Republicans: Moderate chairwoman Karen Kurta wants county’s GOP to avoid divisive issues and instead focus on fund-raising and campaign volunteering.

A self-described “flaming moderate,” Karen Kurta’s political activism was ignited four years ago by a newspaper article that featured Ventura County’s Republican chairman draped in an American flag, espousing the ideals of a notorious ex-member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Kurta fired off a blistering letter to local newspapers that scolded her fellow moderate Republicans--and herself--for not being politically involved, and for allowing the right wing to take over the party.

She punctuated her letter with some incendiary language of her own: “Scum only rises to the top of a stagnant pond.”

Kurta has since been twice elected to the central committee and was recently named chairwoman of the county’s Republican Party, guiding the central committee down a moderate path.

A Ventura lawyer, she wields a firm gavel and doesn’t allow the most conservative members to embroil the committee in political debates on abortion or other divisive issues.

Instead, she steers its membership to the more mundane but core work of the committee: registering voters, raising political cash and recruiting volunteers.

“It’s been hard work to try and keep the committee headed in the right direction,” Kurta said. “Moderates have to get much louder. That’s what it’s going to take in the fight for the soul of the party.”

Battles between moderates and the right wing have popped up in recent years in Republican central committees across the state. In a majority of California counties, the right wing quietly took control of the local party structure and continues today to dominate all the way to state headquarters.

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But in Ventura County, right wing members grew too noisy in 1991 for Republican moderates to ignore. They embarrassed their moderate colleagues by passing resolutions condemning abortion, getting arrested for blocking entrances to clinics performing abortions and elevating Bill Jones of Simi Valley to the position of chairman.

Jones was the one who caught the attention of Kurta and others by his headline-grabbing comments seemingly in sympathy with David Duke, the former Klansman who has run for a variety of public offices in Louisiana.

In 1992, a group led by Bob Larkin of Simi Valley and citrus rancher Paul Leavens mounted an organized, coordinated campaign to reclaim power, which they did.

Kurta was part of that wave of moderates who swept out the social conservatives recruited by the conservative California Republican Assembly and the Christian Coalition, the group founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson to train candidates for higher office.

“It was my wake-up call,” Kurta said. “I don’t like the bigotry and I don’t like the narrow-minded hate that I hear being attributed to the party.”

Kurta considers herself an economic conservative but abhors the socially conservative philosophies that have worked their way into the state Republican Party platform.

“I’m a pro-choice Republican, and I’m also a moderate when it comes to other issues,” she said. “I believe homosexuals have as much right as I do to work anywhere, or live anywhere or serve their country.”

She wants the party to drop its stated position opposing abortion rights. Instead, she said, the party platform should be silent on abortion and other divisive issues.

These views, of course, are anathema to those socially conservative members remaining on the central committee, such as Steve Frank of Simi Valley and Matt Noah of Moorpark.

Noah has assumed the role as the agitator at committee meetings. He said Kurta, like her predecessor as chairman, Bob Larkin, has made the committee politically inconsequential by not taking a stand on the important issues facing the party.

Noah, an antiabortion activist, complained that he feels stifled politically.

“Our central committee is irrelevant in the minds of most people in the county,” Noah said. “It’s like a club for the old guard Republicans.”

Yet the moderate majority applaud Kurta for keeping the committee focused on its central task: help GOP candidates get elected to office. And they say she has managed to keep the peace between the moderate and socially conservative wings.

“She’s doing a great job of balancing the two factions,” said Leavens, a central committee member. “We just aren’t having the problems we’ve had in the past.”

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Historically, the central committee helps candidates by raising political cash and lining up volunteers to work in campaigns. Leavens said Kurta has managed to motivate most members, even social conservatives, to volunteer their time and money.

“Of course,” he said, “the most vociferous of them haven’t done a damn thing except nit-pick everything that comes up.”

Kurta, 53, is a lifelong Republican. Her mother was executive secretary of the Republican Party in Hawaii, where she was born and raised.

“I did a lot of envelope stuffing,” she says of her youth.

Over the years, Kurta has volunteered to assist in various campaigns of GOP candidates, such as former Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino of Ventura.

Kurta moved to Ventura County in 1965 when her husband was in the Navy and was transferred to the base at Point Mugu.

She worked at the California Youth Authority as a counselor until she became hip deep in her legal studies at Ventura School of Law. She graduated in 1978 and joined a small Ventura law firm.

As a partner in Orrock, Higson & Kurta, she handles civil litigation, specializing in real estate matters.

Kurta sprinkles her work week with various Republican duties, setting up events and trying to keep the organization running smoothly.

A tireless party cheerleader, she carries voter registration cards in her car in case she runs across a potential recruit.

“The energy of the party, the life of the party depends on getting new blood and different opinions,” she said. “I think there is room for everybody if we stick to fiscal conservative ideas, smaller government, less taxes and more personal responsibility. That is where we have all kinds of room to agree.”