Republican Defectors Paying Price for Speaking Freely

Kathryn Thompson sounded resigned and philosophical--as if she finally has come to terms with exactly what happens when you challenge Republican orthodoxy around here.

Probably the county’s most successful businesswoman, Thompson had been under the illusion that this was still a country where you can disagree politically without being either (choose one) threatened, humiliated, branded as unpatriotic/immoral or just verbally abused. She thought the people who talked the most about personal values and morality actually would treat her with civility if she dared to disagree with them.

She’s not nearly that naive anymore.

“I didn’t realize our freedom had been jeopardized that much by the New World Order,” Thompson said Tuesday.

The president of a home building company and someone who once worked precincts for Barry Goldwater, Thompson hardly needs to justify her Republican credentials to anyone. In fact, she’s a 1988 member of “Team 100,” made up of people who contributed at least $100,000 to Republican causes.

But, unhappy with President Bush’s inattentiveness to the economy, Thompson and Roger W. Johnson, chairman of Western Digital Corp., hosted Bill Clinton at a highly publicized breakfast last December. By the time they and several other local Republicans endorsed the Clinton-Gore ticket last week, Thompson and the others discovered just how bloody a sport politics can be.

Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) suggested the move could hurt her business. State Sen. John R. Lewis (R-Orange) said the Clinton campaign “had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to come up with this bunch.” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) said the defectors weren’t real Republicans, anyway.

Thompson and Dornan already have a history because she was finance chairman for Judith Ryan, who opposed Dornan in the June primary and lost after a bitter race.

“The thing I’ve been most concerned about is that an elected congressman can make the bold statements he’s been making in the paper,” Thompson said Tuesday. “I’m talking about Dornan. He’s the one that said my business is going to suffer dire consequences because of my actions. . . . He said I better watch out or I’d find my business hurt. I can’t believe an elected official who’s supposed to represent all his constituents can make statements like this.”

Thompson added: “After that (Clinton) breakfast, it became apparent that if we didn’t agree, if we didn’t have uniformity (within the party), that you were going to be criticized. That was understood.

“I don’t mind anyone debating issues with me, having differences with me. The thing I find appalling is (saying things like), ‘It’s going to hurt your business,’ or someone like John Lewis saying ‘they had to scrape the bottom of the barrel.’ I don’t think Dornan or Lewis or any of these guys have started a business from scratch, built it up, made payrolls and given after-tax dollars to the Republican Party.”

Why did she go public with her courting and support of Clinton? “I could just go quietly and vote and not say anything,” she said, “but there’s been a lot of pressure on me from women’s groups to talk to them, about how I made it in the business world. I thought that, like it or not, I’ve kind of evolved into somewhat of a leader. There are a few people who would listen to me, and I felt obliged to say what was on my mind and where I was leaning.

“But I was amazed and still am amazed by the people who say they feel the same thing and are afraid to say anything. To me, that is really frightening. They’re afraid they’re going to be socially blackballed and that there would be repercussions. I can’t tell you the number of people who called and said, ‘I’m 100% for you, I think you’re 100% right, but I can’t say anything because it might hurt my business.’ ”

Coming on the heels of Thompson’s call to me was another phone call, this one from Richard O’Neill, longtime Democratic Party leader in Orange County. He and Thompson have always been on opposite political sides, but O’Neill said he wanted to come to her defense.

“I was a little surprised by the whole thing because she’s a big fund-raiser,” O’Neill said. “She’s Mrs. Big in the Republican Party. She was, like, the secretary of the Lincoln Club once, and you couldn’t get any further Republican than she was.”

“I know these people are going through a lot of bother and they showed a lot of guts, and I thought I should speak up and say something on their behalf,” O’Neill said. “This thing has been bothering me for a number of years--the aggressiveness of Republican elected officials, like Dornan. Now we’ve got Rohrabacher. . . . They’ve been making her life miserable. Those people (Thompson and the others) have done more for Orange County than (Rohrabacher) ever thought about doing. Dornan, too, for that matter. They haven’t done anything except talk.”

Some people will just see the GOP’s reaction as harmless politics, I suggested to O’Neill.

“They’re literally acting as if they’re traitors,” he said. “That isn’t what Orange County is all about, and it hasn’t been in the 30 years I’ve been here. If a person decided to support someone else, you don’t go screaming at them.”

Jokingly referring to all the Democratic defections to the GOP during the Reagan years, O’Neill added: “If we had, I tell you, we would have been worn out.”

The GOP strategy is clear, O’Neill said. “The main thing is they want to keep people from coming out, more Republicans from coming out, to make sure they know they’ll be attacked and attacked heavily. They don’t care whether they vote (Democratic), but they don’t want them coming out in public and saying they’re going to vote for Clinton.”

For her part, Thompson, who’s involved in a fund-raiser next week for moderate Republican U.S. Sen. John Seymour, said she “very much believes in the fundamentals of the Republican Party.” She fears the party is straying from them “when I heard some of the things coming out of Houston, and that platform, where it espoused 100% uniformity instead of unity, and they didn’t know the difference.”

Maybe not this year, but someday soon, the national Republican Party will need the Kathryn Thompsons of the country more than she needs the party. The Democrats want people like her as badly as Reagan wanted certain Democrats. Whether the GOP can reclaim the Kathryn Thompsons at the presidential level will say much about its future.

You don’t sound angry about all this, I said to Thompson at the end of our conversation.

“Disappointment,” she said. “I thought we were of higher integrity than this, to behave like street fighters. I don’t mind debating issues, but issues are not threatening people’s business, casting disparaging remarks about who we are, saying things like ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel.’ That’s completely unnecessary. I hate to see a presidential race end up with name-calling and labeling. We don’t need that. We’ve got plenty of real problems that need real solutions without calling each other names.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.