Wilson Faces Strife at His Women’s Forum : Conference: Some critics drop out and call for a boycott, citing the governor’s stand on such issues as affirmative action. Others say the event he created has become too important to miss.

When Gov. Pete Wilson holds his fourth annual conference for women in Long Beach this week, he will take credit for creating one of the country’s premier forums on women’s issues even while his role as host has become the event’s most controversial subject.

On Tuesday, organizers are expecting their biggest, sold-out audience yet, with nearly 7,000 people paying to hear a full day of speeches from a decorated panel of women authors, health experts, corporate executives and Hollywood celebrities.

Topping the list is O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark, whose keynote speech will describe her spotlighted role as a single working mother.

Wilson aides say they have gone to great lengths to make the event educational and not political by inviting more than 100 speakers and panelists representing a wide range of interests and ideologies, including some who are among the governor’s harshest critics.

But earlier this year, Wilson intensified attitudes about his image when he launched an ill-fated presidential campaign based on a platform of controversial issues such as welfare cuts and aggressive opposition to both illegal immigration and affirmative action.

As a result, some Wilson opponents argue that the governor has become such a divisive figure that he is no longer an appropriate host for a nonpartisan event.

“This has, in fact, become a very prestigious event to be a part of, so I said yes” to participating as a speaker, said author Joline Godfrey, whose books are aimed at women entrepreneurs. “But the more he went around the country, it became clear to me that I could not be part of something that had his name on it. I had to stand up and be counted.”

A handful of conference participants have so far joined Godfrey in dropping their participation from the event and urging a boycott. Also, the National Organization for Women has promised that its president, Patricia Ireland, and hundreds of supporters will gather outside the Long Beach Convention Center as part of a campaign called “Fight the Right.”

“The big difference this year is a matter of degree,” said Jean Morrison, a Los Angeles coordinator for NOW. “Whereas in the past, he has tried to be in the middle of the road, this year he definitely went to the right.”

Godfrey and other protesters said they felt especially provoked by the governor’s high-profile attack on affirmative action since it involves policies intended to promote women in business.

In a letter to its membership, the National Assn. of Women Business Owners in Los Angeles said its executive board voted to withdraw from the conference because “if the governor is successful . . . women business owners will have significantly less access to state and county contracts.”

Despite the controversy, however, the boycott appears to have had only a minimal effect on the increasingly popular conference. Rosalie Zalis, senior policy adviser to the governor and the chief coordinator of the conference, said the event is so oversold its organizers turned away nearly 3,000 requests for tickets.

Participants say the controversy has fueled a debate about affirmative action and Wilson’s standing that will continue inside the forum. The conference organizers also sought to mollify some critics with an affirmative action workshop that includes some who disagree with Wilson.

For the most part, however, participants at the conference from across the political spectrum said the event has become a rare and valuable source of information for women that would be unfortunate to lose. They also said the high caliber of speakers and prominence of the event is due to hard work and commitment from Zalis, not Wilson.

In response to the controversy, two of the nation’s top women political consultants--Republican Mary Matalin and Democrat Susan Estrich--co-authored a letter defending the event.

“While it’s unfortunate that others would politicize a nonpartisan conference and attempt to silence the very discussion that will help improve standards for women, we will all learn something on Nov. 14,” the letter said.

Estrich, a former presidential campaign manager for Democrat Michael S. Dukakis and now a professor at the USC Law Center, said she has been urged to drop out of the conference. But she downplayed the political context of the event and said its value on other women’s issues is far more important.

“It is really not about politics,” she said. “To the extent this signals anything about [Wilson], he should get credit. He was smart enough . . . to put it together.”

Planned Parenthood officials said they also considered the call for a boycott, but decided to continue their participation in the conference because of the governor’s support for a woman’s right to abortion.

“It is quite a dilemma,” said Liz Flowers, spokeswoman for the group in Los Angeles. “Planned Parenthood considers itself a progressive organization . . . but we serve too many women and too many people whose lives count on this [event’s information] to not push this forward.”

One of Wilson’s most outspoken critics recently has been author Arianna Huffington, the wife of California’s 1994 Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Huffington. Arianna Huffington said she plans to participate in the governor’s conference even though she recently published a blistering article that criticized Wilson for being untrustworthy.

“For women who disagree with him . . . their participating in the conference doesn’t mean they endorse Pete Wilson,” Arianna Huffington said. “It’s a little like . . . the people who gave Ronald Reagan a [campaign donation] and he said, ‘They are endorsing me, I’m not endorsing them.’ ”

The conference for women, titled “A Call to Action,” was started by Wilson about a year after he began his first term as governor, having narrowly won a hard-fought campaign against Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

Feinstein made a strong appeal to women voters, challenging them to elect the state’s first woman governor and suggesting that they help replace “a pin-stripe suit” with “a skirt.” In the end, a Los Angeles Times poll on Election Day indicated that Feinstein carried women voters by a margin of more than 14%, an unusually large gender gap for California statewide races.

After the election, Zalis said she suggested the idea of a women’s conference to the governor and he agreed the issue was worthy of state sponsorship. The event is operated at no cost to the state, funded exclusively through corporate donations and a $65 ticket price.

By 1994, when Wilson was pitted against another Democratic woman challenger, Kathleen Brown, he used his appearance at the third annual conference as evidence of his dedication to women’s issues. During a press conference at the convention, he unveiled a new women’s organization formed to boost his reelection.

Now, Wilson’s critics point to that election-year use of the conference as evidence that the event is not free from politics.

“He holds a conference that he pointedly says is not a political conference and then, after the conference, he points to it as an example of his support among women,” said Frank Wilkinson, spokesman for EMILY’s List in Washington, an organization to promote Democratic women candidates. “That sounds to me like a classic Wilson scheme.”

In the election last November, Wilson evenly split women voters with Brown.

But political observers from both parties said Wilson has won support from women voters because he has shown attention to their key issues, especially compared to many other Republican candidates.

Democratic Assemblywoman Jackie Speier of Burlingame, although a Brown supporter, was quoted in Wilson campaign literature last year saying the governor “has done more for California women than all the previous governors put together.”

Speier, who is also a panelist at the women’s conference Tuesday, said she disagrees with the governor’s stand against affirmative action. But she said he deserves credit for organizing a successful women’s conference and for several important decisions in support of women’s issues.

When abortion opponents in Washington cut federal funding for family planning, Wilson supporters noted that the governor ordered the difference made up with state funds. Speier also credited the governor for ignoring some Republican opposition and signing her bill this year prohibiting gender-based pricing for services like haircuts and dry cleaning.

“He has signed bills to deal with domestic violence, child support, sexual harassment and battered women syndrome,” Speier said. “He certainly has recognized the potency of women as a part of the electorate and the need for equity.

“I think he should be complimented when he gets it right and noted as well when he doesn’t,” she added.