GOP Moderates From O.C. Recruiting in L.A. County

A group of wealthy, moderate Orange County Republicans, formed five years ago to supplant the party’s powerful cadre of social conservatives, has a new target: overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal Los Angeles County.

The New Majority -- whose members include Donald Bren and Paul Folino, the chief executives of the Irvine Co. and Emulex Corp., respectively -- has used its influence and ample wealth since 2000 to reduce the power of conservatives who had come to define Republican politics in Orange County and Sacramento. The group backed moves that ousted conservatives from party leadership positions.

The group also sealed its clout by becoming the state’s largest donor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who counts its members among his earliest political mentors.

Now members hope to extend their fundraising efforts -- and perhaps some political influence -- into Los Angeles County.

“As soon as I heard they were coming up to L.A., I signed up,” said retired investment banker Frank Baxter, a former chairman of Jeffries & Co. who serves as finance chairman for the Los Angeles County GOP. “We think the basic message of personal freedom and personal responsibility resonates very well with people.”

It’s one thing to tackle internal GOP politics, and quite another to make a dent in the power structure of Los Angeles County. Most of the county’s legislative seats are as entrenched for Democrats as Orange County’s are for Republicans.

With that in mind, the group has endorsed Schwarzenegger’s proposal to take the redrawing of legislative district boundaries out of the legislators’ hands, which would make some Assembly, state Senate and congressional races more competitive. The governor has pledged to qualify an initiative for a fall special election, along with other changes, if the Legislature doesn’t put a measure on the ballot by March.

This month, New Majority members met in Newport Beach with Schwarzenegger, who asked them to help raise $50 million for the special election. The governor wants $12 million collected by the end of this month.

The group “could be far more influential in Los Angeles if Gov. Schwarzenegger gets his way on redistricting,” said John J. Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College and former advisor to the national Republican Party.

Schwarzenegger’s proposal would not necessarily lead to the election of more Republicans. But the plan’s supporters argue that making districts more competitive would result in the election of more middle-of-the-road candidates who could attract voters from both major parties.

Currently, most districts are so imbalanced in party registration that winners are essentially determined in party primaries, which tend to attract fewer voters and those driven more by ideology. Often, the legislators who emerge are liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans who find little common ground in Sacramento.

The New Majority’s Los Angeles County group will meet March 2 to set goals -- whether to back candidates in nonpartisan local races, for example, or, as the larger group has done, target legislative races seen as winnable. The group also promotes voter registration and Republican turnout on election day.

“Without redistricting, their impact is pretty limited,” Pitney said. “They’re working in a very different political environment” from Orange County’s.

Quite so, said veteran Democratic political consultant Joe Cerrell, who is based in Los Angeles. Nearly 51% of Los Angeles County’s 4 million registered voters are Democrats, compared with nearly 26% who are Republicans. That ratio is nearly reversed among Orange County’s 1.5 million registered voters. Of 26 Assembly seats in or partly in Los Angeles County, 21 are held by Democrats.

But moderate Republicans with a centrist message could nibble at the county’s Democratic base, Cerrell said.

Their first step: raising money to help win more elections. To do so, they hope to entice business types who’ve been successful in their fields but who haven’t been involved in politics.

In Orange County, “we brought out new money, donors and participants who no one in the political community had ever heard of,” said Thomas E. Tucker, president of JenStar Capital of Newport Beach and a New Majority co-founder. “We can bring in those kinds of people in Los Angeles.”

The potential to attract more members in Los Angeles County “is so much bigger ... because of the population,” said New Majority membership chairman George J. Wall, an attorney with Rutan & Tucker in Costa Mesa.

He said some partisans had been reluctant to be more visible as Republican activists in Los Angeles County because of the Democratic tilt. The New Majority could provide safety in numbers, Wall said, and give Republicans a way to become more politically involved.

The New Majority is not expecting to supplant the power structure, he said, but merely encourage a more moderate political perspective and chip away at what it sees as a Democratic monolith. “Given time, it’ll be a meaningful voice,” Wall said.

Said member Timothy O’Brien, president of Motivational Management Inc. of Los Angeles, “We’re not planning to topple anybody, but we want to have a place in the dialogue and get out the New Majority message, which is fiscal responsibility and social inclusiveness.”

What attracted him, O’Brien said, was the “hokey” goal of encouraging a broader message for Republicans -- that “pro-life and pro-choice Republicans, for example, should be able to exist under the same tent even though they disagree with one another.”

The New Majority counts 144 members in Orange County, each of whom pays annual dues of $10,000 plus individual donations. Recruiting in Los Angeles County has so far landed 30 more members, at events such as one last month, a luncheon hosted by Tucker at the Beverly Hilton that featured Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs).

But the New Majority’s effect has been scant on its larger goal of recasting the Legislature, where Republicans gained no additional seats in November. Democrats hold 48 of the Assembly’s 80 seats and 25 of the state Senate’s 40 seats.

If voters turn similarly cold to redistricting changes, the New Majority and its centrist allies might target a growing and more pliable group than Los Angeles County Democrats, Claremont McKenna’s Pitney said.

In the last four years, the largest growth in registration has been among unaffiliated voters. In that time, nearly 700,000 decline-to-state voters have been added to the state’s rolls, including many former Democrats, whose statewide registration dropped from 2000 to 2004 by 14,000. GOP registrations jumped 260,000.

“The decline-to-states is a way station between Democrat and Republican,” Pitney said. For Republicans, “a more moderate approach might be a way to make those folks complete the journey.”