolan in a fight for the party leadership.

Nolan downplays the effect of the primary election fights and his involvement in the FBI investigation.

“I think the real problem in this caucus is that there is a whole group of people who just are not going to lift a finger to help elect more Republicans,” he said. “With that attitude--that we will just sit on our hands unless we see how it advantages us internally--we are never going to get anywhere.”

But Assemblyman Johnson, who replaced Nolan as leader after the 1988 elections, has been no more able to unite the caucus.

Almost immediately after his selection, Johnson angered many in his own party by authorizing the mailing of critical letters to voters in the districts of three Republicans who were expected to support Speaker Brown’s bid for a fifth term as Assembly leader.

Later, Johnson tried unsuccessfully to remove a fellow Republican from the powerful Assembly Rules Committee, causing further divisiveness. And, repeating the tactic that Nolan had used, Johnson stepped into a primary election battle by opposing a San Diego County Republican who enjoyed substantial support from abortion rights activists. The candidate, Tricia Hunter, won despite Johnson’s efforts.

Johnson appears now to have enough support within the caucus to hold onto his leadership post. But even if he does survive, there is a substantial minority who oppose him. And members in every camp seem to agree that the party continues to be crippled by disharmony.

“The caucus is just a bunch of individuals looking out for themselves,” Assemblyman Ferguson said.