Taking a Step Off the Platform : Politics: Disgruntled with their party’s anti-abortion stance, Republican women launch a grass-roots fund-raising network to elect like-minded female candidates.

The standard sales pitch gets right to the point: “Republican women are developing a financial support network to elect pro-choice GOP women candidates to the House and Senate. Would you like to join?”

Since last December that question has been asked nationwide--in telephone conversations between friends, in letters to women’s professional groups, at neighborhood teas, over restaurant lunches, at cocktail receptions.

Stung by the realization that they hold only nine of 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, one of 100 seats in the U.S. Senate and no governorships, some Republican women have taken matters in their own hands.

“We’re finally stepping up to the plate,” says Washington consultant Susan Davis. “We’ve finally realized that it takes money to play the game.” She’s one organizer of a new political action group called WISH (Women in the Senate and House) List, which aims to raise substantial sums to help elect selected candidates.

“We’ve had an incredibly quick launch,” says president Glenda Greenwald, a former magazine publisher. With a handful of other Republican businesswomen, she started making phone calls in mid-December and hasn’t stopped. “We’ve raised almost $150,000 in seed money and are approaching 250 members.”

Members contribute $100 a year and agree to donate $100 to each of at least two candidates recommended by WISH List every election year. The first goal, says Greenwald, is to sign up 1,000 members in time to provide at least $200,000 in WISH funds for November’s general election.

“We are trying to find someone in every city with a network,” she says. To that end, she has spent half her time on the road, has attended 10 launch parties and distributed a trail of 5,000 brochures with the red WISH logo. Greenwald says she hasn’t had a “bad response” yet: “In every city we have found a Republican segment whose voice is not being acknowledged.”

Although their stance breaks ranks with the GOP anti-abortion platform plank, the WISH organizers maintain the party can accommodate differing viewpoints, and they are backed by Jeanie Austin, Republican National Committee co-chair. “There’s room for diverse thinking in the party,” she says. “We don’t agree on 100% of the issues.”

Greenwald’s optimism is echoed across the country, as WISH organizers find acceptance for their message--that it’s time to “balance the power and change the face” of government in America. The hour, they sense, is right:

* “Selling is not a problem,” says Beverly Hills attorney Rosalind Pritikin, who heads the campaign for the Western United States. “The minute we say who we are, everyone gets excited.”

* “It’s so easy,” says Davis, who is organizing in the Washington area. “You just explain what you’re doing and they say, ‘Where do I send my check?’ I haven’t had one woman say no.”

* “WISH List has mass appeal, or that’s what it looked like here,” says Christine Gordon, who divides her time between Malibu and Aspen, Colo., and who, with three other hostesses, entertained 65 guests at a reception last week in her mountain home. “So many women’s issues have been masterminded by militant leaders, you forget they are actually mainstream.”

* “People have just had it with government,” says Barbara Labadie of Grosse Pointe, Mich., a portfolio manager. “We do not have one Republican woman in Washington from the state of Michigan.” She and two friends raised $28,000 in February at one WISH List party for 35 guests. “I’ve been complaining for years to people who would listen and people who wouldn’t that surely there are Republican women who care about other women.”

Greenwald is not surprised. “We’re tapping something,” she says. “There are several issues involved here--the need for more women in government, the reality that some of our rights are being threatened and the fact that there hasn’t been a Republican channel for pro-choice women. Somebody calls it a gathering force of discontent.”

That’s how she felt when she started testing the waters last winter. The former publisher of Michigan Woman magazine, she moved to New York six months ago with her husband, business executive Gerald Greenwald. With their four children grown, she was looking for a new area of interest and contribution.

And, like many of her friends, Greenwald says she had become increasingly politicized over the past five years as the country seemed to unravel at all levels: “We kept feeling that if there were more women in high places--the corporate world and the political world--there would be better solutions to our problems.”

Furthermore, a tempting precedent beckoned across the political aisle. The Democratic group called EMILY’s List (Emily being an acronymn for Early Money Is Like Yeast-- “It makes the dough rise”), was founded in 1985 to elect qualified supporters of legal abortion to high offices. Having raised $1.5 million in 1990 for 14 candidates meticulously screened for electability, EMILY’s List is trying to boost the number of Democratic women in Congress and in statehouses and to earn a national reputation as a political power.

