ELECTIONS / GOP POLITICS : Committee Moderates Fear Right Wing Threat

Moderate Republicans who dominate the local party’s organization are bracing for what they say is a quiet campaign by conservative Christians to regain control of the GOP’s leadership.

Bob Larkin, chairman of the Ventura County Republican Party Central Committee, contends that about a dozen of the 29 candidates vying for seats on the committee are members of the religious right wing, determined to advance an antiabortion agenda.

Larkin and other incumbents have mounted a $5,000 advertising campaign to give voters a slate of “responsible” Republicans for the 19 seats up for grabs in Tuesday’s election.

“Everyone on that slate agrees that the primary purpose of the Central Committee is to work together to elect Republican candidates nominated in the June primary,” Larkin said. “We don’t want to get into single-theme issues.”

But those candidates who are not on Larkin’s list denied that they will focus on abortion and other controversial issues if elected to the board. While many admit they have been urged to run and have strong personal beliefs opposing abortion, they say the Central Committee is not the place to debate the issue.

They learned that lesson two years ago, when a majority of the conservative Christians were ousted by voters, said candidate Jonathan Payne. Now, Payne said, he would be content to vote his antiabortion stance at the party’s state convention, where such issues are routinely debated.

“The days are done when the Central Committee is going to push a social agenda,” Payne said, “unless something really crazy happens, like they start a euthanasia program for California.”

Payne, 38, is a member of two conservative county groups, the Christian Coalition and the New Republicans.

Payne said he was encouraged to run “because I am a hard worker” and would be a “conservative vote at the state convention” set to be held in September in San Diego.

He and other candidates left off Larkin’s slate also denied that they are part of any organized effort to take over the Central Committee. But many said they differ with Larkin’s view that the committee should never stray from its principal chore of party building.

“I do have my opinions and view, and I am going to vote my conscience if anything comes up,” said candidate Michael Ballard, 29, an aircraft electrician for the California National Guard and a member of the First Baptist Church in Camarillo.

Other candidates bluntly say that the Central Committee can and should be used to promote a socially conservative agenda.

Said candidate Matt Noah, 36, a Simi Valley member of the Christian Coalition: “If serving (on the committee) isn’t about an ideology, we’re not different from the Democrats or the Greens or anybody else.”

Before 1990, it was often difficult to find 22 candidates to fill all the seats available on the Central Committee, said Larkin, a longtime Republican activist in the county.

The entire committee faces election every two years. Traditionally, its focus has been on basic party-building functions such as registering voters, raising money and organizing get-out-the-vote drives on Election Day.

The committee also endorses candidates and oversees the activities of the various Republican clubs in the county.

The Democrats also have a county Central Committee, but did not draw enough candidates to warrant an election this year. All candidates who applied will automatically win seats in Tuesday’s election.

Problems on the GOP Central Committee started in 1990, when a conservative Christian faction won a majority of seats. The group’s leader, Bill Jones, triggered controversy when he expressed sympathy for former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s gubernatorial campaign in Louisiana.

Even with Jones ousted as chairman, infighting plagued the committee for two years. The more moderate wing of the party was outraged when some committee members held a candlelight prayer vigil after a meeting in January, 1992, to commemorate the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade abortion-rights ruling.

And the new Christian members tried, but failed, to pass a resolution officially asking the California Republican Party to include a constitutional ban on abortion in the state party platform.

The highly publicized squabbles within the party dried up political donations and the committee was nearly bankrupt when voters ousted the Christian conservatives in favor of moderate Republicans, Larkin said.

If enough of the conservatives are elected, even if they fail to win a majority, they could disrupt meetings by trying to pass resolutions on heated social issues, Larkin said. And that could turn off the spigot on contributions all over again, he said.

“People don’t like to send money to a controversy,” he said.

In the past 17 months, Larkin said, the Central Committee has raised $38,000, refurbished the local party’s Camarillo office and assembled a computerized list of the county’s Republican voters.

That will allow the committee to give candidates precinct lists and mailing labels at cost, he said.

Larkin said he thought the group’s problems were over until a flurry of candidates with unfamiliar names began filing candidacy papers a few days before the deadline. Before then, mostly incumbents had sought reelection, he said.

“All of the sudden, 10 or 15 new names showed up on the lists. And just from what they have been saying in public, it would appear it is an effort to take back the majority of the Central Committee.”

The 16 people listed on a slate mailer sent to 20,000 Republicans who are likely to vote on Tuesday were selected because they are committed to fulfilling the party’s tasks, Larkin said.

Only 19 seats are up for election because only one candidate qualified for the district with three seats representing Oxnard. As the only candidate, Nancy Shook automatically wins and the committee will appoint members to the two other seats.

Central Committee districts follow the lines of supervisorial districts and the number of seats available is based on population.

Some of the first-time candidates said they are running simply because the incumbents’ performance is lacking, especially in registering voters.

Candidate Tom Lee, 19, a Thousand Oaks business student and part-time worker at a tool firm, said he is concerned with a recent drop in Republican registration. According to the county registrar of voters, Republicans have lost 2,313 registered voters since January, while Democrats have gained 93.

Yet Republicans still hold the edge in overall registration by 5,332 voters, with 147,084 on the rolls, the figures show. Lee said he is concerned about the GOP’s lead narrowing.

“It may not seem like much, but in politics, it can mean the difference between victory and defeat,” Lee said.

Larkin said most of the Republicans’ loss comes from older, taxpaying residents moving out of the county, a contention that the county’s assistant registrar of voters supports. But Larkin confesses that the committee has lagged in registration efforts.

The leadership body plans to concentrate its efforts during the remainder of 1994 on signing up new Republicans, he said.