Wooing Voters, GOP Style

It’s people like Gloria Buzard who have made Orange County a bountiful orchard for conservative Republicans.

Buzard has never run for office. She isn’t a big-bucks contributor.

What she does is vote. And vote. And vote.

Year in, year out, come flood, fire or earthquake, she has made her voice heard on election day. And during two decades in a Yorba Linda neighborhood near the birthplace of Richard Nixon, Buzard has consistently cast her ballots for conservative Republicans.

She and other such dutiful voters are the sort cultivated by the staunch conservative Republican forces that have come to so thoroughly dominate politics in Orange County.

Time and again, Orange County’s conservative cadre has vaulted to election victories using sophisticated computer programs to target frequent Republican voters such as Buzard. They then zero in with artful campaign mail and the invaluable absentee ballot, which can lock up a vote early in the campaign.

Electoral apathy by other voters is exploited as well. If moderates don’t feel inspired, excited or interested enough to go to the polls, that makes the votes of Buzard and other loyalists count all the more.

Rock-ribbed conservatives are particularly crucial during low-turnout primaries and special elections, when their reliable harvest of votes can dominate a race. Special elections, which draw scant voter participation, have become almost a sure thing for conservative candidates in Orange County.

But as politicians in both parties concentrate on reaching the diminishing number of people who vote regularly, a growing pool of potential voters is ignored. They don’t get the mail; they aren’t pushed to vote absentee. Even some political consultants who use these campaign techniques see problems for society at large.

Jack Orr, a San Diego County political consultant, calls it “one of the most pernicious aspects of modern election politics. Fewer and fewer people are learning . . . about the candidates. We are working off a diminished universe, and it is getting smaller every year.”

Consultants and politicians share that secret. The vast majority of residents is not in the game. It’s only the ones who vote that count.

“It is totally minority rule,” complained Shirley Carey, a moderate Republican who lost a recent run for an Orange County Assembly seat. “And those who are not voting are the ones who are responsible.”

Orange County’s conservative kingpins argue vehemently that the results represent the majority viewpoint of all voters. The sweep, they insist, reflects the natural order of politics in this most conservative of counties, where candidates routinely fight to stake out the most conservative turf. It’s no different than liberal domination of Democratic West Los Angeles.

“I believe the vote is reflective of community sentiment,” said Thomas A. Fuentes, county GOP chairman. “That is to say, those who are thinking, those who are participating and those who care are enunciating their sentiment at the ballot box. That is what democracy is about. Those who choose not to vote forfeit their voice.”

Consider the high-stakes battle last November to recall and name a replacement for renegade Republican Assemblywoman Doris Allen of Cypress, who angered party leaders by striking a deal with the Democrats to become Assembly speaker for a brief period in 1995.

Despite the statewide importance of a race that would dictate control of the Assembly, just 1 of 4 registered voters in Allen’s district turned out on election day. But conservative Republicans were there, helping oust Allen and install corporate attorney Scott Baugh, a political novice endorsed by the county’s GOP leadership.

Baugh’s low-turnout victory was hardly unusual among Orange County’s legislative delegation. Of the 11 statehouse lawmakers representing Orange County, six were propelled to their current political posts in low-turnout special elections dominated by a faithful electoral bloc of conservatives. Turnout is typically about 15%.

In all cases, they have won those elections by capturing just a tiny percentage of the eligible vote. Party favorite Ross Johnson, for example, carried last year’s special election primary contest in the 35th state Senate District with the support of fewer than 5% of the district’s registered voters.

With an election tab of more than $500,000, Johnson spent nearly $30 for each of his 18,546 primary votes, then coasted in the May runoff in the heavily Republican district against an overmatched Democrat.

Once ensconced in the Legislature, where they enjoy the important advantages of incumbency, these politicians have been unbeatable.

“This core of conservatives in Orange County is better than Republicans have been in a long time at knowing the techniques of winning elections,” said Tony Quinn, a Sacramento-based political analyst.

“Many genteel Republicans don’t like the soiled side of campaigning. There’s the country club approach, a sort of noblesse oblige attitude. But these guys brought to Republican politics what many found unsavory about the way the Democrats operated.”

That means aggressive, rolled-up-sleeves campaigning. Conservative political operatives deploy a ready army of volunteers--many of them young aides drawn from legislative or congressional offices--to staff phone banks and walk precincts.

Orange County’s winning conservatives have almost always enjoyed a big financial advantage. In the last five years, an average of $351,143 was spent by GOP legislative candidates in the year they won their special elections.

