Arrival of Bush Will Heat Up State’s GOP Primary Campaign

Nine months before the presidential primary, the battle among Republicans for bragging rights to California begins in earnest this week, as front-runner George W. Bush makes his maiden tour of the state and challenger John McCain moves onto the television airwaves in an attempt to boost his standing.

Neither move is unprecedented--candidates have been dropping in for months now and Republican candidate Steve Forbes has aired television ads already. But together, the collision of events signals an escalation of interest in California, which moved its primary forward to March 7 next year in a bid to get at least some of the attention political activists believe the state deserves.

Bush is scheduled to campaign for three days this week, hitting the state’s major media markets and, not incidentally, its major donors. With an eye on the June 30 deadline for reporting donations--a date that could spell the end to some teetering campaigns--Bush has loaded his trip with seven fund-raising events.

There will be occasional appearances to press the flesh, including a visit to the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar and a teacher training session in Los Angeles.

For McCain, the decision to run an ad on a San Diego cable station underscores the importance of California for the Arizona senator, a former Navy pilot and Vietnam War prisoner. McCain has assiduously courted San Diego, with its heavy presence of active and retired military personnel and families. But the ad is, as much as anything, a shot across Bush’s bow as McCain seeks the insurgent mantle to Bush’s establishment position.

At this point, however, McCain is a distinct underdog to Bush in California--as are the rest of the candidates in the Republican field, which includes publisher Forbes, former Red Cross President Elizabeth Dole, former Vice President Dan Quayle, commentator Pat Buchanan, conservative activists Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes, former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith and Ohio Rep. John Kasich.

Although he has not yet formally announced his intentions, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch added his name to the contender’s list last week.

In a Los Angeles Times poll published June 16, Bush commanded 50% of the state’s Republican votes, to 13% for Dole. The rest of the field was in single digits.

“Certainly the Bush people have a lot of momentum out here,” said state Republican Party Chairman John McGraw, who hastened to add that it was too early to project a victor.

Even some of Bush’s opponents concede his standing, while insisting that the standings will change.

“Bush starts out as a strong front-runner, but not a prohibitive one,” said Dan Schnur, a longtime political activist here who recently signed on to the McCain campaign as communications director.

“Forbes and Quayle and, to a lesser extent, Dole have some residual name identification in the state. Bauer and Buchanan have the potential to tap into some of the conservative activists. But we believe that once Californians hear John McCain’s story, they are going to be drawn to him.”

That story is threaded through the McCain ad. It shows footage of McCain being dragged out of a lake by his Vietnamese captors, noting that “he’s always put America’s interests ahead of his own.”

The ad then turns to campaign finance reform, an issue that McCain’s backers hope will boost his standing when it becomes the focus of a Senate debate next month.

For Bush, the trip out West is not only meant to solidify support for the primary, but also to begin the battle for California’s general election votes.

In recent polling, Bush has done well here among women and Latinos, two groups that have abandoned Republican candidates in recent general elections. The June Times poll had Bush and the Democratic front-runner, Vice President Al Gore, in a statistical dead heat, with 49% for Bush and 44% for Gore. Although that was an improvement for Gore, who remains a dozen or more points behind Bush in national polls, it also marked success for Bush, given the 20-point victory of Democrat Gray Davis over Republican Dan Lungren in the 1998 governor’s race.

Gore has already sought to stoke anti-Bush sentiment in California. In a visit to Los Angeles on June 18, he belittled Bush’s claim of being a “compassionate conservative” and criticized his support of a Texas bill that barred cities from suing gun manufacturers to recoup the costs of gun violence.

Bush’s positions on gun control and abortion rights--he opposes both in most cases--clash with California’s leanings on the subjects, which have proved in previous elections to be potent weapons against Republican candidates. But Bush’s supporters here play down their potential impact.

“Californians oftentimes turn more on personality than anything else . . . as opposed to their philosophical principles,” said state Sen. Ray Haynes of Riverside, a Bush supporter. “You’ll get that great middle ground of voters if you have the ability to capture the imagination.”