Preferences Foes Wary of Buchanan’s Support

Sponsors of California’s anti-affirmative action ballot initiative are worried that GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan may seize the issue when he campaigns in California this month and give it an extremist tag that sponsors are trying to avoid.

Fearing that moderate voters will be turned off by Buchanan, they have convinced GOP front-runner Bob Dole to open the discussion about California’s initiative in the primary by releasing a letter today that says the measure is needed to restore equal treatment and fairness in the law.

“It’s important for Sen. Dole, as a national figure and one who we expect will be president, to set the tone of the debate,” said Sean Walsh, spokesman for Gov. Pete Wilson, a Dole supporter and a leading sponsor of the initiative. “It is also important that this be argued on the merits and that it not be clouded by extremists in the Republican Party or by . . . President [Clinton].”

Walsh did not discuss Buchanan specifically. Still, Dole’s action revealed a split within the GOP since Buchanan supporters were offended that the senator’s position was welcomed and their candidate’s was not.

They noted that Buchanan has been an outspoken opponent of affirmative action for many years. And they warned that Dole’s hope of uniting the party is in jeopardy if his supporters keep casting Buchanan as the troublemaker.

“They continue to try to persuade people that Pat is an extremist,” said Sen. Richard Mountjoy (R-Arcadia), Buchanan’s California campaign chairman. “They ought to stop that because the more they say that, the harder time they will have getting the party behind one candidate. You are talking about a major, major constituency that believes what Pat is saying.”

The balance within the GOP has been an especially difficult one for Ward Connerly, a University of California regent and the chairman of the initiative campaign.

Connerly has suggested his campaign has an open-door policy, welcoming support from Democrats as well as all of the presidential candidates, including Buchanan. At the same time, however, he agreed to appear with Dole at a news conference promoting the initiative while he has declined the same treatment for Buchanan.

“Will I go to a press conference where Pat Buchanan is endorsing this--absolutely not,” said Connerly, who is pledged as a Dole delegate to the national GOP convention. “I personally believe the vision that Bob Dole has put forth about [how] California and the nation grow to be an inclusive society is not a vision that I have seen thus far from Pat Buchanan.”

Because Buchanan and Dole have similar views on affirmative action and the ballot measure known as the “California civil rights initiative,” the difference that concerns GOP leaders is more a matter of perception than policy.

Steve Forbes, the only other major GOP candidate remaining in the presidential race, has been critical of affirmative action programs but he has not discussed California’s initiative.

Supporters of the measure, who submitted more than 1 million signatures last month to qualify the measure for the November ballot, have tried to portray the issue as one that seeks fairness by eliminating laws that require state government to consider ethnicity and gender in selecting some job applicants or contractors.

“It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating to try to rig the results of the competition through the use of quotas, set-asides and other preferences that serve only to pit American against American, group against group,” Dole wrote in a letter to Connerly that was obtained by The Times.

Critics say, however, that government hiring and contracting is not inherently fair without special considerations. President Clinton has defended affirmative action with a policy he calls “mend it, don’t end it.” And a campaign to oppose the ballot measure has been launched jointly by groups representing women and minorities.

Like the measure’s sponsors, Buchanan has described the issue as one of “equal justice for all and special privilege for none.” Still, leaders of the initiative have called him their “worst nightmare” because they believe his role as a champion of the GOP right wing would taint their effort.

It is actually the November election where Republican leaders hope their significant investment in promoting the anti-affirmative action initiative will pay off at the ballot box. State GOP leaders have boasted about their expectation that the issue will divide moderate and liberal Democrats, causing a major problem for Clinton’s reelection campaign.

“We are trying not to make this a partisan, wedge issue,” Connerly said. “And there is one way [Democrats] can take this issue away--that is to endorse it.”