County GOP Committee Condemns Allen : Politics: Dana Rohrabacher leads the recall charge, labeling the newly elected Assembly Speaker a ‘traitor.’

The Orange County GOP Central Committee took the unprecedented step Monday of condemning Republican Speaker Doris Allen of Cypress, who this month defied her colleagues and allied herself with Democrats in being elected to the Assembly’s top office.

The Central Committee endorsed a recall of Allen by a vote of 49 to 8, passing a resolution calling on the California Republican Party and all Republicans in the state to do likewise.

Allen angered party leaders June 5 when she voted along with 39 Democrats to elect herself speaker of the Assembly, in a legislative coup engineered by then-Speaker Willie Brown. The 38 other Republicans supported the candidacy of Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga).

Since then, the GOP has been locked in a bitter but largely successful internal battle to prevent other Assembly Republicans from aligning with her. Allen, who as speaker gained control of GOP money, staff and committee assignments, has said she will not relinquish the post but will support a Republican legislative agenda.

The committee delegates at the meeting heard an impassioned address from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), who called Allen a “traitor” and compared her to Benedict Arnold, an American general who fled to the British side in the Revolutionary War.

Rohrabacher, who lives in Allen’s district, said she betrayed a conservative revolution in California as it was about to overthrow “the corrupt Willie Brown machine in Sacramento.”

Allen was not at the meeting at the Westin South Coast Plaza, and no one spoke on her behalf.

Frank Ury of Mission Viejo, a member of the Central Committee, castigated the Cypress Republican for firing members of the Republican staff in Sacramento, calling it a betrayal of school choice, education reform and the rights of the unborn.

In her official response to the recall attempt, Allen called it a waste of taxpayers’ money and said Republicans should be “congratulating” her for being the “only person able to dump Willie Brown as Speaker.”

“The recall process is supposed to be used to expel corrupt politicians, not as blackmail by special interests and extremists,” she said.

Republican officials said the vote by the county central committee will boost the campaign against Allen, which was endorsed last week by the statewide Republican County Chairmen’s Assn. Among her most serious detractors are her Assembly colleagues from Orange County.

Earlier this year, the state Republican Party led a successful recall of Paul Horcher in Los Angeles County. Horcher, who was elected as a Republican, became an Independent and endorsed Brown for the speakership.

Phil Paule, political director of the state Republican Party, said Monday that the California Republican Party is carefully gauging its role in the recall campaign in Orange County. The party this time cannot as easily take sides as it did in the Horcher recall, he said.

“We spent resources on the Horcher recall, but he was an Independent,” Paule said. “Doris Allen is still a Republican, so we are still looking at our use of resources for the recall. We have a certain set of bylaws, and we are reviewing them. . . .

No date has been set for the recall election in Allen’s 67th Assembly District. To force a recall vote, Allen’s detractors must collect 25,606 valid signatures, or 20% of all the votes cast when she was reelected in 1994, from voters in her district. The 67th district includes all or parts of Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Rossmoor, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Stanton and Westminster.

Opponents of Allen will start collecting signatures perhaps as early as this week, when the recall campaign receives official petitions from the secretary of state’s office, said Rhonda Carmony, who is Rohrabacher’s campaign manager and also the head of volunteers in the anti-Allen effort. The signatures must be collected within 160 days.

Allen, who was elected Speaker in early June, is due to leave office in 1996 because of term limits. Officials at the county Registrar of Voters office said the recall would cost the county about $200,000.