A Common Connection Wins the Race

I do not think that Bill Simon will win either, but Tony Quinn has oversimplified the reason (“State GOP Courting Disaster,” Opinion, May 5). Simon does not need to compromise his social principles. What I would tell him to do would be to sell his house in Pacific Palisades and move to East L.A.

This is the real trouble spot for Republicans, and it has nothing to do with his views on abortion and homosexuality. East L.A. has no problem with those. It is a deeper problem of connecting to the common people of California, and Latino is what the common people of California mostly now are. I’d bet Ronald Reagan could have done it. But Simon, I regret to say, is no Reagan.

Howard Ahmanson

Irvine

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Hopefully, Republicans will get a wake-up call from Quinn’s excellent opinion piece on the possible skunking of the GOP in California for the next four (or more?) years. I personally was absolutely dumbfounded to wake up on the morning after the primary to find that Simon had won. What form of self-delusion had affected my fellow Republicans to think an archconservative could beat a Democrat in California these days (even though that Democrat is the very unpopular Gov. Gray Davis)?

Hopefully, someone can convince Simon to come out from under that conservative cloud of ether and realize that his points of view are not those of the majority. If he can’t do this quickly, we’re probably doomed to four more years of Davis.

Kathy James

Laguna Beach