Such financial clout makes a candidate virtually unbeatable, providing an overwhelming advantage in reaching voters through direct-mail campaign brochures and hit pieces.

“If you have an advantage that allows you to put out eight or 10 pieces [of campaign mail] and your opponents cannot afford to respond,” said Orange County political consultant Dan Wooldridge, “then they cannot compete.”

The campaign mail, assembled by the few favored consultants of the county GOP elite, is inevitably slick, slashing and carefully crafted to illuminate the gulf between the anointed conservative and the opposition. Typically, it demonizes rivals, even fellow Republicans.

A hit piece in Rep. Robert K. Dornan’s 1992 primary against former Superior Court Judge Judith Ryan employed an unflattering photograph of five nationally known feminists under the headline “Why Are These Women Smiling?” The flip side of the mailer reads: “Because Judith Ryan Is Their LIBERAL Pawn!”

The text called the women “radical feminists,” “left-wing activists” and “liberal Democrats,” and said that “Judith Ryan is one of them.” The rationale: Ryan was endorsed by various women’s political groups, including what the card called “the ultra-liberal” National Organization for Women.

While mail is a must, the computer has become a best friend to Orange County conservatives. State Sen. John R. Lewis, an Orange Republican long known as the political mastermind of Orange County conservatives, and Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) have campaign computer systems full of details on the electoral propensities and ideological likes and dislikes of legions of voters.

Want to reach a registered Republican who votes consistently and is a member of the National Rifle Assn. or attends church every Sunday? Want to find a Reagan Democrat who is tough on crime and might swing Republican? It’s all there in sophisticated computer databases.

Armed with that information, the candidate can dispatch a seemingly personal letter extolling his pro-gun, pro-death penalty or antiabortion stance, or perhaps a four-color brochure exposing an opponent’s less-conservative foibles.

Information on a given voter is derived from public records, phone surveys and canvassing. It is augmented with a host of other data, including information on marriage, income, homeownership, parents, ethnicity, age and spouse’s party affiliation.

Called “voter tags,” these identifiers are accumulated by politicians and consultants and often shared. A voter’s hot-button issues, from abortion to taxes, are also noted and electronically saved.

The combination of computers and sophisticated voter lists are the keys to victory, allowing Orange County conservatives to precisely identify who votes--especially in low-turnout elections--and bombard them with mail and phone calls.

Some consultants target voters who have participated in at least three of the past five elections. Four of five is better yet. The voter who has hit the polls in five straight elections is considered a sure thing, as are regular absentee ballot voters.

“You keep after them with mail and communicate the hell out of them,” said Orr, the San Diego County political consultant. “And if they are not a likely voter, you ignore them. And, sure enough, on election day, [infrequent voters] don’t even know there is an election. They haven’t received any mail, and they don’t care. I don’t even want them to vote.”

Harry and Donalda Alders of Garden Grove receive barrels of mail each and every election. The reason: They have voted by absentee ballot in the last eight elections.

Both are registered Republicans and were heavily lobbied during the Allen recall. “We are both politically active and take a great interest in political activities,” Harry Alders said. “We do feel it is important to vote.”

The Alders are “reliable conservatives,” and did not hesitate to vote to recall Doris Allen and replace her with attorney Scott Baugh, they said. “We met Scott personally at a Rush Limbaugh Club meeting, and we were impressed with him,” Harry Alders said.

While the Alders were being deluged with mail, many of their neighbors received far fewer campaign pieces. Mailers are expensive, and campaigns concentrate resources on the core group that votes with greatest frequency.

“The more conservative the electorate, the more inclined they are to cast a vote on election day,” Fuentes said. “So in a conservative community like this, it plays out that more conservative voters go to the polls--as they do across America--with more regularity. . . . As a consequence, we Republicans tend to win on election day.”

What makes them turn out?

Orange County’s conservatives are motivated by a firm set of beliefs on bedrock issues. They are inveterately anti-tax, they long to curb Big Government and they typically oppose abortion. Many would love to see gun laws spiked.

“I’m motivated by two things,” said Buzard of Yorba Linda. “The economics: I want less government and more of a pro-growth outlook. And, No. 2, I am pro-life, so I want to have the government out of subsidizing abortions. That’s one thing I think a lot of Republicans can agree on.”

These voters also look favorably at any candidate who has received a friendly nod from Orange County’s conservative stars in the Legislature or Congress. An endorsement by Pringle, Lewis, Johnson or Senate GOP Leader Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove) is a signpost for conservative voters, a signal that the candidate--steely veteran or raw political unknown--has the right stuff.

