Seeking what’s left of the Republican Party

JOSEPH N. BELL

The sudden and quite remarkable conversion of Orange County GOP

Chairman Tom Fuentes to the World According to Arnold is going to

leave a lot of local Republicans without a philosophical base.

It is rumored that Fuentes had his fingers crossed behind his back

while sounding jovial about the election of a Republican

standard-bearer who supports choice for women, restrictions on guns

and other violations of the canon laws of the Republican right.

But -- at least on the surface -- Fuentes’ conversion seems to be

taking place. Just three weeks, according to the Los Angeles Times,

after he turned away 5,000 “Join Arnold” signs and was snubbed at the

Schwarzenegger rally at the Costa Mesa Fairgrounds, Fuentes told a

Times reporter: “I’m as excited and as positive as I can be about our

hopes for California with a new Republican governor.”

This is clearly cheering news to what passes around Newport-Mesa

for moderate Republicans, whose local efforts to unseat Fuentes have

been stiffed repeatedly while candidates such as Bill Simon have gone

down the tubes.

If Fuentes’ love affair with Arnold appears to represent a

watershed in local Republican politics, those of us who have been

around these parts for awhile must be permitted our doubts. While

Orange County was electing off-the-scale right wingers such as James

Utt and John Schmitz, we’ve seen real moderate Republicans such as

Goodwin Knight and Earl Warren -- building on the legacy of Hiram

Johnson -- come out of California.

Orange County’s one contribution to this group was U.S. Sen. Tom

Kuchel, a native of Anaheim, who fought off a vicious attack on his

character based on a fraudulent police report. Kuchel was the

Republican whip in the U.S. Senate when he was defeated in the

Republican primary by an ultra-conservative candidate with a strong

following in Orange County, state schools Superintendent Max

Rafferty, who then -- shades of Bill Simon -- lost big to Democrat

Alan Cranston.

This is just a smattering of the legacy fueling the deeply

conservative core that still holds on to power in Orange County.

Meanwhile, some Republicans who have moved to Newport-Mesa since

those early events are wondering if the party’s base here will ever

be open to change -- and what to do about it if it isn’t.

I got such a letter some months ago from Corona del Mar residents

Jim and Jean Coon, who wrote, in part: “We are both lifelong

Republicans, having been so registered in every election since 1944.

Nevertheless, we are in almost total opposition to the Bush

administration and its expressed plans for curing the country’s ills

and, apparently, those of the rest of the world. Trying to get this

‘loyal opposition’ across to the Republican establishment in Orange

County would seem to be an exercise in futility ... . If you have any

information regarding responsible groups who might share our

concerns, we would be grateful for hearing about them.”

We talked briefly on the phone and had decided on further

conversation when the war in Iraq exploded and my normal

procrastination set in. But the apparent embrace of the new governor

by the local Republican organization made me wonder if the Coons

considered this an encouraging sign, so I made a belated visit to

their home.

They are natives of Portland, Ore., where Jim Coon had owned a

retail heating equipment business, from which he retired in 1986.

They lived in Tucson, Arizona and Huntington Beach before moving to a

gated community in Corona del Mar five years ago.

They voted against the recall of Gray Davis because they

considered it a bad precedent, and they found no solace in the

marriage of convenience between Arnold and the conservative

Republicans. Their deep, visceral concern is Bush’s embrace of

preemptive war as a national policy. And after writing to me, they

found ways to express that concern.

“Twice,” Jean Coon said, “we stood at the corner of Bristol and

Von Karman and protested this war. It was a great mix of people: not

rabble rousers or hippies but intelligent, thoughtful citizens. There

were other people our age and people as young as our grandchildren.

All of them felt -- as we do -- that we must do something. And this

was something we could do. We’ve never known anything like this

before.”

When I asked what Republicans they most admired, Jim Coon said

they had worked for Sen. John McCain in Arizona, “but I’m a raucous

kind of Goldwater Republican -- fiscally but not socially

conservative.”

“I don’t think Goldwater’s social views were ever really explored

because he had to spend so much of his campaign time on foreign

policy,” Jim Coon said. “I think if he were around today, he would

feel the same way a lot of people like us who supported him feel. We

shouldn’t get into something we can’t finish. And we should be paying

our debts instead of running them up.”

“Since we wrote you that letter,” Jean Coon said, “we’ve been

meeting people our own age, and regardless of party affiliation, most

of them feel pretty much the same as we do about Bush and this war.”

The Coons are not ambivalent about the depth of their feelings.

“We will vote against Bush regardless of his opponent,” Jim Coon

said. “We feel that strongly about what he is doing.”

The Coons are finding they aren’t standing alone among fellow

Republicans, even in this haven of conservatism. And putting a

Republican movie star in the governor’s mansion clearly isn’t going

to soften their convictions as it did Tom Fuentes’. But they’d still

like to hear about “any responsible groups” -- preferably Republican

-- that share their concerns.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.