The Cloud Over State GOP’s Savior

Reeling from a demoralizing drubbing in the 1998 state elections, California Republicans hunted for a savior to rescue them. “The bottom line,” asserted GOP state chair Michael Schroeder, “is that we’re sick to death of losing.” The party establishment embraced Texas Gov. George W. Bush as the cure.

In January 1999, 14 months before this state’s 2000 primary, 25 state legislators wrote Bush, urging him to run for president. “America needs an experienced leader who brings conservative values and a winning candidacy that will reach out to all,” the letter said. It also didn’t hurt that Bush had a record of attracting Latino voters, whom the state party had alienated by supporting Proposition 187.

Was it a mistake for the state GOP to throw in with Bush so early?

One thing is clear. The “compassionate conservative” whose winning ways mesmerized the legislators a year ago is not the Bush who has emerged from the early primaries. The governor’s stunning 18-point loss to Arizona Sen. John McCain in New Hampshire eroded his aura of invincibility. Last week’s defeat in Michigan inflicted more damage.

Thwarted by McCain’s ability to attract Democrats and independent voters in open primaries, Bush, who began the race touting his coalition-building skills, ended his campaign in South Carolina, where he took a hard right to solidify that state’s conservative base, arguing against inclusion. Defeated in Michigan’s open primary, despite pulling two-thirds of the Republican vote, Bush has expanded his pitch to include “like-minded independents.”

In California, Bush needs to hold the GOP’s conservative base for the party’s delegate contest, where only the votes of registered Republicans will be counted. Responding to a Field poll, 33% of likely GOP voters described themselves as “strongly conservative,” and 40% identified themselves with the religious right. Their support goes a long way toward helping Bush nab the state’s 162 delegates.

That could crimp Bush’s move to the center to show strength in the blanket primary’s “beauty contest.” The center, after all, is where the state party has been looking for help from Bush to erase its mean-spirited, far-right image.

Can Bush’s vaunted money machine make the shift easier? Last year, the Texas governor wiped out the state GOP’s debt with a single fund-raiser. State Republican leaders looked for more where that came from, to bolster their own anemic fund-raising (an informal survey last fall put state Democrats’ advantage at nearly 40 to 1).

But Bush, the erstwhile $70-million man, has an expensive fight on his hands, and recent reports indicate that he has a mere $10 million or so on hand for big-ticket primaries yet to come (McCain’s cash on hand is reportedly close to that). How much time will Bush spend raising “soft” money for a party apparatus he can’t control?

McCain has some California baggage, too: his involvement in the Keating 5 scandal. Five U.S. senators, including McCain and former Sen. Alan Cranston, accepted large campaign contributions from savings-and-loan operator Charles H. Keating Jr., then met with federal banking regulators on his behalf. McCain was cleared of helping Keating.

But the scandal hit Californians hard. Keating’s American Continental Corp. bought California-based Lincoln Savings & Loan and conned thousands of its depositors into converting their life savings into American Continental junk bonds. Eventually, investors lost about $200 million.

In California’s primary, where independents and Democrats will have no role in delegate allocation, McCain must reestablish his conservative Republican bona fides without alienating the inclusive coalition that has put him in real contention. Like Bush, McCain began his rightward tilt in South Carolina, where he regularly appeared with failed GOP presidential hopeful and antiabortion candidate Gary L. Bauer, who endorsed McCain after dropping out of the race. That association may prove helpful in assuaging right-wing angst in this state, but it may not set well with California’s generally pro-choice electorate.

McCain’s is a personal campaign that owes little to the party, and there’s some doubt he can offer California Republicans much in the way of campaign resources. He certainly doesn’t have the fund-raising ability to cure their money woes.

The distance between McCain and the California GOP establishment could make a coordinated campaign for the fall rather difficult. There is no indigenous infrastructure, no dominant California leader to take up the slack. The battle between Bush, the establishment prince, and McCain, the party insurgent--and the angry words and charges spewed by both men--can only exacerbate the debilitating internecine warfare between California’s moderate and conservative Republicans over the party’s future and for its soul.

Should California’s GOP, given the nature and demography of this large, diverse and complex state, tie its fortunes to a national candidate, rather than move to develop its own bench, to grow its own grass-roots coalition?

Republicans contesting the California primary, and those looking to McCain and Bush to save the state party, may find there is a disconnect between the California electorate and national GOP politics that could mean trouble.

Democrats Bill Bradley and Al Gore will come to California arguing over who’s stronger on abortion rights and gun control, issues that resonate with the state’s moderate and independent voters; the Republican presidential contenders, by contrast, may be forced to argue about who’s more staunchly antiabortion, pro-gun and more conservative. Whoever wins the GOP nomination will be stuck with those albatrosses in the fall. That could have consequences up and down the ballot.

In 1992 and 1996, the Republican presidential nominees did not seriously contest California, and GOP prospects in state legislative and congressional races were undermined. Is the handwriting on the wall for a repeat of this scenario in 2000?

On the same day that Bush won that decisive and divisive primary in South Carolina, former state Sen. Ken Maddy passed away. There is a link between those two stories. Maddy was the kind of Republican who could win statewide in California, a moderate who could build coalitions and broaden the GOP base. But Maddy was blocked by his party’s hard-core conservatives from breaking out.

As long as the Republican nominating process remains tilted toward the hard right, and only candidates espousing conservative orthodoxy need apply, the GOP will remain marginalized in California.