GOP Could Use a Road Map for Abortion Issue

One of the nation’s hottest congressional races, taking place right here in the Southland, explains a lot about the abortion fight raging in the Republican Party--and the huge chasm separating pro-life extremists from most mainstream voters.

This is the battle for the 36th Congressional District, which extends from Venice through the South Bay beach cities, the Palos Verdes Peninsula and San Pedro and inland to Lomita, Lawndale and Torrance.

Democrat Jane Harman has represented the district since 1992, when she used a campaign theme of “pro-choice and pro-change” to defeat former Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores. Pro-lifer Flores didn’t have a chance, especially when Harman, married to rich audio equipment manufacturer Sidney Harman, spent $2.28 million, compared to Flores’ $811,592.

In the next race, in 1994, the Republicans nominated Rancho Palos Verdes council member Susan Brooks, who supports Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision permitting abortion. Brooks, even though she was outspent by Harman by $725,000, still came within 812 votes of beating Harman in a district that is just about evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.

Now these two pro-choice women are in a rematch. While Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, who opposes abortion, desperately tries to avoid a fight over the issue at the GOP National Convention in San Diego in August, here in the heartland of Los Angeles County suburbia, the Republican congressional candidate enthusiastically espouses the position that Dole rejects.

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Across the country, suburban areas such as this have become the Republican base in the last 30 years, changing a once-rural party into one that speaks to the hopes and fears of home-owning families trying to hold on to traditional values in a sophisticated and rapidly changing society.

Brooks believes that the Republican Party’s proposed pro-life platform plank, advocating a constitutional ban against abortion, is opposed by these Americans. Nevertheless, the GOP plank states unequivocally: “We believe the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.”

Brooks said, “A lot of older women remember the back-alley days, and those days are not to be reenacted. This is a moral decision that is to be made between a woman and her doctor.”

Public opinion polls show most Republicans are with Brooks. A Times poll of California Republicans found 61% favored abortion in the case of rape and incest or to save the woman’s life. Another 17% favor unlimited abortions. Nationally, a Times poll showed Republicans just about evenly split. Democrats, on the other hand, favor choice by a much larger margin.

At the grass roots, this means that candidates and political managers must take a more pragmatic approach than the sharply ideological rhetoric you hear in news sound bites or on the Sunday political talk shows. For example, Brooks’ campaign manager, Catherine Rayner, is a pro-life Republican, and was an organizer for the California Independent Business Political Action committee, an ultraconservative antiabortion organization based in Orange County. Before that, Rayner was a field organizer for the mayoral campaign of another pro-choice Republican, Richard Riordan.

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Rigid right-wing Republican ideologues might scorn this as selling out, but the smart ones know that it’s the only way to win in a state, and a nation, that has repeatedly demonstrated that the public doesn’t regard abortion as a simplistic issue to which you can just say no.

Ronald Reagan seemed to sense this instinctively as he made his first forays into the suburbs 30 years ago. He became the voice of the new suburban Republican Party in Sacramento and Washington by articulating a broad vision that soared above even such divisive issues as abortion. He could bring down the house at an anti-abortion rally, but in fact he signed the state law legalizing abortion.

While lacking Reagan’s political and oratorical skills, Susan Brooks is trying to follow his road map.

Bob Dole isn’t an orator, either. But he, too, should pull out the old Reagan road map, or he’ll find himself lost in the suburbs.