CALIFORNIA GOP CONVENTION : Anti-Wilson Forces Try to Control ’92 Delegates

Conservative Republicans disgruntled with Gov. Pete Wilson’s policies on abortion and gay rights mounted a long-shot campaign Saturday to seize control of the California delegation to the 1992 Republican National Convention.

The effort to transfer delegate selection from Wilson and President Bush to the state party was rejected 6 to 1 in the Rules Committee at the state Republican convention, meeting in Anaheim. But movement leaders vowed to carry the fight to the convention floor today.

Their attack on the traditional presidential nominating procedures was not aimed at Bush, they insisted. Rather, it was designed as a preemptive strike to prevent Wilson forces from trying to tilt the national Republican platform to the left at next year’s convention in Houston.

A secondary motive was to make it difficult or impossible for Wilson to control the delegation to the 1996 convention when Wilson might be a candidate for president, said John E. Stoos, an official of the conservative California Republican Assembly and a proponent of the change in the national party’s rules.

“The Wilson Administration has done things to damage the chances of Republican elections next year,” Stoos said, citing the appointment of moderate John Seymour to the U.S. Senate vacancy created by Wilson’s election as governor. Seymour, running in 1992 to fill out the rest of Wilson’s term, faces a conservative challenge in the GOP primary from Rep. William E. Dannemeyer of Fullerton.

In other skirmishes on the second day of the three-day state party convention, Wilson came under fire in resolutions being considered by the party.

And, as state and national party figures pleaded for unity, Seymour and Dannemeyer clashed on the topic of gay rights, which has come to represent a dividing line between conservatives and social moderates.

The delegate selection change seemed to be doomed because it needs a two-thirds vote of the 1,500 delegates to pass. That was unlikely to happen. Even if it did, the effort would be rejected by the national Republican Party, state GOP Chairman Jim Dignan told the Rules Committee.

Under present party law, the GOP presidential nominee, assumed to be Bush in 1992, picks the delegation. As a matter of political courtesy and reality, he is expected to allow Wilson to share in the selection process.

California will send 201 delegates and 201 alternates to next summer’s convention in Houston, where Bush is expected to be nominated for a second term without opposition.

A Wilson political strategist described as “outrageous” the notion that the governor is mounting a plot to overturn national platform positions that oppose a woman’s choice to have an abortion and others that are keystones of the Republican right’s ideology.

“He’s not going to spend his time at the Republican National Convention in Houston trying to change the party platform, especially against the expressed wishes of the nominee (Bush),” Marty Wilson said.

The governor’s forces have insisted that the Republican right wields only about a third of the votes at the semiannual state convention. But Stoos, who is executive director of the Gun Owners of California, claimed that “if you had an anti-Wilson resolution, it would get two-thirds of the vote.”

While the challenge to the delegate-selection process was virtually certain to fail, it was a manifestation of the simmering discontent with Wilson among conservatives on issues like abortion, gay rights, the environment and taxes.

At a press conference called to tout the Senate candidacy of television commentator Bruce Herschensohn, Rep. Robert K. Dornan of Garden Grove maintained that, “The soul of the Republican Party in this state is conservative.”

Dornan, who was one of Bush’s earliest and most ardent supporters for the presidency, said the White House had urged him to “build bridges” at the state convention between conservatives and moderates.

And Dornan added a warning for the governor not to approve Assembly Bill 101, sponsored by Democrat Terry Friedman of Sherman Oaks, to prohibit discrimination against gays in employment practices. The bill is on Wilson’s desk.

“Don’t sign AB 101,” Dornan said he told Wilson in May, “or you have a firestorm that will probably make you a one-term governor. Let’s see if he signs AB 101.”

Conservative Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia told reporters that he expects a battle at Houston over the 1988 anti-abortion plank, but believes it will be retained.

Republican success is leading to increased philosophical bickering within the party, Gingrich said. “As you get to be more and more of a majority, you’re going to have fights,” Gingrich said. “You’re going to have to learn to live with it.

As usual, Dannemeyer was leading the opposition to any special treatment or rights for gays and lesbians. One effort, which had the support of Chairman Dignan, would make it more difficult to establish party-chartered volunteer groups. The goal was to deny any such franchise to Log Cabin clubs, organizations of gay and lesbian Republicans. The proposed rules change would raise the membership threshold for affiliated organizations from 200 to 500.

At a press conference, Seymour said, “I think the Log Cabin clubs have a rightful place in this Republican Party of ours.”

But Seymour, while declaring he opposes and abhors any manner of discrimination, declined to take a position on AB 101 or on whether gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military.

He noted that he had voted no in 1984 on AB 1, a bill similar to AB 101, because of the potential impact on businesses that could be sued for discrimination. He has expressed similar concerns about AB 101, but said he has not read the present version of the bill so could not comment further.

Earlier this year, Seymour was quoted in the San Francisco Sentinel, a gay newspaper, as saying his vote against AB 1 in 1984 was “a grave mistake” and pledging to “wholeheartedly” support a new version of the bill. AB 1, which was vetoed by then-Gov. George Deukmejian, was considered to be even more comprehensive and far-reaching than the new version of the legislation.

On Saturday, however, Seymour denied making the comment, saying, “That’s not true. I probably told them what I just told you.”

Asked to comment, Dannemeyer said: “Is he flip-flopping on this?”

He added, “What’s happening here is that John Seymour is beginning to feel the heat--namely of his own colleagues of the Republican Party, the state Legislature.”

Times staff writer Dave Lesher contributed to this story.