Wilson Tries to Hold Truce Within GOP

Gov. Pete Wilson and Assembly Republicans got together for drinks and dinner the other night and nobody shouted or cursed. The governor didn’t even call anyone “irrelevant.” People smiled and relaxed.

This is good news for Republican voters, whose interests usually are best served when party leaders are united and expending their energy repelling the Democrats’ agenda and pushing the GOP’s. Conversely, it is bad news for dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, who know something about political clout being weakened by a fractured party.

On the other hand, it really should not be news at all. Governors and legislators of the same party are supposed to be allies. Ronald Reagan had his 11th Commandment-- Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Another Republican. But Reagan is political history and so is his commandment.

There is just something about Pete Wilson that many conservatives do not like. It is not only that he favors abortion rights or, they believe, is too accommodating to environmental interests. It is more even than his record tax increase two years ago. It goes beyond policy to personality.

Wilson isn’t meek and mild like the centrist stereotype; he merely looks that way. He acts like the feisty Marine combatant he once was. Right-wingers believe they too often have been on the receiving end of the bayonet and this enrages them. And the governor’s feelings are mutual, believing they are too dogmatic and intractable.

*

It was in this atmosphere two years ago that Wilson and Assembly Republicans went on a “retreat” into the Sierra foothills. Predictably, they got into a verbal slugfest. The governor even called one legislator “irrelevant” and embellished the description with a four-letter word plus a suffix. It was something about the lawmaker’s refusal to compromise on taxes and spending. But all anybody in the Capitol remembers for sure is the two-word lambaste.

Now jump ahead two years to the next retreat, last Thursday night in nearby Folsom. “The vibes were much different,” says one conservative Assemblyman, echoing other participants. In her introduction of Wilson, Assistant Minority Leader Andrea Seastrand of San Luis Obispo joked about the previous retreat and promised the governor to be supportive and “relevant.”

There is a truce, if not yet a solid alliance. And the cease-fire extends far beyond the Legislature to several enclaves of GOP activists that had been exchanging shots with Wilson for two years.

“Collectively, Republicans had their heads handed to them in the last election. Everybody’s sitting back realizing that our previous M.O. of beating up on each other wasn’t working,” says Mike Schroeder, an Irvine attorney who is president of the volunteer California Republican Assembly and previously one of Wilson’s harshest critics.

Interestingly, the other side is talking similarly. “There’s nothing like being handed your head. . . . Everybody was a loser, there were no winners,” says Wilson’s longtime political adviser, George Gorton.

In California, Republicans lost a U.S. Senate seat and gave up ground in both the House delegation and the Legislature. Wilson’s welfare/budget initiative also was rejected.

Compounding the far-flung party defeat was that Wilson, breaking precedent with former Republican governors, unsuccessfully backed his own candidates against conservatives in GOP legislative primaries. “The governor’s a major political player and he has a right to get involved in primaries,” says a Wilson adviser. “It may have been dumb, but that’s another question.”

*

The truce also applies to a widely predicted “holy war” between the religious-right and Wilson moderates. There is a GOP desire--in California as well as nationally--to submerge the abortion issue; maybe not take “pro-life” out of the party platform, but to greatly de-emphasize it. Election exit polls showed abortion to be a loser for the party.

The incoming Republican state chairman, Pasadena surgeon Tirso Del Junco, is committed to an intraparty cease-fire and a “big tent” philosophy that includes all views on abortion. So are the two candidates for the party’s vice chairmanship: John Harrington, Energy secretary in the Reagan Administration, and John McGraw, a young Redwood City political activist. Their contest will be decided at the GOP state convention the last weekend in February--and Wilson is staying out of this battle.

There is a realization throughout the California GOP that Wilson faces a tough reelection fight next year. And Republican legislators and party activists still would rather see him in the governor’s office than a Democrat.