San Diego Falls Short in Bid to Be GOP Host : Politics: Houston is picked by party’s selection committee for site of 1992 convention. Local leaders are shocked, disappointed by the decision.

Saying Houston offered more money, a bigger building and the status of being President Bush’s hometown, GOP leaders acknowledged Tuesday that the Texas city appears to have beaten San Diego as host of the 1992 Republican National Convention.

With its pledge of almost $11 million in cash, in addition to donated services such as police and transportation, Houston was picked by the GOP’s Site Selection Committee as its recommended choice. New Orleans, host of the 1988 convention, also had been considered.

San Diego’s only glimmer of hope for emerging as host rests with the full Republican National Committee, which votes on the site at its meeting in Washington on Jan. 25. But, as spokesman B.J. Cooper said, the 165-member RNC has never overruled the site committee.

“This was as close a call as ever had to be made,” Jeanie Austin, RNC co-chairman said in a statement. “New Orleans and San Diego would have done magnificent jobs hosting our convention, but the committee believed that the total package offered by Houston was best for the convention.”

In San Diego, civic leaders expressed shock and disappointment, saying they had been led to believe, as Mayor Maureen O’Connor and others said, that San Diego was the clear front-runner.

O’Connor revealed Monday that San Diego’s chances appeared doomed with the GOP’s unexpected request to have the city ante up an additional $3 million. The GOP said it wanted the money to come from public funds, so as not to shortchange Republican political war chests.

Houston’s package of incentives included an estimated $10.6 million in cash in addition to security and bus services, Republican sources said. San Diego offered “a lot of potential politically,” but fell far short in coming up with the necessary capital and in minimizing logistical problems, a top Texas Republican said.

Civic leaders in Houston said the Astros have agreed to reschedule 21 baseball games during the 1992 season, freeing the Houston Astrodome for several weeks before and during the convention.

Houston has never been host to the Republicans, although the city held a Democratic national convention in 1928, when the party nominated New York Gov. Alfred E. Smith for the presidency.

San Diego had extended an offer of about $6 million in privately raised funds and roughly $2 million of city-donated services, sources said. But an increasingly negative factor, according to GOP leaders in Texas and California, was the city’s proposal to use both the new bay-front San Diego Convention Center and the outdoor San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium as convention sites.

Except for John F. Kennedy’s acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic Convention at the Los Angeles Coliseum, no portion of a major political convention has been staged outdoors.

“Having to use two sites was too difficult a hurdle for San Diego to overcome,” Ernest Angelo, a high-ranking Republican National Committee member, said from his office in Midland, Tex. “There were a lot of advantages in going to California. I never disputed that. And if the issue were money alone, San Diego would have gotten it--or wouldn’t have been blocked in getting it. The decision was made more on the technical end.”

Angelo said technical experts for the RNC were “nervous” about having a portion of the convention outdoors and in alternating between two sites. The President’s acceptance speech would have been staged at the stadium, where the experts said he would have been squinting into an evening sun.

But the bulk of the activity would have been in the new San Diego Convention Center, which many Republican insiders considered too small for the GOP’s needs. The center had been criticized for its floor-to-ceiling columns, which would have obstructed views for delegates inside the hall and for people watching on television.

The convention center has come under scrutiny for a 9- to 12-inch vertical sway on its ballroom floor that drew complaints from dancers at a New Year’s Eve gala. The incident prompted a call for a structural re-evaluation.

Angelo and other Republican sources said one factor weighing in Houston’s favor “at the eleventh hour” was the notion that it “needs” the convention more than San Diego.

Angelo said that Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, only recently emerged from a long period of economic uncertainty, because of the oil bust of the 1980s.

San Diego, on the other hand, already has booked for 1992 the America’s Cup sailing regatta, major league baseball’s All-Star Game and two arts festivals. In January, 1993, the city may inherit the Super Bowl, if the National Football League follows through on a previous declaration and moves the event from Phoenix.

“I’m absolutely elated,” Ben Love, chairman of the Houston Host Committee, said Tuesday, noting that the convention would mean an economic windfall to his city of between $60 million and $100 million.

Civic leaders in San Diego said Tuesday that the city might have been able to win the convention by pledging money from its hotel-motel tax but decided against it, because they had promised not to use any public money.

Times staff writers Ralph Frammolino and William Trombley in Sacramento and J. Michael Kennedy in Houston contributed to this report.