Wilson Quells Uprising Over Abortion Plank : California: He persuades delegates to avoid floor fight, urges them to work to take over party in ’96.

Gov. Pete Wilson doused a brush fire of California opposition to the Republican anti-abortion plank Sunday, persuading delegates to avoid a floor fight this week but to work toward trying to take over the party and its platform in four years.

“I fully expect and intend that this will be the last Republican platform that contains this plank,” the longtime advocate of abortion rights vowed to California delegates in a speech delivered via remote television hookup from Sacramento.

With these and other blunt comments that earned him several interruptions with applause, Wilson reassured abortion rights delegates that he indeed does disagree “emphatically” with the party platform plank calling for a constitutional ban on abortions.

But the moderate governor, who has been fighting off a guerrilla insurrection from party right-wingers largely because of his record tax increase last year, also pleased anti-abortion conservatives by counseling patience to allies in the abortion rights struggle.

Wilson contended that a divisive convention floor fight aimed at repealing the anti-abortion plank could only help Democratic nominee Bill Clinton. And he said that such a fight is doomed to failure anyway in the current political climate, with President Bush favoring a constitutional ban on abortion and like-minded Republicans in control of the convention Platform Committee.

Wilson asked delegates “to heed the wise example of Barry Goldwater,” who at the 1960 Republican convention admonished fellow conservatives to “grow up” and not wound their presidential candidate, Richard M. Nixon, with embarrassing rancor over issues. Goldwater urged his allies, Wilson said, to “work for change so that in four years your party and its platform reflect your view.”

“Well, four years later in 1964,” Wilson continued, “those whom Barry Goldwater had admonished in 1960 had a candidate (Goldwater) and a platform that reflected their view.”

Right now, Wilson’s job approval rating is at a historic low, according to the Field Poll, and he seems destined for a tough reelection battle in 1994. But if he should survive that campaign, he almost certainly would be regarded as a potential contender for his party’s 1996 presidential nomination.

One Wilson senior adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the governor was “talking specifically about the abortion plank but there also was a broader message in there to the more moderate delegates and members of the party. Any delegate or party member who feels uncomfortable about anything else in the platform or at the convention should look at the broader picture and think in terms of four years.”

Whatever the long-range implications of Wilson’s message, it had the immediate effect of silencing the demands of California abortion rights delegates for a convention floor fight today.

“I would say his message carried the day and carried the day strongly,” said State Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, an anti-abortion conservative who is subbing for Wilson as chairman of the California delegation while the governor remains in Sacramento for budget negotiations.

After Wilson’s speech, delegates met behind closed doors to clear the air. “We thought it was important that we talk among ourselves,” Lungren said.

According to Brian Bennett, an Orange County delegate, “about four or five people stood up and said they had wanted to make noise on the issue but changed their minds after listening to the governor.”

Bennett, who opposes abortion, agreed that “the battle will be in ‘96,” but added that “as far as right now, California won’t buck the platform.”

Bobbi Fiedler, a former congresswoman from the San Fernando Valley, went along with Wilson’s plea for patience even though she strongly favors allowing a woman to make the ultimate choice of whether to have an abortion. For the present, she said, it is more important for Republicans to “stand together” for Bush.

But not everyone was satisfied. Shortly after Wilson’s speech, two Republicans got into a shouting match outside the hotel ballroom where the delegation had met. Camille Giglio, president of California Right to Life, said she was “outraged” by the governor’s promise to continue fighting the party’s longtime official stand against abortion and accused him of trying to reduce the population of minorities.

“I resent that! You’re out of line to exploit Latinos, African-Americans and Asians for your cause!” shouted Xavier Hermosillo, head of the state’s Latino Republican Caucus. “You do not speak for minorities.”

Abortion rights activists at the convention have been trying to attain more than half the signatures of delegates from six states to force a floor fight. And with California--one of the most supportive states for abortion rights in the union--bowing out of the fight, the prospects of achieving their goal seemed slim on Sunday.

Ann Stone, who chairs Republicans for Choice in Washington, D.C., insisted that the Bush campaign pressured Wilson into calling off the California abortion rights activists. The governor’s advisers flatly denied it.

In his speech, Wilson said that although “I personally disagree emphatically” with the party’s official anti-abortion position, he realizes that “just as emphatically, with convictions I respect though I do not share, pro-life members” of the delegation support the plank.

He added: “I think we are best advised to direct our energies into efforts that will reelect George Bush and produce the maximum Republican change in Congress and the Legislature.”

He noted that, in the reality of politics, “no delegate and no candidate for office is bound by this platform in violation of his or her own conscience.”

But Sen. John Seymour--whom Wilson appointed to fill his Senate seat when he won the governorship--disagreed with his political mentor’s contention that party unity should rate a higher priority than fighting for abortion rights. Seymour, who faces an uphill campaign against Democrat Dianne Feinstein to retain the seat, appeared at a rally sponsored by national abortion rights groups and pledged to “do whatever is necessary” to repeal the platform plank.

Some of the most vocal Californians on either side of the issue in Houston are not delegates or alternates but county GOP central committee members and other party activists.

Harriett Stinson, a Republican activist from Hillsborough, said the governor’s call for party unity might make for a smooth convention, but would not help Bush win reelection. “This convention is not the real world,” she told reporters. “The real world believes in choice. . . . I’m not a delegate, so I can’t be told to back off.”