State’s Top GOP Official Switching to McCain Camp

Secretary of State Bill Jones, California’s highest-ranking Republican officeholder, will today rescind his endorsement of Texas Gov. George W. Bush and defect to the camp of his chief rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

The move underscores a widespread concern in Republican circles since McCain’s landslide defeat of the party’s national front-runner in the New Hampshire primary earlier this month. Jones said his decision stemmed from Bush’s efforts in South Carolina to dissuade Democrats and independent voters from siding with McCain in Saturday’s primary, and from the relentlessly negative tenor of the campaign there.

Jones said he was making his views public in part because he and others had kept their silence as previous Republican candidates doomed their campaigns by appealing only to Republicans. He specifically cited the campaigns of Bush’s father, George Bush, in 1992, 1996 nominee Bob Dole and the 1998 California gubernatorial nominee, Dan Lungren.

‘An Obligation to Say Something’

“I’ve been down this road before with Bush Sr., I’ve been down this road with Bob Dole, and I didn’t say anything in those cases,” said Jones, one of only two Republicans to retain his statewide office when California Democrats won a landslide election in 1998.

“Maybe I had a bad feeling, and I didn’t say anything. But I’m the only one left. I have an obligation to say something.”

Jones said he would make his views known today at a Los Angeles news conference.

Bush spokeswoman Alixe Glen Mattingly said the campaign regretted but respected Jones’ switch. “This campaign is about leadership, commitment and vision and the affirmation of those qualities in George W. Bush has been made unequivocally clear by the support of over 90% of the GOP elected officials in California.”

Unlikely to Touch Off Other Defections

Jones’ move was unlikely to set off an avalanche of defections from the Texas governor; more likely, others are waiting to see how Bush and McCain fare in Saturday’s South Carolina primary. A victory for Bush could assuage the worry of his supporters, just as a McCain win could send them over a cliff of panic.

But it certainly highlighted the worry among members of the Republican establishment, which had flocked to Bush in the earlier, easier days of his candidacy.

Bush, whose campaign until then had the flavor of an incumbent’s waltz, lost by 18 points in New Hampshire and was forced to retool his strategy. In recent days, he has copied McCain’s free-wheeling style and slammed his competition in negative ads. Bush leads in some pre-primary polls, but others are too close to call.

Even if largely symbolic, Jones’ defection comes as something of an embarrassment to Bush in California, where polls show he has been running unusually well among voters who usually flock to the Democratic Party. But, as has happened in other states, Bush is now having to fend off a charge by McCain in California.

Jones, an outspoken advocate for higher voter turnout, said Bush’s efforts to brush aside McCain’s non-Republican voters and his reliance on negative advertising would threaten turnout efforts and the needs of California Republicans to attract a wide array of voters.

“I don’t want to see that come to California,” he said. “I don’t want to hear about the fact that my voters shouldn’t vote. . . . I don’t want to see 70 negative ads running in California, tearing down a candidate.

McCain, too, has been criticized for running negative ads in South Carolina, although he unilaterally pulled them last week. Jones, however, said that the senator from Arizona has “pretty much maintained” his pledge to run a positive campaign.

Jones said he was attracted both by McCain’s championing of campaign finance reform, which Jones himself has favored in California, and by his ability to attract voters from across the political spectrum. “We have ignored this ability to bring crossovers and Democrats to the party and our candidates and it has hurt us,” he said.

Under California’s blanket primary, voters can cast their ballots for any candidate, regardless of party. But only the ballots cast by Republicans will be counted in determining who wins the GOP delegates at stake on March 7.

Jones said he worried that Bush in California would discourage non-Republicans from voting for him or McCain on election day. That message, he said, would likely depress turnout and also cause Democrats and independents to abandon the party in November.

“I’m sending as clear a message with this resignation as I can that this is unacceptable to me, in the strongest terms,” he said.

The Bush campaign will pick up the endorsements of two state senators and two assemblymen today, and continues to have the support of the only other Republican statewide officeholder, Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush. Mattingly said the California campaign has been “reinvigorated” by the New Hampshire loss. “It was actually a good wake-up call for the whole campaign,” she said.

McCain, in a telephone interview from South Carolina, said that the defection of the state’s senior Republican from the Bush camp was a symbolic help to his campaign here.

“It shows the monolith the Bush campaign is portraying is cracking,” he said.

The Texas governor also has a commanding, if shrinking, lead in polls here. Even McCain, talking to reporters over the weekend, played down the importance of endorsements.

“The higher visibility the race, the less endorsements really matter,” he said.