Women Grapple With Gender Gap : Male-Dominated GOP Leaves Them Little Room, Many Say

A February chill swept through the Orange County hotel meeting room where 31 local Republicans had reluctantly agreed to discuss their differences on abortion.

Deep divisions in the national Republican Party over such social issues as abortion had affected even the fabled GOP stronghold of Orange County, where a handful of high-profile Republicans had come out in support of Democrat Bill Clinton for president in 1992.

Now, three months after the election, both sides of the abortion issue were called to the table by Gus Owen, then president of the influential Lincoln Club of Orange County and an abortion rights supporter whose wife, developer Kathryn G. Thompson, had been one of the defectors. Owen hoped to keep the local rift from widening.

On one side were the moderates, mostly women, including Janice Johnson, whose husband, Roger, would later become the highest-ranking Republican in the Clinton administration as General Services administrator. On the other side were the conservatives, mostly men, including Orange County GOP Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes and the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition.

But the meeting would prove to be more than a debate over abortion. In the eyes of some who attended, it would symbolize the gender gap that separates many moderate female activists from the male-dominated power structure that controls Orange County’s Republican politics. And the moderates came away from that 1993 meeting believing the leadership was intolerant on women’s issues.

As Owen would say later, “It’s difficult to be part of the ‘old boys’ crowd when you are a woman.”

A number of Republican women in the county say they are often shunned and sometimes laughed at when they run for partisan office or try to move up the ranks of the county GOP. Even in recent elections, when there was an open seat and no incumbent, women say they were not recruited as candidates. Those who ran were given no support from the party and usually had to campaign with their own money.

“The battle in Orange County is about power. . . . It’s about acquiring more toys” that can be manipulated, said Eileen Padberg, the 1988 regional political director for the George Bush presidential campaign. She publicly broke with local party leaders in 1992, while managing an unsuccessful primary campaign to unseat Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove).

“They would rather you have a penis than have intelligence or independence,” Padberg added. “One, you can’t run against an incumbent, and two, you’re not one of them. You don’t have the secret handshake, so you can’t run.”

The party power brokers who recruit candidates or supply campaign money insist there is no sexism. They want to win elections with the best candidates that reflect the political views of their districts, they say.

“I don’t look in people’s pants before I decide whether I support them or not,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach).

If women are not supported, Fuentes explains, it is because they are taking on Republican incumbents, do not have financial backing, or are “liberals” who do not fit the county GOP’s conservative philosophy.

“Let’s not confuse the term ‘women’ with ‘liberal women,’ ” Fuentes once told a reporter. Men who do not meet the same criteria also are told to drop out, GOP leaders maintain.

Nevertheless, a perception of sexism causes Republican women to feel cast out of the party, said County Supervisor Marian Bergeson, an antiabortion supporter who 18 years ago became the first woman from Orange County elected to the state Legislature.

The county’s record on electing women to higher office reinforces that perception:

* No woman from Orange County has ever been sent to Congress.

* Of the 11 members of the county’s Sacramento delegation, 10 are men. The exception is Assemblywoman Marilyn C. Brewer (R-Irvine).

* Only two women have served on the Board of Supervisors: the first, Harriett M. Wieder, retired in 1994, the year Bergeson was elected supervisor after 16 years in the Legislature.

Bergeson said both men and women need to do more to get women elected to office. Women, she said, need to organize, recruit candidates and raise money, establishing the same power networks that have long existed in male political circles.

“Oftentimes, a woman will be evaluated on her ability to raise money. Traditionally, women have not had that access to money,” Bergeson said, adding that will change “when women start spending money to elect women.”

However, she also faults men for setting a higher threshold for female candidates. Women “can lick the stamps and walk all the precincts” for men’s campaigns, but that doesn’t give them the right, in men’s eyes, to run for office, she said.

Local political lore is filled with stories of women who approached power brokers with their campaign plans only to get “friendly advice” that the women likened to a pat on the fanny.

Brewer remembers being told in 1994 by one influential Republican, “Why don’t you take your money and go shopping for jewels?” Another female candidate for an Assembly seat said Fuentes told her, “Your money would be better spent taking a vacation with your husband.”

Fuentes calls the charges “silliness.”

Jo Ellen Allen, vice chairwoman of the county GOP, agrees.

“A lot of feminists don’t have a sense of humor,” said Allen, who received the party’s support in her unsuccessful campaign for a Garden Grove-based Assembly seat in 1992. “A lot of this stuff is grumbling and crying from people who have not been able to get the support of the party.”

Past experience shows that women probably need stronger political and financial backgrounds to be taken seriously as candidates, said Diann Rogers, executive director of the Seneca Network, a new group that is raising funds for Republican women across the state.

When Bergeson set out to break the barrier 20 years ago by running for an Assembly seat, she knocked on one corporate door after another in search of support and was quickly reminded she was entering a man’s world.

