Rift Over Wilson Threatens GOP’s Truce : Politics: Republicans worry that after 25 years of peace, a split with conservatives over the moderate governor’s policies could imperil their election chances in 1992.

Only last January, Republican fortunes in California seemed to sparkle brighter than they had since the start of the Ronald Reagan era a quarter-century ago.

But today, that bright view has become considerably clouded. Twenty-five years of relative peace within the party has been shattered by a moderate-versus-conservative struggle that may be unmatched since the GOP blood baths of the 1950s and 1960s.

The public focus has been the social policies of moderate GOP Gov. Pete Wilson--particularly gay rights--but the split is broader and deeper than that, embedded in a dispute over taxes and extending to Wilson’s activist role in party politics in the state.

Intramural battles have wounded Republicans in the past and led to Democratic election victories. California Republican strategists worry openly that a party schism lingering into 1992 could jeopardize their chances to keep one U.S. Senate seat and seize the other from Democrats in a year when both seats are at stake for the first time in state history.

Publicly, Wilson’s advisers try to minimize the importance and risks of the conservative revolt. But Michael Schroeder is among the conservative leaders who warn of danger in 1992 if the governor does not make peace with the GOP right.

Schroeder, an Irvine attorney who heads the 6,000-member conservative California Republican Assembly, said that if Wilson keeps “trying to remake the party in his own image and to purge conservatives, he will have the same sort of disarray and civil war that is taking place now.”

Even though Wilson forces claim to be unconcerned about the insurgency from the right, the governor seemed to be trying to placate conservatives by his veto of a bill outlawing job discrimination against homosexuals. Yet his veto message denouncing a “tiny minority of mean-spirited, gay-bashing bigots” tried to blunt criticism from gays and moderates.

Political analyst William Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington observed: “It was a profile in timidity. Wilson appears to have gotten the worst of both worlds: he angered the gays and he insulted the conservatives.”

Wilson aides and U.S. Sen. John Seymour, the governor’s handpicked moderate successor, have argued that the group constitutes “a tiny minority” in the GOP, differing with Wilson on only a few attention-getting issues like gay rights and abortion. A Wilson political strategist derided them at last month’s raucous Republican state convention, commenting, “They are not players.”

Indeed, Wilson forces prevailed in the convention’s key tactical battles but conservatives claimed victory in the ideological war. Schroeder argued that the convention actions, including a massive walkout when Seymour began his speech, demonstrated that dissident strength must be taken seriously.

The convention formally criticized Wilson’s tax policies, accused him of violating GOP rules by siding with moderates in special legislative elections, and of enlisting the national party to defeat conservative candidates. A resolution demanding that he veto the gay rights bill was shouted into approval by about 900 delegates with barely any opposing voices.

By the convention’s end, some delegates were wearing buttons reading “One-Term Pete.”

To be sure, Wilson has angered moderates and liberals as well, with his veto of AB 101 and, earlier, by demanding cuts in existing programs during budget wrangling. Just last week, he came under fire for vetoing a bill that would have allowed sexually harassed employees to collect monetary damages from businesses.

Still, Wilson’s most obvious problem is with the right. The question is whether conservative anger is deep enough and pervasive enough to cause the Wilson-Seymour forces serious trouble at the polls in June or even in 1994, when Wilson is expected to seek reelection.

Analyst Schneider said the right’s potential for making trouble should not be underestimated, even though the two moderate Republican Senate candidates--Seymour and Rep. Thomas Campbell of Palo Alto--are well-financed early front-runners.

Conservatives tend to win GOP primaries only when they have an exceptionally attractive candidate like Ronald Reagan or when people are really angry, Schneider said. “If people are really angry, they will vote for a right-winger,” he added.

People are angry, the CRA’s Schroeder contended, over Wilson’s budget that raised taxes by as much as $7 billion.

Wilson’s major obstacle in putting together a budget with the Legislature’s Democratic majority came from within the 32-member Assembly Republican caucus. Many of them came to power in the 1978 Proposition 13 tax revolt that made opposition to new taxes an article of Republican faith. Wilson got only nine of them to support his budget deal.

The tax issue has plunged Wilson’s popularity to levels uncommon for a first-year governor. A Los Angeles Times Poll of California voters recently found Wilson’s job approval rating dropping from 52% to 39% since May. The number who disapproved rose from 34% to 46%.

What a difference 10 months made. In January, Wilson was welcomed to Sacramento as the man to match Californian’s massive problems: a pragmatic, put-government-to-work executive of the sort the GOP had not had since the Earl Warren days of nearly half a century ago.

Wilson was the new titular head of the Republican Party with the power to appoint his own successor to the U.S. Senate. And the 1992 election would give Republicans the unprecedented opportunity to snatch the other California Senate seat away from the Democrats. The GOP could hold the governorship and both Senate seats for the first time since 1968.

With Republican voter registration on the upswing and redistricting on the line, Republicans also could look forward to challenging the Democrats’ control of the state Legislature and of the state’s 52-member delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives.

At last, Republicans seemed poised to become the unchallenged majority party in California. After winning reelection in 1994, Wilson might ride the crest right into the White House in 1996.

But for now, events are forcing Wilson to joust with an unexpectedly militant and vocal wing of his own party. The critics’ rap on the Republican right is that it is more interested in championing its ideology than in winning elections. There are enough conservatives to cause trouble, but not enough to win elections on their own.

Schneider said moderates and conservatives have trouble negotiating their differences because they clash over issues that are difficult to compromise: abortion, gun control and homosexual rights.

“They can blackmail politicians: ‘If we don’t get our way, we’ll make it impossible for you to govern,’ ” Schneider added. “They are not good coalition partners.”

The CRA’s Schroeder argued that conservatives can and do win, and accommodate moderates.

“When Reagan was governor, and President, and Deukmejian was governor, they had a very much live-and-let-live philosophy. Both conservatives and moderates could live within the party,” Schroeder said. That has not been the case with Wilson, he contended.

The GOP peace back then lasted so long because most elected leaders and party activists were united under the conservative banner. Wilson’s election was a turning point because of his moderate policies on social issues and the environment, and because of his activist approach to party politics.

While conservative anger at Wilson on taxes simmered just beneath the surface, it was the gay rights issue that triggered an eruption.

The dilemma was not a happy one for the governor.

If he had signed the bill, conservatives threatened to seek its repeal in the June, 1992, primary. That would have energized conservatives to get out their voters to support the ballot issue and their candidates for the Senate.

And the linking of candidates and ballot issues can have a major impact.

Only 64% of registered voters went to the polls in November, 1974, when Democrat Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. won the governorship after a campaign virtually devoid of issues. But in 1982, when Deukmejian battled Democrat Tom Bradley for governor, the turnout was 70%. A handgun control measure on the ballot had mobilized conservatives, and the measure’s coattails, political experts agreed, cost Bradley the election.

But now that Wilson has vetoed the gay rights bill, gay groups are organizing for another measure for the November, 1992, election ballot. If they succeed, the issue could draw anti-Wilson and anti-Seymour voters to the polls from both moderate and conservative camps.