County GOP Ready for New Hand at Helm

For 14 years, Thomas A. Fuentes has shaped the image of the Republican Party in Orange County into that of a dogmatic conservative powerhouse that has helped set the state GOP agenda.

Fuentes is expected to win another two-year term as county chairman at tonight’s party elections, but many party leaders are signaling that this probably will be his last.

Despite an unrivaled track record as a premier fund-raiser and chief cheerleader, Fuentes has fallen out of favor with some party activists and financial backers after the devastating losses for local and statewide GOP candidates in Orange County’s November elections.

Party leaders looking ahead to pivotal elections in 2000 are worried as well that his increasingly barbed comments and attacks in nonpartisan races are pushing away moderates and squandering precious party resources.

Meanwhile, a slate of moderate Republicans chilly to Fuentes’ staunch conservatism will take their seats on the local party committee tonight and try to spark changes to the party’s public face.

The timing coincides with public comments by state Insurance Commissioner Charles Quackenbush, the highest-ranking statewide GOP officeholder to emerge from the electoral rubble, that the party has swung too far to the right and is controlled by extremists out of touch with rank-and-file Republicans.

Local GOP power brokers say it is time to begin grooming a successor to take the helm of the county party’s organization.

“I feel, as most of us do, that even though there are no term limits on this position, that term limits [in practice] serve to bring new blood into any organization,” said Dale Dykema, president of the Lincoln Club of Orange County, the state’s major fund-raising group for Republicans.

As for a successor, he said, “there doesn’t appear to be anyone immediately in the works. Certainly Tom’s performance over the years has been such that he deserves to be reelected.”

Fuentes said Friday that he’s happy to continue serving as chairman and is far from ready to step down. He handles the criticism largely by ignoring it.

“There’s plenty of work to do for everyone, whether you’re a conservative or a moderate,” he said. “I’ve never asked a Republican colleague [about] their politics in asking them to walk a precinct.”

Fuentes has been the party’s chairman and chief rainmaker since his election in January 1985. He secured his tenure by building a county GOP organization renowned nationally. There are about 220,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats on county voter rolls.

The county’s Republican reach is undisputed: Five of six members of Congress, three of four state senators, six of seven Assembly members, all five members of the Board of Supervisors and about 350 of 500 local officials.

But party leaders acknowledge, most of them privately, that they have grown uncomfortable with Fuentes’ often divisive comments and his closed-door discouragement of moderate Republicans from running against Fuentes-favored candidates. His inability to secure the customary--and relied upon--GOP voter turnout in Orange County in November served as an exclamation point to the sentiment that he was out of touch with the bulk of Republican voters.

If she wins her bid for party secretary tonight, former Newport Beach Councilwoman Evelyn Hart would be the first Republican favoring abortion rights to be elected to the committee in more than a decade. She said Fuentes has discouraged moderates from running, even though 70% of Republicans in Orange County are identified as moderates.

She said it’s time for Fuentes to start grooming a successor and step down, turning the party over to more inclusive leadership.

“Tom is very good at collecting money, but maybe the money would come anyway,” she said. “It’s time for us to see who is going to take over.”

Hart is a member of Republicans for New Directions, a group that faults Fuentes for advancing an exclusionary brand of litmus-test politics out of step with most voters, particularly regarding abortion rights. The group also accuses him of abusing his power, as in 1996 when he backed former Democrat Mark Leyes, a friend of then-Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle, over longtime Republican Charles V. Smith for county supervisor. Smith won.

“We’ve seen ugly partisanship in Orange County for 10 years, and people are sick of it,” said Eileen Padberg, a Republican political consultant for moderate GOP candidates and a New Directions member. “They’ve used the issue of choice to beat us over the head, but it’s not ideology, it’s power. They want people who look like them, who act like them and who think like them.”

New Directions will seat 11 members tonight on the 60-member central committee.

Fuentes said he’s found the New Directions members “amalgamating with great courtesy” into committee ranks.

He dismissed the charge that advancing conservative politics cost the GOP votes at the ballot box in November. He said the party simply was stung by a Democratic sweep statewide and nationally. The problem was compounded, he said, by a lack of significant grass-roots outreach to persuade voters to choose GOP candidates.

Toward that end, the party will concentrate in the next two years on more door-to-door visits with voters and neighbors not only to discuss Republican Party issues but also to find out what issues interest people.

“It just can’t be the boardroom and cocktail circuit,” Fuentes said. “It all has its role, but to each of those who assemble with us at a delightful social occasion, we should say, ‘Were you with us as well in the precincts?’ That’s traditionally been how we’ve built this party.”

Bill Christianson, the county party’s executive director for five years, said Fuentes excels at raising money and getting out the vote. At the same time, he is unfairly criticized for manipulating the local party committee, which has no platform and only rarely passes resolutions, such as its 1995 opposition to a proposed half-cent sales tax increase.

State Sen. John R. Lewis (R-Orange) said Republicans who criticize Fuentes can’t match his energy, devotion and contributions to the GOP cause.

“Year in and year out, Republicans are just unbelievably lucky to have someone of Tom Fuentes’ caliber and energy to sacrifice so much to do this thankless job,” Lewis said.

Fuentes undeniably takes no prisoners when it comes to those he deems unworthy. He once equated Republicans’ support of President Clinton’s reelection with French politicians who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. He also was quoted saying Democratic voters were like “good Germans denying the existence of the Holocaust.”

Last month, he angered several party leaders after sending a congratulatory letter to newly elected county GOP legislators that accused UC Irvine and Chapman University of being “dominated by extreme leftist faculty” and singled out two political science professors.

One of those professors, Chapman University’s Fred Smoller, said the comments falsely characterized him and the university, and were intended to hurt his standing at the private school, which is run by a board of directors dominated by conservatives.

“Tom Fuentes is following the national model of the politics of personal destruction,” said Smoller, a self-described moderate Democrat who ran for Assembly in 1990 against Lewis.

Smoller said Fuentes demonizes anyone who disagrees with him and fails to acknowledge the county’s growing diversity. That myopic view contributed to the county GOP’s losses in November, he said.

The defeats were significant. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) won reelection by a wide margin. Central county voters sent Democrat Lou Correa to the Assembly, ousting Assemblyman Jim Morrissey (R-Santa Ana), and Democrat Joe Dunn to the state Senate, unseating Sen. Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove).

Statewide Republican candidates failed to rack up traditional large victory margins in Orange County. Governor hopeful Dan Lungren led Gray Davis by an anemic 52,000 votes and went on to lose statewide.

A computer analysis of the turnout by Times political analyst Dick Lewis of Newport Beach showed that Lungren fell well below the GOP party-line vote across most of the county, edging slightly above it in only three cities--Buena Park, Cypress and Los Alamitos.

Meanwhile, the fastest growing group of new voters in the county continues to be those who decline to be affiliated with a political party.

“Tom Fuentes’ pattern of being shrill, accusatory and engaging in ad hominem assaults is what’s helping to really create a more bipartisan approach to politics in this county,” said UC Irvine professor Mark Petracca, who also was targeted by Fuentes’ letter.