A Times Orange County Poll showed that half of registered Republicans say their vote is influenced a lot or somewhat by specific endorsements from the party, and the figure is two-thirds for religious conservatives. Among high propensity Republican voters, 44% say an endorsement would influence their vote to some degree.

Even some Republican campaign gurus consider such politics a bit Pavlovian.

“That group responds to the message from the Republican elected leadership, who have done a very good job of energizing and delivering their base,” said one GOP consultant from Orange County. “They have trained their core group to hear and look for a specific message from Curt Pringle, [Huntington Beach GOP Rep.] Dana Rohrabacher, Rob Hurtt, John Lewis, Ross Johnson. And that has been effective. If you have 15% of the potential voters in your pocket, that is tantamount to victory in special elections.”

Special elections have become increasingly frequent because of the many vacancies created by the state’s 1992 term limits law. In just the last 13 months, Baugh, Johnson and Assemblyman Dick Ackerman (R-Fullerton) were elected this way.

In the rush to fill vacant seats, special elections are often held at odd times. Newspapers usually give only brief nods to the contests. There is often no radio or television coverage; although Orange County has a fledgling cable TV news channel, it has no broadcast TV stations.

The result: an even more tepid response from an already apathetic voting public.

Except for the highly publicized recall contest won by Baugh, voter turnout in the nine legislative special elections and their primaries held since 1991 has ranged from 11.8% to 18%.

Consider Johnson’s victory in a May 1995 special election for the 35th state Senate District seat. Johnson won the runoff with 33,110 votes against Democrat Madelene Arakelian, a hefty 70.5% of the total vote.

Robust as it seemed, Johnson’s landslide wasn’t an overwhelming mandate from residents of his district, where nearly 800,000 people live. Just 8% of the district’s registered voters cast a ballot for him.

Half of Johnson’s votes were garnered by absentee ballot. To seal the victory, he spent nearly $600,000 in the March primary and the May runoff, most of it on mailers and phone banks to reach a tiny slice of the electorate.

These other legislators also captured their seats in special elections:

* Ackerman won his seat last September with the support of 17,503 votes, less than 1 in 10 of those registered to vote. Turnout was a shade under 13%.

* Hurtt dominated a special election in March 1993, winning three-quarters of the vote in a race where turnout was just 14.6%. He went to Sacramento on the strength of 27,436 votes, just 1 of 9 registered to vote in his district.

* Lewis jumped from the Assembly to the Senate in 1991 with the support of 36,706 voters, not even 1 of 8 of those registered. Turnout was 18%.

* Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange) won a September 1991 special election runoff with 15,254 votes, 1 in 9 of the registered voters. Turnout was 12.6%.

In every case, these were safe Republican districts. That means the true contest was settled in the special election primary, where each of these GOP conservatives was backed by an even smaller slice of voters: Ackerman with 12,057, Lewis 13,374 and Conroy 12,832. Hurtt won without the need for a runoff by receiving more than 50% of the vote in the primary.

Fred Martin, a longtime government relations specialist for Bank of America, said the significance of the special election victories cannot be underestimated. “Always, when you get a group that fundamentally is a minority but wants to be a majority, they do it through techniques like that [special elections],” he said.

Baugh’s election in November epitomizes the strategy and tactics used by the party’s insider candidates to get key voting blocs to the polls.

Baugh said his goal was to “mobilize conservative forces, including Christian forces, the pro-life community, the pro-gun community and canvass neighborhoods and encourage our people to go to the polls.”

A key component for Baugh’s campaign team was a large, expensive absentee ballot drive that sought to identify the candidate as “the alternative to Doris Allen.” Dave Gilliard, Baugh’s campaign consultant, used computerized databases to target likely voters and those who regularly cast absentee ballots.

“We figured that with election day the Tuesday after the Thanksgiving holiday, the turnout would be quite low,” Gilliard said. “We wanted to do it by mail because we figured that is the best way to ensure their participation.”

Beginning in September, Baugh’s campaign team dispatched absentee ballot solicitations with messages from Baugh’s key early backers--Rohrabacher, Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) and Assemblyman Bill Morrow, a South County Republican.

Once the voter returned an absentee ballot request, the campaign began what insiders call “the chase.” A campaign literally chases the voter with political mail, phone calls and visits in the hope of pulling him or her into the fold.

The campaign mail doesn’t stop until a vote is cast, either by absentee ballot or at the polls. When done right, the results of such a campaign can be phenomenal.

“With special elections, there are so few voters that if you can bring them in early with an absentee program, they end up being 40% to 50% of the vote cast and will dominate the election,” said Mark Thompson, an Orange County GOP consultant.