When Greenwald had talked to enough women, and “everybody seemed to want to do something,” they decided to model themselves after EMILY’s List, right down to its support of legal abortion--even though that breaks with official Republican Party policy.

They got help from Ellen Malcolm, EMILY’s founder, who maintains that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. “I think it’s terrific creating a force for pro-choice Republican women. The past 10 years has been a tremendously painful and difficult time for progressive women in the Republican Party--I’m glad they are helping to force the door open.”

With reapportionment and retirements opening 100 congressional seats for ‘92, says Greenwald, “the timing seemed urgent,” so she took on WISH List full time. As the non-salaried president, she now has a 15-member board of directors, a New York office with a staff of one and another office in Los Angeles.

As they work their Rolodexes and membership rosters, WISH List organizers cite a litany of factors in their favor: The national mood in general is anti-incumbent; more women are working, which means they feel comfortable writing membership checks, and more women have their own businesses, which gives them the potential to write substantial checks.

But the galvanizing force, repeated from city to city, is “Anita Hill.”

Senate hearings last October on Anita Hill’s sexual harassment charges against Supreme Court nominee and now Justice Clarence Thomas were a “watershed for women,” says Orange County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, a veteran Republican officeholder. “Women who never thought of themselves as feminists, whatever that is supposed to be, were aroused.”

When Wieder sent out invitations for a WISH List organizing party in early March at her home, more than 50 women showed up. Half joined on the spot. “A lot of them were nonpolitical women with business careers,” she says. “I’m finding that there is absolutely a new consciousness now.”

Michigan organizer Labadie says the televised hearings signified a national “paradigm shift. . . . It wasn’t even the question of who was believable. The visual that is sticking with everyone is that stark picture of 14 white males on the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

Adds Washington consultant Davis: “I’ve talked to people all over the country and I don’t think there is any question that the hearings were a catalyst for a lot of women deciding to be more vocal about how we feel. . . . This is not anti-Republican Party.”

Davis describes herself as comfortable with official GOP positions on everything from government regulation to foreign policy. “But I totally disagree with their stand on abortion rights, and I think a lot of other women do too.”

In official Republican circles, the new activism is welcome. “Our platform is certainly opposed to abortion,” says Republican National Committee spokesman Gary Koops, “but the Republican Party isn’t a one-issue cause, nor is there any litmus test for what makes a good Republican.”

In 1990, he notes, Republicans lost experienced women in Washington when three Congresswomen ran for the Senate and lost. “An organization like this might have been able to help them,” he says. “I think this is all good news.”

And RNC co-chair Jeanie Austin says she’s happy to see WISH List: “With more women, maybe we wouldn’t have all the rottenness going on in Washington. We don’t have an old-boy network and we need one.”

Even conservative Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who was outraged by press suggestions last month that WISH List “might” endorse Judith Ryan, his opponent in the June primary, says he’d like to see more Republican women in Washington.

When Dornan believed in early March that WISH had targeted his race, he protested publicly to the White House and the Republican Congressional leadership in Washington. WISH officials replied that the group was too new to endorse anyone.

“I don’t welcome them (WISH) because I am a strong pro-lifer,” Dornan said later, “but I have never let one issue drive my whole agenda. I understand them and I say, ‘full speed ahead.’ ”

While emphasizing that WISH policy for this election year is not to endorse challengers over incumbents in a primary race, Greenwald finds Dornan’s attention significant: “The whole controversy was premature, but it’s flattering for a fledgling organization to be taken seriously by a veteran politician.”

The group benefited further last month when “60 Minutes” focused a long segment on EMILY’s List. Describing it as “one of the most powerful fund-raising institutes in Washington,” correspondent Morley Safer ended the segment with a brief mention that Republican women had started their own version, called WISH List.

Just on that basis, telephones at the National Federation of Republican Women started “ringing off the hook,” with women trying to track down the new organization, says political director Karen Johnson. “They all think we started it and want to know where to send the money.”

The 138,000-member federation has recruited and trained women for campaigns since 1938, but “unfortunately, we can’t give money to candidates, and money is the key,” she says.

“I’ve been working here for four years, and finally in this election cycle I’m seeing our members energized, ready to go out and support candidates. We’re really happy.”