Businessman’s Doubts Cast Shadow on GOP

Given the Republican Party’s close ties to the business community, Bob Massey is the kind of voter who should be leading the parade for President Bush.

Massey, president of the San Gabriel Chamber of Commerce and vice president of San Gabriel Valley Lincoln Mercury/SAAB, shares many of the conservative values long espoused by the GOP. But even before this year’s primary, he began having doubts. He changed his registration from Republican to independent. “I felt the Republicans had absolutely no possibility of turning the economic situation around,” he said.

His decision shows how the economic troubles of the San Gabriel Valley, until recently a booming industrial heartland, are impacting the presidential campaign. The valley’s population is important because it closely mirrors the rest of California. Thus, Bob Massey’s disillusionment with the GOP helps explain why President Bush is in deep trouble in California.

Today, two months before the election, Massey favors Clinton. “I’m still a little bit open,” he said, “If I could get something from the Bush Administration that concedes our economy is in the worst shape it’s been in in my recollection and they would make some significant changes, then I would possibly consider voting for Bush. I don’t anticipate that happening.”

I met Massey when he introduced Gov. Bill Clinton at a rally in San Gabriel, a role that intrigued me. Chamber of commerce types usually are found at Republican events. Massey’s appearance was one more sterotype-breaker I’ve encountered while reporting on the San Gabriel Valley’s unpredictable swing voters. I chatted with Massey afterward and arranged for an interview.

We met at the auto agency’s used car lot, and walked to a nearby Italian restaurant. He’s a tall man with sandy hair who has lived in the San Gabriel Valley most of his life. He was born in Alhambra and raised in Monterey Park when that city, which now has an Asian majority, was all white.

“We had El Dorado Days down on Darby Boulevard and everybody dressed up as cowboys,” he recalled. “It was like going to a little town in Colorado. In the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, the Latinos started moving from East L.A. Then I left the area for eight or nine years and when I came back, there was this whole Asian influx.”

Massey has tried to understand the demographic revolution, rather than rage against it, as some San Gabriel Valley residents have done. And a top priority of his year as chamber president is improving relations betwen the Anglo and Asian business communities.

Yet the changes are troubling to him, and to his business. “Very seldom do we sell an Asian an automobile,” he said. “They go to an Asian broker. I still don’t know the answer to that.”

The resulting erosion of his customer base has hurt sales. So have the recession and the loss of industrial plants in the area. “The unemployment in the San Gabriel Valley is unbelievable,” he said. In San Gabriel, he said, “we don’t have any industrial base like we used to have.”

While burdened with such worries, Massey received an unexpected invitation. Judy Brown, the San Gabriel chamber’s executive director, asked him if he’d like to go to a lunch for Clinton. “I didn’t even know Gov. Clinton was coming to town,” he said. The next thing he knew he was invited to join a group of community leaders meeting with Clinton and to introduce him at the rally.

“He gave us his booklet on his economic strategy. I liked a lot of the things I saw there. We talked briefly. I thought that was nice.”

Massey’s brand of Republicans, who lean toward the political middle, are turning out to be trouble for the President’s California campaign, largely because of the economy.

A Los Angeles Times Poll survey of voters in Orange County, adjacent to the San Gabriel Valley, showed the defections. A total of 35% of “non-conservative,” or moderate, Republicans favor Clinton.

At this stage in the campaign, the Republicans don’t seem well equipped to counter the forces pushing middle-of-the-road Republicans into the Clinton camp.

On Labor Day, I attended a Republican rally in Brookside Park in Pasadena, at the western edge of the San Gabriel Valley. No more than 50 people were there--not counting the reporters and television crews.

The event had a thrown-together look about it and the messages were mixed. Sen. John Seymour’s message would make sense to Massey--”jobs, jobs, jobs.” But I don’t think the Bob Masseys of the world would have been stirred by Senate candidate Bruce Herschenson’s autopsy of past Democratic foreign policy.

The GOP will have to do better than that to bring wavering Republicans back into the fold.