White House Keeping Its Distance From Thorny Recall

With concerns that intervention could create more problems than it solves, the White House appears to be remaining hands-off in the California gubernatorial recall, even as the Republican field narrows to just two leading contenders, GOP sources say.

In Washington and California, many Republican leaders are growing concerned that even if Gov. Gray Davis is recalled, the Democrats will retain the office if both actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and conservative state Sen. Tom McClintock remain in the race, splitting the Republican vote and handing victory to Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante.

Despite the concerns, the White House and the Republican National Committee have continued to steer clear of any direct effort to force out McClintock, who is running behind Schwarzenegger in the polls, GOP sources say.

“I haven’t gotten any sense that we are participating in it,” said one GOP strategist familiar with White House thinking. “We are rightly not engaging in it, and this thing is going to have to play itself out without any opinion from us.”

Added Rep. David Dreier (R-Glendora), a top Schwarzenegger supporter: “I’ve talked to the president about this; I’ve talked to Karl Rove [President Bush’s chief political strategist]. I’ve made very clear that staying out of this is the right thing for them to do, and they totally agree.”

The White House hesitation reflects several factors: fear of handing Davis ammunition for his effort to paint the recall as a Republican “power grab,” reluctance to antagonize conservatives by undercutting McClintock, and the ongoing debate among some GOP strategists over whether Bush would benefit from the election of a Republican governor in the state.

“There’s still a strong belief in some people’s minds that they would rather have a Democrat dealing with” the state’s problems, said one GOP lobbyist close to the White House.

Even as the White House stands back, some national conservative leaders are quietly maneuvering to consolidate support for Schwarzenegger and increase pressure on McClintock to leave the race.

At the state GOP convention in Los Angeles this weekend, Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a leading conservative political action committee, is to meet with Schwarzenegger. Moore’s intent is to press the actor to adopt a more explicitly conservative economic agenda and harden his opposition to new taxes -- steps Moore said could lead his group and other national conservative organizations to endorse Schwarzenegger and publicly encourage McClintock to withdraw.

The hope of Moore and some other national conservative leaders, such as anti-tax activist Grover G. Norquist, is that if Schwarzenegger embraces enough of McClintock’s small-government agenda, the state senator may decide to step aside.

“Arnold ... still has not done enough and said enough of his plan on the economy to make conservatives like me feel comfortable,” Moore said. “But if Arnold moves far enough to the right on economic issues

So far, McClintock has given no indication that he’s open to such a deal; he has said that he’s in the race to the end.

John Stoos, McClintock’s deputy campaign director, said the candidate is feeling no pressure from Washington to change that position. As recently as Thursday, Stoos said, he had received word from California GOP officials that the White House was “officially neutral” on the race.

The campaign, Stoos said, has been told that the White House “has assessed the situation and sees no role to play.”

From the start, the California recall has presented the White House and other national Republican leaders with a complex set of calculations.

On the one hand, many Republicans have been intrigued by the possibility of capturing the governorship in the nation’s largest state, which Democrats have dominated politically since the mid-1990s. That excitement surged when Schwarzenegger unexpectedly joined the race last month. Some national GOP leaders see the actor’s entry as an opportunity to reconfigure the party’s image in California into a more moderate one.

But other strategists, including some close to the White House and the Republican National Committee, have worried about potential aftershocks from the recall. They have expressed concerns that even if Davis is recalled and replaced by a Republican, the new governor could be tarnished by the economic problems facing the state and become a drag on Bush’s effort to win California in 2004.

Strategists with that view believe Bush will benefit more in the state if the Democratic presidential nominee is forced to associate with a weakened Davis still struggling with a large budget deficit. “From the Republican perspective, the analogy is you wouldn’t have wanted Jimmy Carter to have been recalled [as president] in 1978,” said the GOP strategist close to the White House.

Another factor has also encouraged caution in the White House: Rove’s initiative to recruit moderate former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan into the 2002 gubernatorial race blew up when conservatives revolted and powered Bill Simon Jr. to the nomination.

Many in the GOP believe that Rove and the White House have little interest in engineering another confrontation with California conservatives by pressuring McClintock to step aside for Schwarzenegger.

In California and Washington, some conservative leaders remain leery of Schwarzenegger, who supports legalized abortion and gun control, has refused to sign a no-new-taxes pledge promoted by Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, and has indicated that he opposes private-school vouchers and a California ballot initiative that would bar the state from collecting racial data. Some conservatives also say that even if it helps Bustamante, McClintock should stay in the race to increase his exposure and strengthen his position as a party leader down the road.

“From what I hear, the White House is going to be very hesitant to jump in after the Simon and Riordan mess,” said Michael Bowman, executive director of the Concerned Women Political Action Committee, a social conservative group.

Added the GOP strategist close to the White House: “If we did anything, it would shift the story line in a way that hurts Schwarzenegger. Davis and Bustamante are desperately looking for a villain here, and you don’t want to give them a foothold.”

Still, many Republicans are expecting at least indirect pressure on McClintock from national party figures as the election nears.

Dan Schnur, campaign manager for Peter V. Ueberroth, the moderate Republican who quit the race this week, said the campaign had not received any pressure from GOP leaders to withdraw. But he predicted that such pressure would soon be applied to McClintock, although not directly from the White House or Republican National Committee.

Looming over these calculations is uncertainty about whether party leaders have much leverage with McClintock.

One California GOP strategist said McClintock may be more vulnerable to pressure from fund-raisers because his state Senate district, as redrawn after the 2000 census, is more competitive.

But Bowman, a veteran of California conservative politics, believes pressure may only harden McClintock’s resolve to remain in the race. “I think Tom realizes even if he loses, he could become the rising star of the party by standing on principle,” he said. “I don’t see what he gains by pulling out of the race.”