California Republican Party

Re "California Conservatism's Worst Nightmare Revealed," Opinion Aug. 17: As a Chinese immigrant advocating drastic reductions in immigration, both legal and illegal, I strongly disagree with Sherry Bebitch Jeffe's statement, "Unless the California Republican Party can shed its mean-spirited, anti-immigrant . . . image, it could wither on the electoral vine." Bob Dole lost in November 1996 because he was boring and had no real issues. The Republican Party could have won the White House if it had explained, in a sensitive manner, to voters, especially those living in states with high concentrations of immigrants, that many of their major concerns could not be addressed without drastic immigration reductions: overcrowded schools, traffic congestion, overburdened infrastructure.

By any numerical measurement, the California Republican Party has hit hard times. Fewer than one out of three registered voters call themselves Republicans, and the party doesn't control a single statewide elected office.  In Monday's column , George Skelton points out some other statistics show the party sliding toward oblivion.  The California GOP is 82% white in a state expecting to have a Latino majority next year, according to...

There has been a lot of outrage over the videotapes that show workers for ACORN, the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, offering a couple posing as a prostitute and a pimp some advice on how to expand their "business" with government funding. Congress voted to cut off federal money to ACORN, and there are various probes into its funding and activities. This page chided the group for tarnishing the name of grass-roots organizers everywhere. But that doesn't mean every gleeful anti-ACORN attack is on the mark.

SACRAMENTO - "Too white, too right and too uptight," says a veteran political consultant. "That's why the Republican Party can't come back in California. " Strategist David Townsend is a Democrat, so that's the sort of comment you would expect from the likes of him. But there were top Republicans at the party's state convention in Sacramento over the weekend making similar observations, in softer tones and absent the negativity. They realize that to survive, the California GOP must broaden its ethnic and ideological bases and be less rigid on social issues.

SACRAMENTO - "Too white, too right and too uptight," says a veteran political consultant. "That's why the Republican Party can't come back in California. " Strategist David Townsend is a Democrat, so that's the sort of comment you would expect from the likes of him. But there were top Republicans at the party's state convention in Sacramento over the weekend making similar observations, in softer tones and absent the negativity. They realize that to survive, the California GOP must broaden its ethnic and ideological bases and be less rigid on social issues.

In Bill Press' column of June 3, Press questions the motives of the California Republican Party in seeking to halt the California Democratic Party's involvement in the Mike Woo for mayor campaign. I want to make our motives clear: The California Republican Party is fighting to uphold the state Constitution and the will of the voters. We simply seek fairness under the law. Through his actions and the actions of the California Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee, Press has shown his total contempt for the California Constitution and total contempt for the supporters of Proposition 49. Press has taken liberal leave of his senses when dealing with state laws and when dealing with facts.

Pro-life supporters in the California Republican Party are alive and well except in Gov. Pete Wilson's handpicked delegation to the Republican National Convention in San Diego this August ("State's GOP Delegates Oppose Abortion Plank," June 30). Out of 165 delegates (largest delegation in the country) only a handful support the national Republican plank on abortion. This delegation certainly does not represent the California Republican Party, which has repeatedly adopted a pro-life plank at its state conventions.

A former office manager for California Republican Party executive Russ Oertel sued him for $3 million, claiming that she was fired Feb. 21 because she resisted his sexual advances. In her action, filed in Sacramento Superior Court, S. Renee Koon said her work appeared to be acceptable to Oertel until Feb. 1, when she resisted his advances after accepting an invitation to his home for a glass of wine. The next day, she said, Oertel began to find fault with her work.

YAF is an organization that routinely attacks and intimidates young Republicans who will not join their organization or support their positions or candidates in statewide elections. They attempt to harass Republicans who do not agree 100% with YAF positions and will resort to criminal actions in their campaign to "purify" the California Republican Party. When a hawkish, capitalist, pro-life conservative like myself is labeled a "liberal" or a "Commie" by YAFfers because I will not support their strong-arm tactics, YAF has gone too far. SHAWN DUDLEY Fallbrook

SACRAMENTO - "There's no place to go but up," asserted Jim Brulte, whose mission is to save the California Republican Party. "We're on the way back. " Brulte told me that in 2000 at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. He was the state Senate minority leader then. And was he ever wrong! The California GOP did make a brief resurgence under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was never fully accepted or appreciated by party activists. But in recent years, it has been going down, down, down.

SACRAMENTO - Two years ago, Andy Pugno was a celebrity culture warrior on the rise. He had written the ballot measure banning same-sex marriage in California and then raked in cash from conservative donors to fund an attempt to win a seat in the state Assembly. But the political ground shifted, and a flood of money from labor unions and gay rights groups crushed his legislative campaign. This year, a federal court overturned the state's gay marriage ban, and national polls now show a majority of Americans have no problem with same-sex marriage.

LAKE ARROWHEAD - A hiss rose from the front row as the Republican-turned-independent took a swing at his grand old party. Voters in Southern California's vast frontier of mountains and desert can break from the GOP's "tyranny of the minority" in the June 5 primary, congressional candidate Anthony Adams told the crowd. A hundred or so people, ranging from "tea party" adherents to gay-marriage defenders, had come to hear him and other hopefuls at a forum inside the Lake Arrowhead Resort.

It was Richard Nixon who brought me into the Republican fold. He was running for president, and I had recently arrived in California from Austria, which I'd left because the European socialist mentality wasn't big enough for my dreams. Growing up, I was surrounded by kids whose greatest ambition was to one day collect a pension. I didn't intend to spend my whole life dreaming about floating on a government safety net. One day, when Nixon was talking on the television, my liberal friend Artie translated bits of what he was saying.

Like so many budget sessions in Sacramento, this one had stretched late into the night. When the four leaders of the Assembly and Senate finally agreed on a package of spending cuts and modest reforms, a six-week standoff — which had forced the state to suspend payments to child-care centers and nursing homes — seemed at an end. Half an hour after legislative leaders left Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office, though, someone leaked word of...

The front-runners in the GOP presidential race were nowhere to be found as California Republicans met in Los Angeles over the weekend, giving underdog candidates a chance to press their argument that the nation will recover from its economic malaise only by shrinking government to the bounds of the Constitution. The crowd at the state party convention — as usual dominated by the more conservative elements in the GOP — warmly received U.S. Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Ron Paul of Texas.

The state's political watchdog agency Thursday fined a committee of the California Republican Party $25,500 for failing to disclose campaign contributions donated to seven GOP candidates in 1989 and 1990. In announcing the action, the Fair Political Practices Commission said the California Republican Party/Victory 1990 Cal Plan Committee had agreed to pay the fine as part of a settlement reached with the agency's executive director.

GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann on Friday predicted California would side with Republicans in 2012, a distinct improbability given voting registration trends and recent history in the Golden State. "I'm here to announce to you tonight, we will take our country back in 2012 and together we will make Barack Obama a one-term president," Bachmann told about 400 people at a dinner at the California Republican Party convention. "President Obama's numbers are the lowest they have ever been and I'm just here to say they haven't hit rock bottom yet. I think Election Day in 2012 will probably be the lowest they are yet, that's why I know … that we have got a message and we have got a winning streak," she said.

There has been grousing, moaning and buyer's remorse about the independent citizens' commission that just redrew California's political districts. But, overall, the remapping should be celebrated. The commission faced a very low bar, of course. Practically any product would have been better than legislators again rearranging the districts to protect themselves, their pals and the political status quo. That's what the Legislature did in 2001 during the last redistricting of legislative and congressional seats.