ORANGE COUNTY REPUBLICANS : 2-Day Clinton Conference to Be Nonpartisan Affair

From his desk at the transition headquarters in Little Rock, Ark., Orange County political consultant Bob Nelson is still somewhat amazed that he is there--the only Republican staffer on President-elect Bill Clinton’s transition team.

But he is, he says, living proof of Clinton’s “politics of inclusion”--the President-elect’s repeated insistence that minorities, women, and yes, even Orange County Republicans, will have roles as the new Democratic Administration is established.

And as Clinton’s two-day economic conference gets underway in Little Rock on Monday, local Republicans Roger Johnson and Kathryn G. Thompson will be among those helping define the direction of national economic policies.

Nelson, who signed on with the Clinton transition team as deputy assistant director for Public Outreach, has worked to ensure that Republicans would be included in the transition and inaugural activities, as well as receive appointments in the new Administration.

In planning for the much-ballyhooed economic conference, Nelson said there was a “very substantial effort” to include “the ideas of people like myself to make sure there was a lot of representation of Republicans from around the country.” He added that between 30 and 50 of the approximately 200 total attendees will be Republican.

Invitations to the conference were highly coveted. But there was never any doubt that Johnson, chairman of Western Digital Corp., and Thompson, a real estate developer, would be on the invitation list.

Johnson, Thompson, and Nelson were among a group of visible Orange County Republicans who took the politically risky step of publicly breaking ranks with their party to support Clinton’s bid for the presidency. During the campaign, Johnson and Thompson did numerous national television interviews, and Nelson said he traveled to 36 cities for the Clinton-Gore ticket.

So guarded has information about the conference been kept, Thompson said, that conferees would only learn their schedules when they arrive in Arkansas.

“I don’t think that for a two-day meeting, the setting is going to allow for a 1-through-10 itemized list of ‘Here’s what you have to do,’ ” Thompson said. “But I think it’s important that we leave with a common understanding of the approaches we need to take to reduce the deficit. . . . There has to be some certainty for people” to break the economic paralysis gripping the country.

“For example, if you were going to buy a car now, you might want to hold back because you don’t know if there’s going to be more income tax,” Thompson said. “If you are a businessman, you might want to hold back on buying that new piece of equipment until you know if you will have that investment tax credit that makes it worthwhile.”

While both Johnson and Thompson applauded Clinton’s economic team--headed by Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen as treasury secretary, and Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) as director of the Office of Management and Budget--Thompson said she was particularly pleased to see three women appointed to key posts.

Referring to the appointment of Donna Shalala, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Thompson said she considered that an important matter in the development of economic policy.

“HHS is the largest segment of the budget, so as a woman, I am very pleased to see that happen. So far, it seems to me that it’s a very balanced approach, and a very tough approach to be taken to the Cabinet.”

Of Harvard lecturer Robert B. Reich as secretary of labor--a liberal whose views on trade and industrial policy have rankled both union and corporate leaders--Thompson said: “I would rather have him in labor than in economic policy.”

Johnson, who has been mentioned sporadically as a possible nominee for an unspecified post in the new Administration, characterized the appointments of Bentsen and Panetta as being “right smack down the middle” of the campaign promises made by Clinton.

Since most members of the economic team have reputations as “deficit-cutters,” Johnson suggested Clinton would be addressing the economy “not just in shallow ways, but with long-term solutions. (The problems) have been a long time in the making and it will take a long time to fix.”

Johnson said he did not believe in a short-term stimulus package unless it has long-term effects.

“I don’t think we need to hire 20 people and dig a ditch from here to there, no,” Johnson said of short-term proposals that include job-creation programs.