ELECTIONS / COUNTYWIDE : Republican Group Aims Blitz at GOP Right

Embarrassed that the religious right has seized control of the Ventura County Republican Central Committee, disenchanted Republicans have mobilized an unprecedented campaign to regain power in Tuesday’s primary.

The newly formed Committee to Elect Responsible Republicans has fielded a slate of 22 candidates and plans to spend more than $5,000 on a last-minute blitz of campaign mailers and newspaper advertising to overwhelm the conservative Christians in the Republican primary.

The candidates and their supporters also are planning to blanket supermarkets, churches and public gatherings with flyers this weekend, said Brian Fox, a candidate and member of the committee.

But the GOP Central Committee’s new conservative Christian majority is fighting back with its own campaign, aimed at showing mainstream Republicans that their elevation to office in the June, 1990, election was not a fluke.

The socially conservative group has formed its own slate of 21 candidates, many of them incumbents, and is receiving key financial and campaign support from the conservative Pro-Family Caucus of Ventura County.

Traditionally, seats on the Central Committee go begging for volunteers to perform the most basic party-building functions, such as registering voters, raising funds and getting voters to the polls. In many past GOP primaries, the candidates have had no opposition for Central Committee seats and their names never appeared on the ballot.

But this year’s battle between the so-called old guard GOP members and a newly active group of socially conservative Christians has drawn an unprecedented 53 entrants, 10 of them unaligned with either slate. Both sides agree that the outcome of the June 2 primary will determine the direction of the Central Committee.

“What’s really at stake here is the heart and soul of the Republican Party in Ventura County,” said Fox, a Ventura attorney.

Critics contend that the conservative Christian majority has turned the Central Committee into a platform for promoting their socially conservative values. Over the past 17 months, critics say, the committee failed to take care of party chores and instead has been preoccupied with debates over a constitutional ban on abortions, school vouchers, prayer in schools and the governor’s veto of homosexual rights legislation.

But the incident that brought the division within the committee to a head occurred in November, when then-Chairman Bill Jones was quoted in a newspaper making comments that appeared to support former Ku Klux Klansman and Nazi sympathizer David Duke. In a photograph accompanying the article, Jones is shown wrapped in an American flag, an act that offended many county Republicans and shut off donations to the committee, said Bob Larkin, who has served on the Central Committee for more than 20 years.

“After that, every Republican I talked to said they were going to sit on their billfold until they see the committee going the way they think it should be,” said Larkin, a Simi Valley insurance agent. “And that means staying out of the issues.”

Richard Ferrier, who sides philosophically with the conservative Christian faction, was chosen as the new chairman in a compromise vote. In recent months, Ferrier, a tutor at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, has tried unsuccessfully to mend the rift.

But Larkin, who engineered Ferrier’s election as chairman, said the committee has continued to fail at raising badly needed donations and organizing voter-registration drives.

The committee depends on donations to cover operating expenses, but a financial statement released Wednesday shows it is teetering on bankruptcy with a presidential election only six months away, Larkin said.

The financial statement shows less than $1,000 in the committee’s bank account, with bills coming in, including liability insurance that could cost up to $1,500, he said.

Although Ferrier acknowledges that the committee has been able to raise only one-third of the $5,000 collected last year, he blamed the shortfall partly on old guard Republicans for refusing to use their clout and experience to help organize donation drives. Publicity about the committee’s problems also has made it difficult to raise money, said Ferrier, who is running for reelection.

A barbecue to raise money for the committee is planned for July 5, he said.

Ferrier defends the committee’s efforts to register Republicans, considered a critical task in a general election year. Although the organization has registered only about 100 people so far this year--less than one-fourth of those registered in 1991--Ferrier has appointed a new registration chairman and efforts should pick up during the next few months, he said.

“It’s not like we’re neglecting business,” Ferrier said.

But opposition candidates like Fox and Camarillo attorney Teresa Caldwell contend that most members of the conservative Christian majority have only one agenda: fighting for a ban on abortion.

“That is their litmus test for who are the real Republicans and who are not,” said Caldwell, who began attending Central Committee meetings in January. “But they can’t come out and say blatantly what they are, because if they do, they won’t get elected to office.”

Five of the conservative Christian committee members running for reelection have been convicted of misdemeanors related to their participation in antiabortion blockades of medical clinics in Southern California. They are: Ronald W. Lawson of Ventura, Clara Jean Davis of Camarillo, and Linda L. Keuser-Vahl, Lee Casey-Telles and Loren G. Broyles, all Oxnard residents. Many of the protests were organized by Operation Rescue.

Raymond P. Connelly, a Central Committee candidate and treasurer of the Pro-Family Caucus of Ventura County, said he and other conservative Christians make no secret of their values and are simply exercising their right to run for office.

“I’m not in favor of a church state,” Connelly said. “But I’m definitely in favor of people who are religious being involved in the activities of the government.”

The Pro-Family Caucus received donations of about $4,000, mainly from people who gave $30 or less, said Al Pacheco, a caucus member and Central Committee candidate.

The money was used to create a mailer containing a slate of candidates endorsed by the caucus in federal, state and local races, including the Central Committee’s contest, Pacheco said. About 95,000 of the mailers will be sent to targeted Republican voters and distributed at churches and in precinct walks over the weekend, he said.

The Committee to Elect Responsible Republicans raised $5,500, mainly in $99 donations from the candidates listed on their slate and from longtime county Republicans, according to a financial statement. Advertisements promoting its slate have been placed in local newspapers and mailers have been sent to every county Republican who voted in 1990, Fox said.

Larkin estimates that it will take 4,000 to 5,000 votes to win the most heavily contested Central Committee seats, especially in Camarillo, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks.

But mainstream Republicans are confident that they will be returned to power at the primary because the public is more aware of who is running for office and what they stand for, said 1st District candidate Paul Leavens, a Ventura rancher who is well-known in Republican circles.

“We have a lot of disenchanted Republicans in this county,” he said.