SACRAMENTO — Gripped by the early symptoms of presidential fever, California Republican leaders began gathering in Sacramento on Thursday for an organizational convention dominated by the question: "Will Pete run?"
Gov. Pete Wilson, his political capital restored after a strong reelection victory in November, will speak Saturday to a convention that is far from united on the question of whether he should seek the Republican presidential nomination next year.
In almost any other situation, state party loyalists would be ecstatic to have their governor considered potential White House stock.
But leaders of the GOP's conservative wing have been particularly outspoken against the idea of Wilson quitting the governorship in midterm and leaving the state's top job in the hands of a Democrat.
If Wilson became President, or vice president, he would be succeeded automatically under California law by Democratic Lt. Gov. Gray Davis.
Greg Hardcastle of Sacramento, president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, said Wilson should live up to his pre-election pledge to serve a full four years as governor.
"I think he's dead serious about running," added Hardcastle, whose volunteer activist group--an official constituent body of the California Republican Party--often has warred with Wilson over tax increases, abortion, gay rights and other issues.
Hardcastle's group adopted a tartly worded resolution at a recent meeting that--as described by the group's newspaper--"commends and praises Governor Wilson for his noble and responsible self-sacrifice in promising to serve his entire four-year term as governor of California."
Some version of that resolution will be floated this weekend, but party leaders and the governor's office were seeking a way to bury it in committee.
Officially, the major business of this semiannual party gathering of 2,000 delegates and guests is to elect new officers, during the formal business session Sunday, for the next two years. Normally, it would unite in celebration of the November election in which Republicans scored major gains and begin gearing up for the prospect of seizing the White House in 1996.
But the prospect of Wilson as a presidential campaigner has become the dominant issue in California politics the past two months.
At first, the idea largely was discounted because of the succession problem. But Wilson-for-President advocates argue that by 1997, Republicans could effectively control the Legislature, making it difficult for Davis to push Democratic programs.
