Moderate Ends Her Bid to Lead GOP Committee

Moderate Republicans in Ventura County have dropped their bid to retain control of the GOP Central Committee, agreeing to end a divisive challenge for the committee’s top post and work with a newly elected slate of conservative rivals.

A moderate faction of the county Central Committee voted last week to install Santa Paula businesswoman Leslie Cornejo as chairwoman of the local party, a week after a rival conservative faction elected Oxnard resident Jackie Rodgers to the same post.

Both groups said they held legitimate elections. And each accused the other of failing to follow the committee’s bylaws and participating in bogus balloting.

But after state party officials last week declared Rodgers the winner and state elections officials refused to intervene, Cornejo and her supporters faced the prospect of having to file a lawsuit if they wanted to force a runoff election.

Cornejo said Tuesday she decided against that course of action, saying it is time to patch up differences and work toward the common goal of putting Republicans in office.

“I feel we had been the good guys up to this point, but we would have become the bad guys if we had forced a lawsuit,” said Cornejo, who plans to hand over the committee’s checkbook, office keys and paperwork during a meeting today in Camarillo.

“We have six months until the election, and we didn’t want to do anything that damaged the chances of electing Republicans,” she said. “That’s really our job. That’s what we were elected to do.”

Even if the moderates had won in court, Rodgers probably would have been chosen to lead the committee anyway.

During April 10 balloting, Rodgers received 15 out of a possible 29 votes, making her the first African American elected to that post. The committee is responsible for raising cash and lining up volunteers for Republican campaigns.

That meeting was not attended by Cornejo and most of her supporters, on the grounds that it violated the committee’s bylaws. But even if the moderates had attended, they could not have generated enough votes to overcome Rodgers’ majority.

In fact, during a second election--held a week later and ignored by Rodgers and her supporters--Cornejo only received a dozen votes to claim the chairmanship.

“I think it was clear that I had the support of a majority of the members of the Central Committee,” Rodgers said Tuesday. “I’m pleased that everyone is now on board and ready to move toward the goal . . . of electing Republicans.”

This is not unfamiliar ground for Republicans in Ventura County and elsewhere.

Battles between moderates and conservatives, over such issues as abortion and school prayer, have popped up for years in GOP central committees across the state. Locally, the clash came to a head a decade ago after the takeover of the Ventura County committee by an anti-abortion faction whose leader fanned controversy with his sympathetic words for former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

In 1992, a group led by former committee chairman Bob Larkin and Ventura citrus rancher Paul Leavens mounted a successful campaign to sweep the conservatives out of leadership positions.

The moderates had been in charge until earlier this year, when 41 candidates squared off for the committee’s 22 seats--numbers not seen since the ideological battles of 1992.

A slate backed by conservative Assemblyman Tony Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks) took half those seats during the March balloting, while a group of moderates, led by Leavens and Larkin, took the other half.

However, when it came to electing the committee’s chairperson and other top posts, seven ex officio members were also allowed to vote. That group included conservatives such as Strickland and Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge), which gave the edge to Rodgers and her backers.

Larkin, who was reelected to the Central Committee in March, said he believes many Republicans have been turned off by the views espoused by the conservative wing of the Republican Party. And he said he worries that having conservatives in charge of the local party will hamper efforts in November to put Republicans in office.

“We had a good committee for eight years,” he said. “Now we’ll have to wait and see what happens. But I don’t think it can help Republicans, and it may end up hurting their chances in November.”