GOP Hopefuls Court Moderate Group

Two multimillionaire friends and Republican candidates for governor--one hoping to make the GOP a “party of inclusion,” the other positioning himself as “the true conservative”--took their campaigns to the convention of one of the state’s most liberal Republican groups Saturday.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and Pacific Palisades businessman Bill Simon Jr. were in North Hollywood to make their pitch for an endorsement from the California Republican League. It’s a statewide group that often backs moderate Republicans, including those who support abortion rights.

It was friendly territory for Riordan, who has vocally supported abortion rights on the trail and is angling to steal moderate votes from Gov. Gray Davis in November.

Riordan worked the cramped Holiday Inn ballroom, attracting admirers at every turn.

Simon, who opposes abortion and has never run for public office, circulated less but chatted amiably with Riordan about last week’s primary debate.

The former mayor drew applause when he began his speech by saying, “We are part of a new Republican Party--a party of inclusiveness.” As he frequently has, Riordan depicted California as a state on the verge of collapse and accused Davis of failing to manage it.

Riordan, who is leading his GOP rivals in early polls, compared the state’s position to that of Los Angeles after the Rodney King riots, when Riordan won the mayor’s office.

“Why did I run for mayor? Because I felt there was a total vacuum of leadership. . . . It is worse in Sacramento than it was in Los Angeles nine years ago,” he said.

Simon acknowledged that he is an underdog in the scramble for the nomination but said he is used to doing the impossible. He gave the examples of helping fund the family-friendly television channel PAX-TV and helping prosecute leaders of the five Mafia families when he was a federal prosecutor in New York City in the 1980s.

Simon, who has spent much of the primary campaign emphasizing his conservative credentials, spoke only generally about broadening the Republican Party.

“We as a party have to pull on the same oar in order to take the governor’s office from Gray Davis,” he said. “I think the way to do that is welcome other people’s points of view.”

The third Republican candidate for governor, Secretary of State Bill Jones, held a news conference Friday in Fresno attacking Riordan and Davis for accepting campaign contributions from scandal-plagued Enron Corp.

“When it comes to ethics in government,” Jones said, “you are either part of the problem or part of the solution.”