Politicians and political strategists expect the conservative hammerlock on Orange County politics to loosen a bit with the coming of the state’s new open primary law, adopted overwhelmingly by voters in March.

Open primary supporters believe that the measure, which will allow California voters of any affiliation to invade the previously protected turf of party primaries, will lead to looser party control of politics.

Republican chieftain Fuentes rues the proposition’s passage, saying it has “so much potential for devastation and has such evil lurking in its language, because it takes away from Orange County Republicans the right to select philosophically committed candidates through the intrusion of liberals and Democrats into our primary.”

Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Matt Lait.

INSIDE

Miles Apart: The habits of voters in Newport Beach and Santa Ana are as different as the cities’ demographics. A8

Crucial Cogs: Elected leaders owe much of their success to a cadre of young conservatives who toil behind the scenes. A8

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A FIVE-DAY SERIES IN ORANGE COUNTY

Sunday: Orange County conservatives are spreading their influence throughout the state, providing muscle and money.

Monday: A pair of Orange County millionaires are funding the conservative think tanks that are reshaping thought in Sacramento.

Today: Republican strategists are exploiting electoral apathy and mastering the science of electioneering, with swift and stunning results.

Wednesday: Money for Orange County’s GOP machinery no longer comes mostly from land developers but rather two ultraconservative businessmen drawn to politics by religious beliefs.

Thursday: Orange County’s leading Republican cheerleader knows how to play hardball.

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An Election Edge

State Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine) captured his seat in the 35th District in a 1995 special election that, because of the GOP’s registration advantage, was virtually locked up in the primary. As a result, a tiny percentage of the electorate won the seat for Johnson, who now represents more than 800,000 people.

March 14 Primary:

District population: approximately: 800,000

Registered voters: 397,827

Total ballots cast: 60,057 (15.1%)

Total votes for Johnson: 18,546

Absentee votes for Johnson: 9,068

Note: Field of eight candidates included six Republicans. Top Democratic vote-getter, Madelene Arakelian, received 4,611 votes.

****

May 9 Runoff:

Registered voters: 398,307

Total ballots cast: 46,965 (11.8%)

Total votes for Johnson: 33,110

Absentee votes for Johnson: 19,079

Votes for Democrat Arakelian: 13,143

Source: Orange County registrar of voters

Researched by PETER WARREN / Los Angeles Times

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Winning Low-Turnout Elections

Orange County’s GOP leaders have mastered the art of winning low-turnout elections, particularly special elections. With little news coverage devoted to these low-visibility contests, most voters get their information from heavily slanted mailers sent by the campaigns. The key to winning is capturing the ballots of voters who rarely miss an election--typically older, wealthier and more conservative people. The use of absentee ballots is central to the strategy. The effort can cost as much as $30 a vote.

[1] Analyze the race: Using historic voting data, consultants estimate turnout. Special elections draw the fewest voters; typically about 15% of those registered. Turnout for primaries rarely exceeds 50% and often hovers at about 33%. A gubernatorial race draws about two-thirds of all registered voters, a presidential race about 80%.

[2] Target voters: Voter histories are analyzed by computer to determine who is likely to vote in the contest at hand. High-propensity voters include those who have voted consistently in recent elections and those who have previously voted absentee. In some elections, absentees make up half the total vote. Many computerized data bases also employ “voter tags,” which identify voters who have contacted legislators about specific issues.

[3] Mail absentee applications: The likely voter receives a computer-printed mailer from the candidate. The mailer can include a message that previous research has shown is important to that voter. A personalized letter is standard. An absentee ballot application, often containing a bar code that identifies the voter, is always enclosed. The voter has the option of sending it back to the campaign, which absorbs postage costs.

[4] The chase: Returned applications are scanned, reading the bar code and entering the voter’s name in a database. From the registrar of voters, the campaign purchases lists of other voters who have applied for absentee ballots on their own. All applicants are deluged with correspondence. Campaigns keep “chasing” them with mail, phone calls and home visits.

[5] The list: The county registrar of voters office constantly updates its list of new absentee ballot applicants and those who have voted absentee in advance of the election. The campaigns buy these lists as often as several times a week. They send more “chase pieces” to anyone who still has an absentee ballot. Once a voter casts a ballot, the mail and phone calls stop.

[6] Election day: The campaign works to turn out likely supporters, who have been identified by phone and mail surveys, door-to-door canvassing and political allies. Using computerized precinct lists, workers telephone and knock on doors to get out the vote. Volunteer help is crucial; campaigns offer everything from carpools to child care to get voters to the polls.