Republicans Divided in Effort to Unseat Boxer

Three months after conservatives overwhelmingly cast aside ideological purity and backed moderate Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor, California Republicans are once again split as they try to dislodge Barbara Boxer from the U.S. Senate.

The Republican primary is shaping up as a classic tussle between the party’s conservative and moderate wings, but with a gender twist. The conservatives this time are embodied by two men, Bill Jones and Howard Kaloogian, the moderates by two women, Rosario Marin and Toni Casey.

Ethnic politics are also at play. Marin, an immigrant from Mexico who served as mayor of Huntington Park and then U.S. treasurer, portrays her campaign as a historic chance for the California GOP to reach beyond its base of white conservatives. She paints Jones, her most formidable rival, as a relic of the old guard.

Jones, a former secretary of state who won endorsements Thursday from former governors Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian, has tried to ignore his primary rivals and establish himself as Boxer’s only credible challenger.

However the race plays out, the main question for Republicans is whether the winner can emerge from the March 2 primary well positioned to deny a third term to the Democratic senator, a notoriously elusive target for the GOP.

“Boxer always seems to be vulnerable to defeat, but there never seems to be a strong candidate,” said Jack Citrin, a political science professor at UC Berkeley.

In her 1992 and 1998 campaigns, Boxer undercut Republican foes by casting them as right-wing extremists, most notably on abortion. The strategy diminished their support among women and moderates.

The four major Republicans this time are trying to avoid that trap -- a delicate task, given the dominance of conservative voters in GOP primaries.

For many Republicans, Schwarzenegger’s election -- with solid support from conservatives -- renewed hope that GOP candidates can prevail in statewide races despite California’s strong Democratic tilt in recent elections.

“One of the things I’m watching for is any sign that conservatives’ getting a taste of winning makes them want more,” said one election analyst, Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Report, a nonpartisan Washington newsletter. “Or do they just revert back to ideological purism?”

At a Los Angeles campaign stop on Thursday, Jones repeatedly invoked the governor’s appeal, echoing Schwarzenegger’s vow to “put the people’s interests ahead of partisan interests.”

“Gray Davis paid the price for his fiscal mismanagement, and it’s time that Barbara Boxer answered for her failure to represent California on state and national issues,” he said.

Jones, a Fresno farmer, is the only candidate in the primary who has won statewide elections: After serving in the Assembly for 12 years, he won two terms as secretary of state. But in 2002, he finished a distant third in the gubernatorial primary; his failure then has led rivals to question his prospects this year.

Jones has been a staunch social conservative, building a solid anti-abortion record and obtaining the endorsement of the National Rifle Assn. in the governor’s race. Still, his strategist, Ed Rollins, said Jones would run for the Senate as a “centrist mainstream Republican.”

Already Jones is a target for opponents who hope to exploit two stains on his conservative record: He yanked his support for George W. Bush in the Republican presidential nomination race in 2000, switching to John McCain. And, during the 1991 budget crisis, he voted in the Assembly for Wilson’s $7-billion tax hike.”You can’t hold the base of the Republican Party when you’re the author of the largest tax increase in the history of California,” said Kaloogian, a former assemblyman from San Diego County.

Jones said Thursday that he would oppose raising taxes; he described the context of the 1991 tax hike as “unique.”

For Marin, whose slogan is “Adios Boxer,” Wilson’s high-profile endorsement of Jones opened the way for her to draw attention to her ethnic appeal. To many Latinos, Wilson is a symbol of intolerance because of his support for Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot measure to deny public services to illegal immigrants.

Marin once worked for Wilson as his liaison to the Latino community, a post that required her to defend his support for Proposition 187 despite what she said was her personal opposition.

Minutes after Wilson endorsed Jones, Marin appeared at a nearby hotel. Lined up behind her were nearly two dozen supporters, almost all of them Latino. She called them “the future of our Republican Party, one of compassionate and common-sense conservatism for all Californians.”

Marin, the daughter of a janitor and a seamstress, arrived in the U.S. when she was 14. Her family settled in Huntington Park, where she raised a developmentally disabled son and became an advocate for the disabled. She was elected to the Huntington Park City Council and went to work for Wilson, who faced questions Thursday on why he had bypassed Marin in favor of Jones.

“She’s a very nice woman and has a very appealing life story and much to admire,” he said. “But that’s not the same thing as being successful as a political candidate in a statewide race in California.”

While Marin described herself as “pro-choice” on abortion, she also sought to score points among conservatives by pledging to support Bush’s agenda in Congress.

“That is not the case with Mr. Jones, who flip-flopped on his endorsement of George W. Bush in 2000,” she said.

Vying for the same slice of the primary electorate as Marin is Casey, a former mayor of Los Altos Hills in the Silicon Valley. She, too, worked for the Bush administration -- as director of intergovernmental affairs at the Small Business Administration.

Casey is a former biotech industry consultant and lobbyist whose business contacts have provided a surge of donations. Like Marin, she describes herself as “pro-choice,” although both Republicans -- unlike Boxer -- supported the recent ban on certain late-term abortions that Bush signed into law.

Kaloogian, a San Marcos lawyer, is aiming for the most conservative Republicans. As an outspoken advocate of recalling former Gov. Gray Davis, he built a donor list and made himself a fixture on talk radio.

In the Legislature, he developed a long conservative record on abortion and guns, topics that Boxer has used to defeat prior Republican challengers. But Kaloogian said he could “hold the base of the Republican Party” and draw independents and Democrats away from Boxer.

“It’s pretty easy to get to her right without being an extremist,” he said, “because she is so far to the left.”