O.C. Is a Center of Attention for Clinton Camp

President Clinton comes to Orange County today with one eye on his current battles with the Republican-controlled Congress and the other on next year’s campaign for the White House.

One thing is certain, campaign strategists say: Expect to see a lot more of him before the 1996 election.

“Orange County is key for the President. If he wants to win California, he has to keep the margin in Orange County below 200,000 votes,” said former Assemblyman Tom Umberg, who is expected to play a major role in Clinton’s reelection campaign. “He has a very good chance, as he did in 1992, of doing that.”

This time around, political observers think Clinton will capture fewer states in the South than he did in 1992. That would make a win in California imperative. To succeed here, a Democrat must keep the Republican margin of victory in Orange County at about 200,000 votes, a difference that in turn would be balanced against the heavy Democrat turnout in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

In Orange County, Clinton is not concentrating on fund-raising events as he did in Los Angeles on Thursday night. Instead, an important component of his stopover here is a session with Democrat, Republican and independent opinion leaders at the Tustin Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station.

Strategy for that part of the visit has been devised by Roger W. Johnson, head of the General Services Administration and a GOP defector to Clinton in his 1992 campaign against then-President George Bush. The meeting will emphasize Clinton’s role as political centrist, Johnson and others said.

“We want to reach out to Republicans and Perot people, regardless of who they are backing now,” said a Democrat who has worked on planning the Orange County visit. “This is base-building against the increasing likelihood that the Republican nominee will be from the right wing of the GOP.”

During the 1992 campaign, Orange County gained national attention when its Republican base splintered, a schism that was dramatized when a group of Republicans--including county notables, such as Johnson--abandoned Bush and publicly supported Clinton. The so-called “Orange County 8” campaigned throughout the country for Clinton.

Robert Nelson, a political consultant who worked for President Reagan’s campaign and was one of the eight defectors, said Clinton still enjoys Republican support.

“I talk to a lot of Clinton Republicans in a lot of states, and every one of them plans to vote for Clinton again,” he said. “The party moved, we didn’t.”

In the 1992 election, Clinton carried California by 1.5 million votes, losing Orange County to Bush by 106,447 votes. Significantly, a large number of the county’s Republicans broke ranks with their party’s nominee and voted for Perot, an independent candidate who received 218,108 votes.

“If Ross Perot would not have been in the race, the margin from Orange County would have been there and across the nation for George Bush,” said Orange County Republican Party Chairman Tom Fuentes. “Perot was the spoiler and the reason Bill Clinton is President, a minority president.”

Fuentes and other local Republicans argue that the typical Perot voter here is either a conservative or a populist, who will vote for the Republican presidential nominee rather than Clinton.

Johnson, however, sees Perot voters as those “who are, in the main, Clinton people. They want change and a sound operating government; they don’t want to demolish government.”

Democratic strategists believe the issue in the campaign is which candidate can command the center, and that is what the visit to Orange County is designed to underscore: Clinton as a moderate, a man of issues, not ideology. The events in the county today are scheduled around that theme: Clinton will meet privately in Santa Ana with police officers from Southern California to discuss crime, while highlighting his anti-crime package, which is putting 100,000 police on the nation’s streets.

Clinton will also publicly promote a national program for youngsters funded by the Taco Bell Foundation and run by The Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

In his meeting with a bipartisan group of opinion and business leaders, Clinton will discuss improving exports, converting defense industry jobs and increasing access to college loans, Johnson and other strategists said.

To Fuentes, it is all hype. He calls Clinton the “most partisan President we have known in this century.”

“The liberal agenda of Bill Clinton has not changed, although his spin doctors are masterful in draping it in more moderate cover these days,” he said. “What we have here in Orange County is a community that is excited about the Gingrich revolution.”

That preference and party loyalty will show up at the polls next fall and can be documented right now through voter registration, GOP activists say. Republicans outnumber Democrats by about 600,000 to 385,000 in Orange County.

But according to a UC Irvine poll conducted in late August, the two leading Republican candidates in Orange County have weaknesses Clinton might be able to exploit.

The poll showed county voters evenly split between Clinton and Gov. Pete Wilson. Clinton would lose to Dole, the survey showed, by 50% to 35%. However, that margin--in a county with 1.1 million voters--is far less than the 200,000-vote difference thought necessary to offset Democrat advantages upstate.

More important, it showed Clinton making significant inroads with independents against both Republican contenders. In addition, Clinton held onto swing Democrats, who sometimes vote Republican in presidential contests.

Republicans contend the poll is not indicative of what would happen more than a year from now, after the Republican presidential nominee spends time campaigning here.

The poll results mesh with Democrats’ strategy for the coming electoral contest. Ann Lewis, a national spokeswoman for Clinton ‘96, said the President’s campaign must woo independent and suburban voters.

“The election has less to do with old-style political voters and more to do with independents who vote more on the issues,” she said. “Some of the dynamics we saw in 1992, that resulted in people crossing party lines, we are seeing again. It is caused by the growing extremism of Republican Party.”

Republicans here reject that thesis, saying first that the dynamics in the country have changed.

“The Republican Party has won the Senate and the Congress because our philosophy resonates with the American people,” said Buck Johns, a GOP fund-raiser and party activist in Orange County. “I think the mood of the country is more to the right. That hurts Clinton, who is an ultra-liberal who has run toward the center.”

In addition, Johns said the Republicans will run stronger because Bush “wasn’t conservative enough. He raised taxes. He had conservatives defecting. That is why Ronald Reagan won a second landslide. Had Bush adhered to conservative principles, he would have won.”

But Nelson, who founded Republicans for Clinton-Gore, believes the Republican Party has abandoned its tradition as a progressive party, while Clinton has made good on promises to fight crime, reduce the deficit and cut the size of government.

“The right of a woman to make a choice about whether or not to have a child is not the business of the government,” he said. “The Republican Party has decided to exclude those for whom this is a core issue.”

Declaring that “the relevance” of the GOP is being destroyed, Nelson said, “Today, Richard Nixon wouldn’t be able to win a Republican primary.”

* PUTTING SCHOOLS ON-LINE: President unveils plan to link public schools to Internet. A3

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Presidential Percentages

President Clinton is in Orange County today for several events, including a meeting with local political and business leaders. He’ll be attempting to improve his political standing here. This is how Clinton would fare against Gov. Pete Wilson and Kansas Sen. Bob Dole in Orange County if the presidential election were held now:

Wilson vs. Clinton

Pete Wilson: 41%

Bill Clinton: 41%

Other/don’t know: 18%

Dole vs. Clinton

Bob Dole: 50%

Bill Clinton: 35%

Other/don’t know: 15%

And here’s how the county voted in 1992:

George Bush: 44%

Bill Clinton: 32%

Ross Perot: 24%

The Elite Meet

Some of the people who will meet with Clinton on political and business matters today:

Developer Kathryn G. Thompson

U.S. General Services Administration head Roger W. Johnson

Tom Umberg, a Clinton campaign strategist and former Democratic assemblyman

Former county Democratic Party Chairman Howard Adler

Pacific Mutual Life Insurance CEO Thomas C. Sutton

Source: L.A. Times files

On the Itinerary

Here’s President Clinton’s formal schedule for his visit to Orange County today:

9:55 a.m. Arrives at Tustin Marine Crops Helicopter Air Station.

10:20 a.m. Visits Boys and Girls Club of Santa Ana, 950 W. Highland Ave. Visit includes separate meeting with law enforcement officers from Southern California.

2:30 p.m. Departs Orange County from the Tustin air station and flies to San Diego.