Affluent Conservative Political Group to Focus on Local Races : Ideology: Organization headed by Ahmanson heir has helped put candidates in Legislature. New approach is designed in part to put others on a similar path.

Allied Business PAC, the aggressive and affluent conservative values political group headed by Orange County banking magnate Howard Ahmanson, has announced that it is changing its name and plans to spread its reach into city and school board races statewide.

The organization, which spent $5 million on legislative races during the 1993-94 election cycle--more than any other California group--has already switched its offices from Garden Grove to Pasadena and will rename itself California Independent Business PAC.

It also plans to begin looking at conservative Republican candidates in school board and city council races in hopes of developing a “farm team” for state legislative elections, a strategy that political analysts say mirrors a common tactic of the religious right.

“We’re hoping to create another level of training for people,” said Danielle Madison, the group’s executive director. “We’ve found in trying to recruit good candidates that it’s hard to find people who have had local experience. . . . We want to find good solid business people to run for office, but sometimes it’s a huge jump from that to the Legislature.”

The name change also marks a shift away from state Sen. Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove), one of the original founders of Allied Business PAC. After he was elected to the state Senate in 1993, Hurtt began moving to the periphery of Allied. The name change removes him from any official connection to the operation.

Ahmanson, who inherited a multibillion-dollar fortune from his family’s savings-and-loan operation, will serve as the new group’s chairman. The other members are all holdovers from the Allied days, wealthy Southern California businessmen Ed Atsinger, Roland Hinz and Rich Riddle.

Madison said the group registered with the state under its new name last month. Allied will continue operating as a shell organization until several outstanding loans are paid, then will be shut down.

The group has consistently pushed a conservative agenda. It is pro-business and anti-tax, and opposes abortion and gun control. Ahmanson and Hurtt have consistently pushed conservative issues such as the school voucher initiative.

Allied has also been quite effective. In 1994, 29 of the 32 candidates who received contributions from the group won primary battles; 24 of them were elected to the Legislature. In 1992, 17 candidates backed by Allied won seats. Currently, 25 lawmakers backed by Allied are in the Assembly and eight are in the Senate.

The group raises money strictly by tapping the wealth of its small cadre of members. In contrast to the $5 million Allied spent in 1993 and 1994, Democratic kingpin Willie Brown raised $4 million.

Its tactics have proven particularly effective in the aftermath of the state’s term limits law, which has begun to produce a rapid turnover of officeholders. At the same time, efforts to curtail campaign spending have either been gutted by the courts or rejected by lawmakers, opening the door for wealthy political groups such as Allied to quickly make a mark.

Madison said the move to create a pool of potential candidates on the local level probably won’t begin to take form for about another year. She said the group will focus on districts where voter registration numbers favor a conservative candidate and a swing of one or two seats would install a conservative majority.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at Claremont Graduate School, said the group’s move to the local level “is a very smart strategy in the era of term limits” because it gives them a ready talent pool to draw on for state races.

She also said it mirrors tactics perfected by the Christian Coalition and other religious right groups.

“Religious groups have always started on the local level,” Jeffe said. “We saw that most clearly in 1990 in San Diego County with the stealth campaigns run by the Christian Coalition, which helped achieve a majority for the religious right on the Vista school board.”