New O.C. Group Seeks to Appeal to GOP Moderates

With an ambitious goal of reshaping Republican politics in Orange County, a group of executives from the county’s most successful companies has raised more than $500,000 to push more mainstream candidates for office.

Calling itself the New Majority Committee, the group seeks to wrest control of the county GOP from leaders long known for ideological conservatism--including Chairman Thomas Fuentes--and position the party more in line with what they believe will draw more Republican voters.

Ultimately, group leaders want to nudge the statewide Republican Party away from a core of social conservatives who vow to outlaw abortion and prevent gun regulation.

Such views are so unpopular with large numbers of Californians, group leaders say, that Republicans have devastated their own fortunes in the state. More moderate candidates have been discouraged from running, committee members said, and voters have stayed away from the GOP in droves, particularly women, Latinos and independents.

Some founding members are heavyweights in local, state and national politics: Donald Bren and Gary Hunt, chief executive and executive vice president, respectively, of the Irvine Co.; George Argyros, chairman and chief executive of Arnel Development; and developer William Lyon.

Although many are new to politics, the group’s members are a Who’s Who of successes in new technologies that stoked Orange County’s economic revival in the 1990s. The group’s 50-plus membership includes founding members Henry Samueli, founder of technology giant Broadcom; Nicolas Shahrestany, founder of Procom Technologies; Paul Folino, chief executive of Emulex Corp.; Terry Hartshorn, vice chairman of PacifiCare; and Don Beall, former chief executive of Rockwell.

Several of the members are conservative Republicans--such as Dorothy Stillwell, who with her late husband, Glenn, helped found the Lincoln Club of Orange County. But they see local GOP leadership as being too focused on divisive social issues rather than on economic concerns on which most Republicans are unified.

Fuentes characterized the committee as a group of wealthy people who think their money entitles them to power. The party’s activists will fight them, he said.