Perot’s Shadow Dims Bush Visit to GOP Bastion

President Bush sought to boost his standing in Southern California Friday by offering help for the beleaguered defense industry, but he also received a harsh dose of political reality from state Republican strategists.

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 Republican leaders.

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” for him to carry California and its 54 electoral votes, especially in light of the challenge posed by Ross Perot’s prospective presidential campaign.

Perot and the strong appeal he has demonstrated throughout California--including the traditional GOP stronghold of Orange County--cast a long shadow on Bush’s latest visit to a state in which he long has been viewed as politically vulnerable.

“Clearly, (Perot’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.

Just Thursday, in fact, Perot attracted some 8,000 cheering supporters to a rally in Sacramento and about 5,000 equally fervent backers at Irvine’s Lion Country Center.

In contrast, the President received a warm but hardly ecstatic reception at his only public event Friday: a luncheon sponsored by the Industrial League of Orange County, a business organization, at the Hyatt hotel in Irvine.

“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.

Discussing the problems Bush faces in California, State Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) said: “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.”

Bergeson made her comment after attending the political strategy session at Bush’s Newport Beach hotel.

Another of the session’s participants, Rena Godshall, a Corona del Mar resident who heads the conservative-oriented California Republican Assembly, urged Bush to abandon his above-the-fray campaign style and unleash an attack on Perot.

Bush has said he would hold off direct criticism of either Perot or presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton until mid-August, when he is formally nominated for a second term by the Republican National Convention.

“We want him to attack,” Godshall said. “We want him to take some of (Perot’s) statements and expose him.”

Bush partisans are particularly concerned about Perot’s popularity in Orange County, a region that typically has delivered huge vote totals for Republican presidential candidates.

Perot’s Orange County supporters claim to have gathered 156,181 signatures on petitions to help put him on the presidential ballot in November--only about 15,000 people less than the vote Bush received in the GOP primary on June 2.

A Times survey of Orange County residents conducted by Mark Baldassare in mid-May, moreover, found Perot leading Bush, 42% to 36%, with Clinton far behind at 16%.

Bush’s speech to the Orange County business group seemed partially aimed at improving his regional political fortunes. He used the occasion to disclose 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.

Bush also made time for some person-to-person campaigning after the end of his political strategy session. Changing into shorts and a T-shirt, he directed his presidential motorcade to the main beach at Corona del Mar and drew a surprised swarm of sunbathers as he walked along the water’s edge.

The President began his campaign day by holding separate meetings with Latino and Asian journalism groups at his hotel.

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.

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

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