‘92 REPUBLICAN CONVENTION : State GOP Delegates Distressed by Polls, Election Prospects : California: Many believe that Bush’s slide in popularity and inability to solve economic problems will also hurt party in senate races.

Despite opportunities for political gains this year, California Republicans are a dispirited bunch as they gather for their party’s national convention.

Candidates, strategists and delegates all desperately yearn for President Bush to have a big week to help improve GOP prospects in November and lift the state party from its doldrums. Additionally, the two U.S. Senate candidates, John Seymour and Bruce Herschensohn, are pushing their own agendas, highlighted by the divisive issue of abortion.

In a split symbolic of the party’s division, Seymour favors abortion rights and Herschensohn opposes them.

The huge California contingent, normally a confident crowd at these conventions, is distressed by public opinion polls back home. The surveys show the President trailing Democrat Bill Clinton by historic landslide numbers and the two Senate candidates running far behind their Democratic rivals, Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Barbara Boxer of Greenbrae.

Behind the balloons and cheering, there is a sense the pendulum has turned against Republicans in what they once proudly called “Reagan Country,” where the GOP presidential ticket has triumphed in nine of the last 10 elections, including the previous six.

The party’s declining fortune, rooted largely in the recession, could hardly have come at a worse time: Two Senate seats are up for grabs for the first time in California history, and the GOP should be benefiting from one of its most favorable congressional and legislative reapportionments in decades.

“When you start at the top of the ticket with a negative, and the Republican governor’s not in good stead either, there’s just no reason for people to want to vote Republican,” lamented state Senate GOP leader Ken Maddy of Fresno, who along with Gov. Pete Wilson decided to skip the convention and remain in Sacramento for budget negotiations.

Maddy’s comment about Wilson’s standing referred to the battering the governor’s image has taken as he has sought to reach a budget agreement with Sacramento Democrats.

Jack Flanigan, Bush’s campaign director for California, said that “the President needs a terrific (acceptance) speech on Thursday night, defining with specificity where he wants to take America in the next four years. Anything he could say regarding a prescription for economic recovery--a credible prescription--would be very helpful in California. . . .”

“He first didn’t understand we were going into a recession, and then he was slow to admit it. Now, every time he comes out to the state he says, ‘I understand California is hurting.’ What he really needs to say is how we’re going to deal with it.”

Flanigan said Bush should indicate, for example, how he thinks California’s lost defense jobs can be replaced.

One veteran Republican strategist from California, speaking anonymously, asserted: “If Bush doesn’t generate some excitement among the troops and gets a nice ‘bump’ (in polls) from the convention, this campaign by September will be stillborn.”

Internally, the 402 California delegates and alternates are split over abortion, as well as an ongoing power struggle between Wilson, a moderate, and the party’s conservatives.

By staying home, Wilson missed an opportunity to deliver the convention’s designated “Big Tent” speech--the idea that, despite the platform’s call for a constitutional amendment to ban all abortions, the party has room for divergent opinions on this and other volatile issues.

A longtime advocate of abortion rights, Wilson still will address the convention via TV hookup from Sacramento Wednesday night. But he will be attacking “tax and spend Democrats” instead of further riling hard-rock conservatives with “Big Tent” exhortations.

Against the backdrop of philosophical division within the California delegation, Bush’s state campaign leaders, the two Senate nominees and other GOP candidates all seem to have come to Houston with separate agendas.

Bush’s California strategists are hoping to attain a smoother working relationship with the national campaign organization, especially now that James A. Baker III is in charge. Relations between Sacramento and Washington became so strained last spring that Bush senior adviser Charles Black virtually was blackballed from the state.

Most of the Californians’ contact with the national organization has been through deputy national campaign manager Mary Matalin and chairman Robert M. Teeter. Both have good rapport with the state team, which Wilson chairs. But beyond these two, said one key California Republican, “there’s not a lot of trust,” and it has resulted in delays in staffing and strategy.

As for Seymour, he broke with Bush on abortion and is working with abortion-rights activists to remove anti-abortion language from the platform. The appointed senator, still struggling to boost his poor name identification, is troubled by internal polls that show many Californians believe that he opposes abortion rights.

“There’s a sizable segment of the electorate that just assumes he is pro-life,” said Jeff Weir, a top Seymour adviser.

By taking a strong abortion rights stand at the convention, Weir said, “we hope to clear the air, defuse the issue and rob Dianne Feinstein of the ability to run on it.”

Weir said polls show that many Republican women intend to vote for Feinstein on the basis of her outspoken support of abortion rights. “We’re trying very hard to communicate with Republican women who are pro-choice to let them know that John Seymour also is pro-choice,” the adviser said.

“We consider them a big part of the Republican base that we need, and are not willing to give up one vote from that base to Feinstein.”

Seymour conceded that he may be alienating conservative, anti-abortion Republicans. “There’s always such a danger when you stand up on an issue,” he said.

But polls have shown that most California voters agree with Seymour and Wilson on abortion. A statewide survey by The Times Poll in 1990 found that 82% of the electorate--including 75% of Republicans--believed that “the decision to have an abortion is a choice that must be made only by the woman herself.” Only 11%, including 17% of the Republicans, thought “that the government has a legitimate right to regulate abortion.”

A Times survey last April, however, also tended to substantiate the contention of Herschensohn’s strategists that abortion will not be a decisive issue in November. The subject ranked near the bottom of a long list of issues California voters said they would “particularly like to hear discussed by candidates running for state and national office this year.”

Heading the list were unemployment, the economy and education.

Herschensohn opposes abortion and, far from being hurt by a convention floor fight over the issue, his campaign manager believes the former Los Angeles television commentator could benefit. Veteran adviser Ken Khachigian said the underdog Herschensohn plans to use his anti-abortion stand to energize fellow conservatives behind his candidacy.

“It’s his base, Bush’s base and the core of the Republican Party,” Khachigian contended. “Just as Boxer is the darling of left-wingers and feminists, Bruce is the darling of conservatives across the nation. We’re looking at this convention to provide him more name-ID, prominence and recognition of stature within the party. We’ll show that Bruce is the new conservative voice in California.”

But right now, many GOP candidates in California privately complain that they are being hurt by Bush’s unpopularity.

“They’re very demoralized,” said attorney Steven A. Merksamer, a Republican insider and one-time chief of staff to former Gov. George Deukmejian. “I’ve had lots of conversations with Republican officeholders who think the President is going to bring them down. They’re worried about a landslide.”

A Look at the Delegates

The Republican convention delegates who will nominate President Bush are overwhelmingly white, middle-aged and male. Interviews with more than 2,000 of the 2,210 delegates showed: * Nearly 60% are men. Nationally, men account for about 49% of the population.

* Nine out of every 10 delegates are white. In the nation as a whole, eight in 10 Americans are white.

* Fewer than one delegate in 20 is black, compared with one American in eight.

* One delegate in 28 is Latino, compared with one American in 11.

* Three out of every five delegates are between 45 and 64 years old, while one in four adult Americans falls in that age range.

* One in 50 of the GOP delegates is a union member. One in four delegates to the Democratic convention belonged to a union.

* Delegates’ occupations include: lawyers (268), homemakers (156), business people (121) and farmers and ranchers (38).

Source: Associated Press