Loyal Donors Deliver Despite McClintock Dislike of Asking
SACRAMENTO — When he entered politics 20 years ago, state Sen. Tom McClintock paid for his campaigns the old fashioned way: He tapped the same moneyed interests that finance most legislators' campaigns.
For the last 10 years, however, McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) has received only modest sums from such GOP stalwarts as the oil and insurance industries. Instead, McClintock, the antitax, free-market Republican who hopes to replace Gov. Gray Davis in Tuesday's election, has come to rely on some of the most conservative political donors in California to sustain his campaigns.
As GOP leaders have urged McClintock to cease campaigning and most major Republican donors have contributed to action movie actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a political moderate, many of McClintock's most conservative donors have remained loyal.
With the recall campaign bringing him national exposure, McClintock has expanded his base. He traveled to Colorado last weekend for a fund-raiser put on by national conservative leaders Richard Viguerie, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schafly and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.
One host of the event was Howard Ahmanson Jr., scion of the family that founded Home Savings & Loan. Ahmanson, a major financier of free-market and religious think tanks, and his wife, Roberta, have given McClintock $202,000 since 2000, making them among his largest donors, campaign finance reports show.
Ahmanson and a political action committee he founded with three others have given McClintock at least $400,000 in the last decade, making McClintock one of the largest beneficiaries of its money.
"Howard Ahmanson's support is the California conservatives' equivalent of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval," said Jack Pitney, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a former Republican strategist. At a time when the California Republican Party is trying to portray itself as more moderate, Pitney said, Ahmanson "has been an important source of life support for conservatives."
Ahmanson's patronage benefits several nonprofit think tanks, including the Claremont Institute, where McClintock worked for two years after losing his 1994 run for state controller, and the Chalcedon Foundation, which promotes a brand of Christianity known as Christian Reconstructionism. Chalcedon produces journals for which McClintock political aide John Stoos routinely writes.
