Echoes of Perot Visit Trail Bush in GOP Bastion

President Bush, touching key political bases in Southern California, offered help Friday to the defense industry and met with strategists summoned to his hotel suite to provide a dose of campaign reality a day after Ross Perot demonstrated strong appeal in the traditional Republican stronghold of Orange County.

The President drew mixed reviews at his only public event: a luncheon sponsored by the Industrial League of Orange County, a business organization, at the Hyatt hotel in Irvine.

In a region that typically has delivered huge vote totals for Republican presidential candidates, Bush received a warm but hardly ecstatic reception from the business group.

“I was expecting a lot of rah-rah and hoopla today, and I didn’t hear that,” said Ed McGraw of Brea, whose company distributes cabinet-making hardware.

In contrast, Perot attracted some 5,000 fervent supporters to a rally at Irvine’s Lion Country Center on Thursday. And the attention that the prospective presidential candidate is drawing has made a sharp impact on the Bush team in California.

“Clearly, he’s got some momentum going. All the old rules are out the window,” Jack Flanagan, chairman of the Bush reelection drive in California, told reporters.

Before the luncheon, Bush held separate meetings with Latino and Asian journalism groups at his hotel in Newport Beach.

He assured the Latino journalists that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this week upholding the kidnaping of a Mexican doctor orchestrated by U.S. officials would not result in a snatching spree in other countries.

But the President stopped short of guaranteeing that incidents similar to the 1990 kidnaping of Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, a Guadalajara gynecologist accused in the murder and torture of an American drug agent in Mexico, would not happen again.

“I gotta be careful that I don’t condone in any way what this person was accused of,” Bush said during a question-and-answer session with eight Latino reporters. “To sit there and watch an American be tortured . . . I’m sorry, this President finds that most offensive.”

Alvarez Machain was kidnaped in Mexico and is being held in Los Angeles awaiting trial on charges relating to the 1985 murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena near Guadalajara. The physician was accused of keeping Camarena alive while Mexican drug traffickers tortured him to determine what the agent knew of their operations.

The Supreme Court ruled last Monday that the United States had the authority to seize a foreign national even in cases where this country has signed an extradition treaty and pledged to respect another country’s sovereignty.

Bush, who campaigned Thursday in Northern California and will speak today in Universal City before leaving the state, met privately for about 60 minutes Friday afternoon with more than 100 California Republicans.

They warned him, according to one campaign source, that “it’s going to be tough, it’s going to take a lot of work, a lot of time and a lot of energy,” to carry California and its 54 electoral votes, especially in light of the challenge posed by Perot’s as yet-undeclared independent presidential candidacy.

“We are in a very difficult time politically and economically. The public is frustrated and wants some sign of improvement. They want some sense of hope,” said State Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) after the meeting.

In his speech to the business group, Bush disclosed he would lift government regulations that require defense companies to pay the government a fee on the sale to non-government purchasers of products and technologies developed under government contracts.

The decision is intended to make it more profitable for defense industries to convert operations to non-military production in the post-Cold War era. In its presentation during a presidential visit to a community in which defense spending cuts have helped cripple the local economy, it also reflects a recent White House practice in which Bush delivers locally targeted forms of economic assistance during his campaign stops.

“These fees hurt American workers by making it more difficult for (U.S. firms) to compete for business here and abroad,” Bush said. “And given the historic changes we’ve seen during the last year, this burden is no longer justified.”

Bush acknowledged that in California, “it’s been a tough time.”

“As the Defense Department downsizes, you face adapting from a military to a competitive civilian market. It’s tough for companies and employees,” he said.

Times staff writers Sonni Efron and Dan Weikel contributed to this story.

RELATED STORY: D1