Why a Virtual Rookie May Bat for the State GOP Come November

The 1994 season is underway and Rep. Michael R. Huffington is aiming to make the jump to the Big Leagues. Recent polls show that, in his quest for a U.S. Senate seat, Huffington has yet to make it to first base.

Huffington’s personal fortune (which helped him come out of nowhere to win a seat in Congress) and his chutzpah (which helped him run for the Senate less than a year after winning that seat) dazzled the media and anointed him the GOP front-runner against incumbent Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

But after a million-dollar TV blitz, Huffington is no better known among Californians than his main opponent for the GOP nomination, former Orange County Rep. William E. Dannemeyer, and he has been unable to come near Feinstein in one-on-one match-ups.

Things could change. But, whether Huffington wins or loses, the most important lesson for California politics won’t revolve around the effect of money on elections. What is critical in Huffington’s candidacy is that it is symptomatic of a larger problem for California’s Republican Party--a weak electoral bench.

Some would argue no GOP “heavyweights” chose to challenge Feinstein because she appears hard to beat. Feinstein’s strength in early polls may have dissuaded some. But what heavyweights?

That Huffington could easily step up to bat at the highest levels of politics, and could so quickly be taken seriously by the media and many state Republicans, shows that California’s GOP is so devoid of strong leaders, any rookie bench-warmer can buy his way up to the electoral plate.

What has become of the GOP farm system? Truth is, since Ronald Reagan was governor, the GOP has never held more than two of the six partisan, statewide, constitutional offices. That’s one reason they found their bench so thin four years ago--when they plucked Pete Wilson out of the Senate to hold the governorship in a reapportionment year. Wilson was scouted as a moderate who could raise money. He had his own fund-raising base and a GOP President to help out.

Wilson’s hand-picked Washington replacement, Sen. John F. Seymour, couldn’t hold the seat in 1992. So this year there is no incumbent GOP senator or President to help fill Republican campaign coffers.

It is possible that Huffington’s candidacy could shore up GOP fortunes--at least in the short-run. As the Republican nominee this November, he would be able to help subsidize the party’s “ground war”--funding registration drives that will help GOP candidates from Wilson on down the ballot.

But that kind of prayerful anticipation by party strategists reveals how weakened the state GOP is.

And it’s not a done deal that Huffington, even with his millions, will take the primary. A recent Times Poll shows Dannemeyer, the hard-right candidate, ahead of moderate Huffington (22% to 13%) and another conservative, Riverside County businesswoman Kate Squires (7%) in the GOP primary--though no candidate is well-known and there is a high undecided vote (58%). As pollster Mark Baldassare put it, “In the GOP primary, voters are old and conservative. And that will work against Huffington.” Particularly if turn-out is low.

What does all this mean to the future of the state GOP? If Wilson should lose the governorship, it could mean that conservative Dan Lungren, the state’s attorney general, would become the titular head of the state party.

In the long-term, it might mean that the “big tent” philosophy of Republicanism could disappear completely from California, as it did--with disastrous results--from national GOP politics in 1992. Because the California Republican primary electorate is conservative and there are few GOP incumbents with high name recognition, a Republican candidate who wants to make a political dent will need to be rich or ideologically correct--or both.

Rookie state Sen. Robert S. Hurtt Jr. (R-Garden Grove) fits that bill. He bankrolled his own successful campaign for legislative office and continues to gain clout by electing other right-minded conservatives to the Legislature. The ability to expand the GOP bench has been hampered by shifting campaign financing patterns. Contributions from business, agriculture and other economic interests, that once held allegiance to the GOP, now find their way to Democratic incumbents.

Traditional Republican supporters now turn to the new breed of moderate, business friendly Democrats. With the GOP’s edge in business contributions blunted, “ideological money” will grow in importance in GOP politics. And it tends to go to conservative candidates.

Federal campaign financing rules have put constraints on congressional candidates without a committed base of small contributors and grass-roots activists, a hefty bank balance or a hot Rolodex. In California this, too, tends to work against GOP moderates, who cannot count on motivating their party’s activist base--even when they embrace the rhetoric of conservatism. That’s why it’s looking more and more like moderates will have to play with their own money.

That’s what Huffington has done. And no matter what this election year holds in store for him, his political odyssey will tell us something about the future of California’s GOP.