Reorganization Is a Priority as State Republicans Gather for Convention

SACRAMENTO — A battered California Republican Party gathers today for a reorganizing convention designed to patch the fragmented GOP structure together behind Gov. Pete Wilson’s forthcoming 1994 reelection campaign.

Sometimes there is nothing like a good electoral drubbing to unite a party for the long haul back to victory. And four months after the worst drubbing California Republicans have suffered in a generation, unity talk is sprouting like the daffodils that soon will splash across the nearby Mother Lode foothills.

But there were signs Friday that the state GOP’s official governing body may revert to form in spite of itself. The norm of the past several years has been bitter infighting between pro-Wilson moderates and anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-gun control conservatives and religious activists.

In the key test vote at the most recent party convention, the body was split almost exactly 50-50.

“The Republican Party has to get its act together,” said incoming party Chairman Tirso del Junco, a Los Angeles surgeon who begins a two-year term at the end of the convention Sunday.

In particular, Del Junco said, “I want to put to rest the social issues” that have been the catalyst for the factionalism. Del Junco wants the focus shifted to economic matters on which the disputing sides can come together.

Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll said the outcome this weekend could be important to Wilson, whose popularity has been the lowest of any modern California governor in recent months.

“If he could unify the party, and there was a resolution between the conservative wing and the rest of the party, you could hypothesize that it would be easier for Wilson to shore up his standing with the public,” DiCamillo said.

“But no one seems to be expecting that, so he needs to improve his standing with the public in areas that are beyond the Republican State Convention,” DiCamillo added.

In fact, Wilson did not even attend the most recent convention in Los Angeles last September, although his political agents toiled unsuccessfully to prevent an anti-abortion plank from being written into the party platform for the first time.

This weekend, however, the governor has what is usually considered the featured speaking slot at tonight’s convention banquet.

Outgoing Chairman James R. Dignan of Modesto, who will preside through the closing gavel Sunday, said that Republicans must refrain from finger-pointing over the 1992 election, in which California Democrats carried the state for President Clinton, elected two Democratic U.S. senators and won unexpectedly large majorities in the state Assembly and in the 52-member delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Some conservatives blamed Wilson for the scope of the Republican losses. Wilson sided with moderates in some GOP legislative primaries and spent considerable time and energy on a failed ballot initiative to reform the California welfare system and to grant the governor greater budget authority.

Dignan seemed to aim a barb at Wilson without naming him by saying: “As we move forward, we have to start focusing on electing Republicans and not on passing initiatives.”

GOP leaders aligned with Wilson are not mourning the passing of the gavel from Dignan to Del Junco.

“The irony is that Del Junco is more conservative ideologically than Dignan, but he understands the role of the party and the party chairman,” said one leader who asked not to be quoted by name. “He is very clear in his support of the governor’s reelection.”

One parting shot that irked the Wilson camp was Dignan’s scheduling of 14-year-old Gianna Jessen of ALIVE Ministries to speak at a Sunday prayer breakfast. In a news release, she was identified as the survivor “of a saline abortion performed during the third trimester of her teen-age mother’s pregnancy.”

Even if there is no open debate on the abortion issue--and none was scheduled in advance--the presence of Jessen on the program may fan emotions between the abortion rights advocates and abortion opponents of the party.

The convention consists of as many as 1,500 delegates who hold office by virtue of election by county central committees, appointment by Republican officeholders or by winning GOP primaries in 1992.

Dignan guessed that about 300 delegates will be new ones at this convention.

The featured speakers during the weekend will be Wilson, Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, Assembly Leader Jim Brulte, GOP National Chairman Haley Barbour and Bruce Herschensohn, the GOP nominee for the Senate seat won by Democrat Barbara Boxer.

Resolutions expressing official party positions are to be considered today.