Bergeson, then a Newport Beach school board member, was asked by businessmen: Was she happily married? What was her husband’s occupation? Could she play cards with “the boys” in Sacramento, a favorite pastime of the assemblyman who was stepping down?

“It was as if they were saying, ‘There’s no way that a school board lady could hope to be effective in Sacramento where the big boys play,’ ” remembers Jackie Heather, Bergeson’s campaign manager.

Just as Bergeson was elected to the state Legislature in 1978, Wieder became the first woman to serve on the County Board of Supervisors. In 1982, Doris Allen of Cypress was elected to the Assembly, and Bergeson moved on to the state Senate two years later.

And that’s where the movement stalled.

Republican women who favored abortion rights and ran against bedrock conservatives found themselves in bloody fratricidal battles. Among them:

* Evelyn R. Hart, a former Newport Beach mayor and councilwoman, who ran in 1988 against then-Assemblyman Gil Ferguson, one of the so-called “cavemen” of the Assembly. She entered the race despite warnings from Fuentes that she was “washed up in politics,” Hart said. During the campaign, her volunteers were stalked and photographed in a campaign of harassment by unknown opponents, she said.

* Judith Ryan, a former Superior Court judge, who ran in the 1992 GOP primary against Dornan. She and her consultant, Padberg, reported receiving harassing telephone calls from Dornan. Other callers threatened her husband’s business. Most of Ryan’s money came from national abortion rights groups, including the National Organization for Women, prompting Dornan to say publicly: “Every lesbian spear chucker is hoping I get defeated.” (He said afterward he meant to say “spear carrier.”)

Angered by the treatment Ryan had received, Brewer co-founded Women In Leadership to raise money for female candidates. Later, she left her job as an aide to Supervisor Thomas F. Riley and used family business money to run in 1994 for the 70th Assembly District seat vacated by Ferguson.

One of Brewer’s first encounters with the “good ol’ boys” was at a 1994 state GOP convention in Burlingame, where she chased down Lincoln Club board member William Buck Johns III to introduce herself.

“He just laughed,” recalls a friend of Brewer who was there. “He said, ‘We’ve got somebody. Need to let these boys win.’ ”

Brewer, who supports abortion rights but considers herself a pro-business conservative, was labeled a “liberal.” During the campaign, she found an early-term fetus in her mailbox, her campaign backers say. But she persisted.

“I kept suiting up and showing up,” Brewer said. “They never saw me as one of them.”

Brewer upended the political establishment by winning the Assembly seat, mostly because the two male conservatives in the race split the endorsements and the vote.

Then came Haydee V. Tillotson, a conservative, wealthy Huntington Beach businesswoman who campaigned in last year’s special election to replace Doris Allen, who was being recalled because of her political alignment with then-Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

Tillotson had run for office before, been an active party member, contributed money to the Allen recall, and was prepared to finance her own campaign, eventually raising about $250,000. And although she does not support abortion, she believes government should stay out of the debate.

Lincoln Club President Doy Henley backed Tillotson, but other power brokers sided with political novice Scott Baugh, who was recruited by Rohrabacher.

Rohrabacher admits being motivated by an old political grudge: Tillotson was an ally of Wieder, who ran against Rohrabacher when he won his congressional seat in 1988.

Days before the election, the Baugh forces produced a public opinion poll showing Tillotson with low name recognition, prompting her to quit the race, she said.

“A member of the Lincoln Club faxed that to me. I was absolutely insulted,” Tillotson said. “People knew I was my own person. . . . They probably felt Baugh would be more of a player.”

Baugh won the Assembly seat but has since been indicted on charges of campaign finance irregularities. He has pleaded not guilty.

Bergeson, who endorsed Tillotson, said political gamesmanship against women is “what eventually will lead to a backlash.” Tillotson’s foes labeled her a “liberal,” Bergeson added, yet they have no problems endorsing Garden Grove Councilman Mark Leyes, a former Democratic Party activist-turned Republican and antiabortion supporter, who faces a November runoff election for a Board of Supervisors seat.

“I think the abortion issue is a big litmus test” for GOP candidates, a Republican member of the business community confided privately. “But if there’s a litmus test, then apply the litmus test to Mark Leyes. What litmus test does he pass? There’s no litmus test other than he’s a lifelong friend” of Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle.

Brewer has shown, however, that once in office, political pragmatism can take over. She has aligned herself with the very “kingmakers” she once claimed shunned her and other women. Her past opponents, meanwhile, rarely mention her abortion-rights position now, and some see a state Senate seat for her in the future.

“You ought to talk to Marilyn now,” said Johns, explaining he once discounted her because she came from the “liberal side” and he didn’t think she could win.

“She’s done a helluva job, and we’re just so proud of Marilyn,” he said.