GOP Right Puts Emphasis on Unity at Convention : Politics: Gov. Wilson may benefit from several actions, including the election of Tirso del Junco of Los Angeles as the new state Republican chairman.

Gov. Pete Wilson emerged Sunday from another raucous Republican state convention with about the most he could hope for from a party apparatus dominated the past two years by the conservative right and Christian activists: The 1,321 delegates left town without blatantly embarrassing the moderate governor.

In the long run, Wilson may benefit from Sunday’s elections. The results put most of the top leadership positions in the hands of seasoned party officials, who stressed the need for GOP diversity and unity after last November’s election drubbing by Democrats.

Their message was that the broader good of the party and its total agenda must take precedence over ideological purity on a few issues such as abortion and gay and lesbian rights.

The newly elected party leaders can be as avidly conservative as the younger activists, who were drawn to politics in pursuit of moral and social goals. And they are certainly more conservative than the governor.

But these winners won because of goodwill built up through party work over the years and the loyalties that accrue in the process, according to veteran observers. They are generally heirs of the Ronald Reagan legacy in California, compared to the newcomer conservatives, whom one moderate critic described as captives of the “Pat Robertson theocracy.”

The new state GOP chairman is Los Angeles surgeon Tirso del Junco, 67, who has built lasting friendships within the California GOP over three decades. He will hold office through Wilson’s 1994 reelection campaign.

Succeeding Del Junco automatically in 1995 will be former U.S. Energy Secretary John S. Herrington, 53, of Walnut Creek, a lawyer-businessman active in California politics since 1966. He will serve in the 1996 presidential campaign.

Herrington defeated his more conservative opponent, John McGraw of Redwood City, 678 votes to 517.

Del Junco said in his convention address: “All of us are here today because we care deeply about our party and we want to ensure its future.

“During this last election cycle, we let our own personal agenda divide us and our united message became distorted, uprooting the vitality of our party from the top down,” he said.

Del Junco said he would welcome all who want to be Republicans, including abortion rights supporters, gays and members of racial and ethnic minorities. Of the nearly 1,400 voting delegates on the convention floor Sunday, officials estimated that about 25 were openly gay and about 40 were black.

Within minutes of taking the gavel, Del Junco engineered a compromise on abortion that seemed to satisfy Wilson troops and the conservatives: With a bylaws change, the party decided not to adopt a platform in gubernatorial election years.

This means that Wilson can go into his reelection campaign without fighting out the divisive abortion issue all over again. The maneuver also precludes moderates from a threatened floor fight to remove the 1992 abortion plank, which advocates outlawing abortion.

“This will allow the governor to run on his own platform,” Del Junco said.

Del Junco’s style was a marked change from that of his predecessor, Jim Dignan of Modesto.

Last September, Dignan overrode opposition from the Wilson wing of the party and used a confusing parliamentary ploy to write the anti-abortion language into the state party platform for the first time.

Over the weekend, moderates repeatedly complained that Dignan had “stacked” important party committees with right-wing conservatives.

One result was Resolution Committee approval Saturday of a measure sponsored by delegate Jon Fleischman of Cupertino, an official of the Young Americans for Freedom, which asked the Republican National Committee to consider holding the 1996 Republican National Convention in Colorado.

The idea was to express solidarity with Coloradans who voted last fall for a state constitutional amendment nullifying all gay rights laws. In retaliation, gay rights activists have attempted to mount a boycott of Colorado. Some national groups have canceled Colorado conventions.

Albert Anderson, a San Diego tourism official, protested that such a move could jeopardize San Diego’s extensive efforts to land the GOP convention, with a potential $500 million in business.

“Let’s not worry about Colorado,” Anderson said. “Ask the Republican Party to bring it (the convention) to California. We need it financially.”

The resolution in favor of a Colorado convention lost on a standing vote of 368 to 267.

Earlier, the convention had shouted approval of resolutions that were harshly critical of President Clinton’s proposal to allow gays to serve in the military.

At that point, the party’s leading gay spokesman, Frank Ricchiazzi of Laguna Beach, said: “The perception out there by the average voter is that this party is anti-gay, this party is anti-abortion, that this party is only for those who believe in the Pat Robertson theocracy.”

However, after Herrington’s victory and other actions, Ricchiazzi said he is encouraged by the prospects for greater tolerance and diversity within the state party.

In another surprise gesture of moderation, Assemblyman Gil Ferguson of Newport Beach, long a leader of the party’s right, denounced the Resolution Committee’s proposal to censure moderate Assemblyman Paul Horcher (R-Diamond Bar) for accepting appointment by Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown as vice chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

Horcher’s action outraged conservatives because Brown had refused to name one of their own to the post.

Ferguson said the censure by the state party would set a bad precedent. If any institution should discipline Horcher, he said, it is the Republican caucus, which has elected not to do so.

Following Ferguson’s lead, the convention easily rejected the censure proposal.