New Faces in an Old Bastion : Orange County, once ‘GOP land,’ draws Bush, Perot, even Clinton

A decade ago, Orange County was so reliably in Ronald Reagan’s pocket that he pointedly used it as a beginning and ending place for his landslide presidential election campaigns. But if the traditional bastion of American conservatism has been the heart of national Republican politics, today we find other contenders for the White House daring to listen to its pulse.

President Bush was in the county Friday, on the heels of Thursday’s rally conducted in Irvine for Ross Perot, who spoke to an army of disgruntled California voters who cheer and gather thousands of signatures from Orange County to put him on the ballot.

Bill Clinton, the presumed Democratic nominee, has visited several times, meeting boldly with pro-choice Republican business leaders, and taking the measure of a changed county that the 1990 census showed did not necessarily fit the old suburban stereotype.

Orange County has not escaped California’s economic woes, which no doubt ac counts for some of the new restiveness and political opportunism. However, today’s altered county profile also explains something about the presence of new minefields being explored by presidential challengers.

The 1990 census showed that Orange County developed a greater ethnic mix, its middle class shrank and the population began to look more and more like older urban areas of the country. Moreover, the vagaries of economic fortunes resulted in a widening gap between rich and poor as manufacturing jobs dried up and the new arrivals sought their place in the sun. Meanwhile, as the “haves” became better off than ever before, Orange County also emerged as better educated than ever. That change perhaps foreshadowed the new blooming of independent political thinking.

Orange County remains Republican country, of course--but whose Republicans are they? Not so long ago, it seemed unlikely any presidential contender would bother much with a place so predictably for a Republican incumbent president.

One sure sign of this topsy-turvy year is that suddenly Orange County seems not entirely a certainty.