GOP’s San Diego Bash Makes Noise in ‘California’s Heartland’

Here in “California’s Heartland,” the Republican National Convention got lousy television ratings but good reviews, with nominees Bob Dole and Jack Kemp making serious strides in their not-so-subtle seduction of undecided moderate voters.

Janna Rigby, an independent who voted for Ross Perot in 1992, found herself falling for the GOP ticket as she watched the candidates’ speeches Thursday night with her Republican father and Democrat sister. “Unless something huge happens with the Democrats, that’s where I’m leaning,” she said.

Annette Simmons, a kindergarten teacher, blanched at Dole’s attack on teachers unions but then gave him credit for “guts,” and cheered his “outrage” at America’s crime problem.

And a few neighborhoods away, Chris Bingham, who works a graveyard shift processing pharmaceutical orders and who went into the week doubting he could vote Republican, found himself warming to Dole. “The guy’s got a great smile. You never saw that before. He looks pretty darn good for a 73-year-old.”

Here where central Fresno blends into a patchwork of tree-shaded neighborhoods and rapidly disappearing farmland, few voters were at risk of convention-coverage addiction. Based on interviews throughout the week, most didn’t watch the four-day event so much as absorb it in bits and pieces. And even those who had said they planned to view dutifully instead wound up renting videos, getting called in to work, or escaping the 112-degree heat by loading up the van and heading for the coast or the mountains.

*

The biggest complaint from those who did watch and described themselves as political moderates was that GOP speakers spent too much time bashing President Clinton. Otherwise, they reserved their wrath for the TV networks’ continuous commercials and the seemingly incessant punditry there and on PBS.

At the Rodeo Coffee Shop, in Clovis’ old-town area, Frank and Mary Borges, Republicans who voted for Clinton in 1992, ate pancakes and praised the GOP for putting so many women on the podium. “What a woman speaker says, that influences me,” Mary said. “I’m impressed.”

At Barnum’s Barber Shop, Democrat Wayne Stumpf, 59, said he voted for Clinton in the last election, but lost faith in the president’s “integrity.” Watching the convention cemented his decision to vote for Dole this time. “I have differences with the Christian Coalition and the right wing of the party, but to me they’ve settled those issues,” he said.

Stumpf’s views don’t go unchallenged, though. “My wife is a liberal Democrat. When [New York Rep.] Susan Molinari was speaking, she kept saying, ‘That’s not true!’ ”

In fact, the Stumpfs’ neck of northern Fresno might be called “Gender Gap.”

A couple of streets over, Joan and Marvin Bier sat at their kitchen table, eating a dinner of tamales with the television on in the background.

“We don’t have political arguments in this house,” said Marvin, a registered Republican. Within 12 seconds, though, the fire department mechanic was jabbing the air with his finger, while Joan, a secretary and lifelong Democrat, waved her fork.

“What’s his name, Kemp? He’s already flip-flopped on three issues,” she said.

The mother of three grown sons, Joan was impressed with retired Gen. Colin L. Powell’s emphasis on the need for strong families. By the end of the convention though, neither her vociferous husband nor the GOP media onslaught had changed her views. “I’m going to vote for Clinton,” she said.

Just down the street, independent Janna Rigby said she and her husband, a Republican, avoid talking politics until the last minute. But as Dole’s daughter, Robin, spoke on Wednesday, the 37-year-old high school teacher gave running commentary, sounding like a media analyst. “All these things she’s saying speak to women--the things you did with your dad. They’re on the right track.”

When Elizabeth Hanford Dole wandered into the audience to do a talk-show-style tribute to her husband, Rigby nodded approvingly. “I like her, and that may be a problem for the Democrats. [First Lady] Hillary [Rodham Clinton] is controversial. [Elizabeth Dole] gives the impression her husband is someone you can trust as a neighbor. I think she’ll appeal to women.”

Rigby’s main concern, though, is with Dole’s proposed 15% cut in income tax rates. “My sister, a Democrat, was asking, “How does that work?’ That’s what I want to know too. If I understood the tax thing, I would say ‘I’ll vote for Dole.’ Otherwise, I’ll wait till after the Democratic convention” to decide.

But for Greg and Annette Simmons, the GOP’s weeklong embrace of family broke through their skepticism about Dole. By the time the candidate said it doesn’t take a village to raise a child, but rather, “It takes a family . . . “ he had the couple enthralled.

“The hardest thing we’ve ever done is have a family,” Annette, 30, said, holding her 7-month-old daughter while the couple’s 4-year-old chattered nearby.

Dole’s video clip of his tough life in Kansas, and his tale about his father coming to visit him in the hospital, moved the couple. “He and my dad have a lot in common, in that they had to sweat blood to get where they are,” Annette said.

Dole momentarily lost his grip on the young teacher when he lashed out at teachers unions. “I was tempted to be offended,” she said. “But teachers unions can be very powerful and political. He took a chance of offending tens of thousands of teachers for something he believes in. That’s a gutsy thing to do.”

*

As red, white and blue balloons spilled from the convention hall ceiling, the Simmonses were all but sold on the Dole-Kemp ticket. “The fact that Dole said he would balance the budget by 2002 sits very strongly with me,” said Greg.

But by the time Travis Tritt had launched into his patriotic country tune, the couple’s euphoria had evolved into analysis.

“Will that $500 tax credit per child be phased out [for more affluent taxpayers]?” asked Greg. “I don’t think there’s going to be a phasing out of any capital-gains tax cut for the wealthy, so I don’t think the child credit should be phased out [as income increases] either.”

Nearby, in a tract of small homes with neat lawns, Bingham, 43, watched the final convention session with the curtains pulled and only a fan to blow back the afternoon heat.

Bingham had reacted with skepticism to earlier speeches, questioning the GOP’s commitment to working people. He was drawn into the final event, though, from the moment Kemp began talking about the hugs and encouragement he got from his father. Kemp’s warmer Republicanism appealed to Bingham, who is the sort of blue-collar moderate pollsters lump into the angry-white-male bloc.

He and his wife, Barbara, a bookkeeper, have raised four children. With the kids now out on their own, the couple spends as much time as possible deer hunting across the West.

That hobby puts Bingham at odds with Clinton on gun-control issues. But it is the GOP that has been repelling him on most of the other so-called wedge issues, he said. So when Kemp talked about inclusiveness, and toned down the party’s often harsh anti-immigration rhetoric, that appealed to Bingham.

“When Barbara and I are hunting in these mountains, the families we see are Mexican families. They’re out there teaching their kids the traditions. . . . They really have as much right to be here as we do.”

Ultimately, it was the GOP ticket’s promise to abolish the tax code and restructure the Internal Revenue Service that hooked Bingham. “I don’t think there’s any American who doesn’t believe that our tax code is stupid and needs to be replaced,” he said.

And after listening to Dole’s speech, Bingham added that for the first time the GOP nominee didn’t seem “dour” to him. “I think he scored some points,” he said.

But Bingham refused to let the convention push him into a commitment. “I think it’s much better to wait until you see what guys are saying closer to the election,” he said. “I probably will not make a full decision until I see the debates” in the fall.