In L.A., GOP Family Values Theme Wins Mixed Reviews

Like Marilyn Quayle, Ann Grant is an attorney and mother who comes from a conservative Republican background. But her role model isn’t the vice president’s wife, it’s Hillary Clinton, and Grant is steamed over the Hillary bashing that was in vogue this week at the Republican National Convention.

“It really offends me,” Grant, 30, said during her lunch break amid the corporate high-rises of downtown Los Angeles. “I think it’s really sad it’s gotten to that level.”

The GOP convention’s family values campaign theme--framed by attacks on Democratic nominee Bill Clinton’s wife, by homage to mothers who stay at home and by condemnation of the gay rights movement--seemed to be playing to decidedly mixed reviews in Southern California this week.

The Times took an unscientific sample of opinion Thursday and Friday in downtown Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. While some of more than two dozen voters wholeheartedly embraced the Republicans’ emphasis on family values, the majority thought it either largely irrelevant as an election issue or downright insulting. Even for those who have supported the GOP in the past, the economy ranked much higher on their list of concerns than which party might have a greater claim to family morality.

“I think the Bushes are very family-oriented, and that’s great,” said Susan Gellerman as she handed a slice of pizza to her 3-year-old daughter and strapped her 3-week-old son into his car seat in the parking lot of the Northridge Price Club on Friday. “But it doesn’t make for a great President. I think I’m going with Clinton this time.”

Marge Kaiser, a nurse who has four grown children and six grandchildren, dismissed the family values theme as a “tool they’re using.”

“I don’t think it means a darn thing to them. . . . If they want to talk family values, let them talk about day care for working mothers and schools,” Kaiser said.

A sales representative said she had listened to the Republicans with growing fury.

“I thought it was extremely insulting,” said the woman, who declined to give her full name. Describing herself as a divorced mother who has raised two children alone, she said: “If I didn’t agree exactly with what they said, I was excluded. I was considered almost like scum, I suppose.”

The family values appeal did strike a deep chord with some.

“They are very convincing on that,” said Bellkiss Gutierrez, who has five children and works at home as a mechanical designer. “I am pro-life, and I believe in family tradition and all that.”

Said Jean Willrich, a legal secretary: “I strongly support family values, and Mrs. Bush did an excellent job, I thought.”

Alice Gratias, a retired secretary, was also impressed. “I like it. I think it brings the nation together.” Moreover, she believes mothers should stay home until their children reach college age, just as she did.

But for many women, that is not a matter of choice. Unlike Barbara Bush and Marilyn Quayle, they said, they cannot afford to stay home to care for their families full time, and they resent the suggestion that they are neglecting their duties as women by going off to the workplace.

“I think it stinks,” said Marcia Rea, a mother of two who works as a secretary. As far as she’s concerned, the Republicans “insulted women, single mothers, anybody who doesn’t fit their mold.”

Fumed attorney, mother and gay rights activist Carol Anderson: “Maybe if (Marilyn Quayle) took the silver spoon out of her mouth long enough, she could say something that has some relevance to the world.”

In her remarks to the convention, Marilyn Quayle, who left the legal profession for full-time motherhood, asserted that liberals are “disappointed because most women do not wish to be liberated from their essential natures as women” and love being wives and mothers.

Marilyn Quayle’s remarks outraged Barbara Walden, the owner of a Los Angeles cosmetics firm, who said friends--men and women, Republicans and Democrats--were calling her until 2 a.m. Thursday complaining about Quayle’s Wednesday night speech. One of her friends, she said, asked, “Why should we have this woman put us down and make it almost an embarrassment to do something for ourselves?”

Greg McClinton, an attorney, took offense at Patrick J. Buchanan’s comments. “I thought he was something akin to Adolf Hitler,” he said, adding that he thought the attacks on Hillary Clinton were “disgraceful.”

“Hillary Clinton is not running for office,” McClinton said.

Judith French, a telecommunication worker, just wishes the Republicans would “stick to the issues.” Referring to their continuing allusions about Clinton’s personal life, French said: “I don’t care what the man does in his bedroom. I want to hear what he’s going to do for the country.”