Delegates Pull Republican Party to the Right : Politics: Activists at state convention vote to punish straying legislators. Outgoing chairman says party is close to “abandoning its very birthright of tolerance.”

SACRAMENTO —  After giving due recognition to their new moderate leaders--Gov. Pete Wilson and U. S. Sen. John Seymour--activist California Republicans pulled the party sharply to the right Sunday, opening it up to potentially divisive fights over taxation, abortion, gay rights and other issues dear to the hearts of conservatives.

The 1,317 voting members of the state Republican Central Committee also issued a blunt warning to any GOP legislator who might think of making a deal with Democratic leaders in order to save his own seat when it comes time to redraw legislative district lines. The committee, meeting in its semiannual organizing convention, authorized itself to punish such legislators with the rare sanction of party endorsement of a GOP challenger in the June, 1992, primary election.

The convention overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to allow the state party chairman to succeed himself, thus delivering a sharp rebuff to outgoing chairman Frank Visco, a moderate from Lancaster who had lectured the delegates on the folly of embroiling themselves in single-issue politics.

The committee also gave a not-so-subtle warning to Wilson and Seymour by adopting a resolution that calls the support of new tax revenues a “betrayal of the Reagan Revolution.” Adopted without dissent, the measure authored by Rep. William E. Dannemeyer of Fullerton calls on Republican lawmakers to cut spending rather than raise taxes.

After the vote, Dannemeyer said he hoped the delegate vote would prompt Wilson to re-think his support of tax increases.

“I would hope the governor would follow the advice of the party,” said the congressman, who is challenging Seymour for the Senate seat in 1992.

Wilson needs GOP votes as well as support from majority Democrats to pass his first budget, which proposes more than $1 billion in new taxes to help overcome a projected deficit that could run as high as $10 billion over the next 18 months.

After his featured luncheon address Saturday, Wilson told reporters it may be easy for grass-roots Republicans to oppose new taxes but, as governor, he has the constitutional mandate of balancing the budget and the “managerial responsibility” of offsetting the deficit with new revenues as well as spending reductions. To those who would rely entirely on cuts, Wilson said: “They’re wrong politically. That isn’t the solution.”

But Seymour, after seeming to remain open to the need for new taxes in January, told the convention Saturday he was unequivocally opposed to any federal tax increase.

Conservatives generally hold more sway in the party in off-years than in election years, when the ranks swell with activists attracted by particular candidates or issues. Nevertheless, the moves made over the weekend will determine how the party behaves as it heads into the 1992 elections. The changes spawned expressions of concern by moderates.

In his farewell address, Visco lamented that the California party was “preoccupied with matters of secondary importance.”

While he did not identify those matters, the insurgent conservatives have criticized most Republicans who support a woman’s right to an abortion and gay rights. Both Wilson and Seymour fit that profile. Wilson breezed unchallenged through the 1990 GOP primary for governor despite his outspoken support of abortion rights, but he infuriated the Republican right with his appointment of Seymour, of Anaheim, to succeed him in the U. S. Senate.

“As Republicans, we have never been the party of a litmus test in politics,” Visco said. “We’ve never been a party of single-issue politics. . . . This certainly is not the time to start.” He warned that the party is “on the verge of abandoning its very birthright of tolerance . . . for the sake of a very narrow minority,” adding that, “a political party which trades only in single issue politics is doomed to failure.”

But Visco’s successor, Modesto agribusiness executive Jim Dignan, said he was committed to allowing free and fair discussion of all issues during his two-year term, even if it leads to the party putting itself on record against the chartering of gay GOP clubs and in support of Dannemeyer’s proposed recognition of a “heterosexual ethic.”

“I want to see committees that are balanced to promote discussion,” Dignan said.

On Saturday, after the lame-duck Rules Committee rejected Dannemeyer’s anti-gay language, the congressman said: “It is obvious this committee was stacked.” But if he lost the battle, Dannemeyer was confident of winning the war. “I am willing to wait until the September convention. The committee will be differently organized than this.”

When Rules Committee Chairman Lou Barnett presented his report to the convention Sunday, he said: “We felt these kinds of problems were better handled behind closed doors. . . . The less controversy, the less discussion we have, the better.”

But even with Dignan’s pledge for free discussion, the new chairman said he did not want to see the committee turned into a debating society. “We can discuss issues, but the bottom line, my friends, is that my job is to raise money.”

Dignan proposed collecting up to $18 million in the next two years in an effort to chip away at hefty Democratic majorities within the state’s 45-member congressional delegation, growing to 52 in the 1992 election, and in both houses of the Legislature.