State GOP Leaders Give Up Attempt to Endorse Bush

Chagrined California Republican leaders, yielding to an uprising in the ranks Saturday, scuttled their attempt to orchestrate an unprecedented party endorsement for President Bush’s reelection.

Scrambling to stave off embarrassment of the President, the party chiefs decided instead to hold a non-binding straw vote during today’s concluding session of the Republican State Convention. Delegates would be given an opportunity to stand up for either Bush or Patrick J. Buchanan, the President’s conservative challenger.

Although Bush was expected to win easily, Buchanan forces were elated by the recognition they were getting for the conservative former White House speech writer and television commentator.

An aide to Gov. Pete Wilson said the face-saving compromise was struck in hopes of keeping the rancor that has infected the GOP’s two U.S. Senate contests from spilling over into the presidential campaign and jeopardizing Bush’s reelection prospects.

Wilson aide Dan Schnur said emotions were at a fever pitch Friday night after back-to-back debates among seven candidates for the two Senate nominations in the June 2 GOP primary. If party rules were changed today to allow an unprecedented endorsement for president, pressure would build for endorsement votes for the Senate contests, he said.

At best, the compromise papers over deep divisions that have emerged three months before the primary. One veteran official described the schism as a struggle for the ideological soul of the California GOP. The fight is between moderates, as represented by Bush, Wilson and Wilson’s handpicked Senate successor, John Seymour, and conservatives supporting Buchanan and Senate candidates Bruce Herschensohn and Rep. William E. Dannemeyer.

The level of bitterness showed up during the Senate debates Friday night when Seymour, running for the final two years of Wilson’s Senate term, accused Dannemeyer of endorsing genocide of people with AIDS. Dannemeyer retorted that Seymour was “a damned liar.”

Palm Springs Mayor Sonny Bono, up to now the most mild-mannered of the Senate candidates, told Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Palo Alto), one of his opponents for the nomination for the seat being vacated by retiring Democrat Alan Cranston: “Tom, you went to Washington to clean up the pigpen and you wound up at the trough with the hogs.”

Bono was commenting on Campbell’s vote for a congressional pay raise bill, something Campbell said he supported only because it was tied to an ethics package.

Herschensohn joined the Campbell assault, demanding: “Why should the taxpayers have to pay you to be ethical?”

As if to emphasize the lack of import of today’s presidential endorsement vote, the Rules Committee adopted provisions Saturday stipulating that there be no debate and that it merely be considered a snapshot of unofficial party sentiment at this point in the campaign.

The state party governing body has never taken sides in advance of a primary.

The small and loosely organized Buchanan contingent at the convention was delighted by the endorsement retreat and staged a parade Saturday afternoon through the atrium of the convention hotel near San Francisco International Airport.

“This is a major defeat for the President,” said Collin Hunter of Santa Clara County, a Buchanan leader who heads the Libertarian Republicans of California.

State Party Chairman Jim Dignan tried to put the best light on the compromise by saying: “We didn’t want anyone leaving this convention feeling that (Buchanan supporters) don’t make a difference.”

Just the day before, Dignan had said the endorsement was critical so that the Bush campaign could immediately begin using the state party apparatus--telephone banks and the like--to field a strong campaign for the fall.

California could be pivotal in November because it will cast 54 electoral votes, one-fifth of the 270 needed to win the presidency.

Dignan insisted that the only motive behind the endorsement proposal was to boost the Bush campaign. But insiders said Dignan was also attempting to force the White House to pay more attention to California conservatives, who have fought bitterly with Wilson, the moderate governor who will be the official Bush campaign chairman in California.

Times Sacramento bureau chief George Skelton contributed to this story.