Reminiscing about the conservative movement in the 1970s, Paul Weyrich of Coalitions for America once told me: "We used to have big PACs [political action committees] and could tell candidates 'get out of the race - you're going to divide the conservative votes.' We could unite behind a single conservative and win primaries. It's happening less and less frequently."
That was in 2000. We were commiserating over two less-established conservatives draining enough votes and resources from the leading conservative contender in a Houston-area Republican primary for an open U.S. House district. As a result, the conservative placed third and the two coveted run-off positions went to two more moderate GOP candidates.
Actually, Weyrich and I have had this same discussion several times because this same scenario of "we divide, they conquer" continues to occur. Because conservatives too often fail to keep their eqos in check and put cause before ambition, the resources, supporters and votes that conservatives needs gets splintered and the candidate conservatives liked least wins by a plurality. Moderate Republican Reps. Judy Biggert of Illinois and Tod Platts of Pennsylvania, for example, both won their seats initially by winning pluralities in primaries in which there was more than one conservative opponent.
All told, as the Republican Party moves increasingly to the right, its moderate and liberal wings remain alive and well.
The latest case in point occurred yesterday, in the race to fill the seat of disgraced former Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham in California's 50th District. As expected, Democrat Francine Busby drew almost 44% of the vote and run first in a field with fourteen Republican candidates. (Under the Golden State's arcane special election rules, the top two vote-getters of each party compete in a run-off to fill the remainder of Cunningham's term unless one wins a majority outright; since Busby failed to do that, she will square off with the runner-up, moderate Republican Brian Bilbray, in June - the same day as the California primary, when voters select nominees for a new term as congressman from the 50th).
Bilbray, who represented the neighboring 49th District from 1994-2000, was second in yesterday’s free-for-all race with 15% of the vote. Many experienced hands in state politics fear that the failure of more conservative GOPers to embrace him may put this solidly Republican seat in the hands of national Democrats. (The same day of the special election, many of those who were runners-up to Bilbray will still be vying in the primary for nomination for a full term in November). Others point out that the figures favor the GOP - 44% to 30% in terms of registered voters, with 21% independent.
But the present showdown did not have to be. After Bilbray, the line-up in the 50th District was millionaire business Eric Roach with 14% of the vote, followed by former State Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian with 8% and State Sen. Bill Morrow 7%. Both Kaloogian and Morrow sported solidly right-of-center records on social and economic issues in the state legislature, while first-time candidate Roach (who spent an estimated $1.5 million of his own exchequer) ran as a strong conservative and underscored his differences with Bilbray in a hard-hitting media blitz.
One doesn't have to be John Nash (the brilliant mathematician-hero of A Beautiful Mind) to analyze the arithmetic. Had two of the three runners-up - who appear to have agreed on almost every issue - deferred to another and waited another day for their own ambitions, Busby (a liberal Democrat who moved to the middle by endorsing abolition of the death tax) would have been facing a card-carrying conservative; as it is, she faces the most prominent moderate in the race (Bilbray's lifetime rating with the American Conservative Union rating is 71%) and someone distrusted strongly by the right.
Now it's not my place to say who should defer to whom. Kaloogian and Morrow both had splendid conservative records; Roach, albeit a political newcomer, took conservative stands on virtually every issues, according to my friend Ron Pearson, who heads the Conservative Victory Fund (the nation's oldest conservative PAC). But it seems a good bet that if one or two of the three on the right yielded to a third candidate, the noble "deferrers" would have had their reward down the line. Bill Witt, a conservative businessman and Pat Buchanan Republican, wanted badly to run for Congress from the Portland, Oregon area in 1992 but he finally deferred to another conservative who had already held office, State Treasurer Tony Meeker. Meeker lost and two years later, conservatives felt it was Witt's turn and he became the GOP nominee almost by acclamation.
For now, what happened in California's 50th District race is the latest unhappy chapter in a volume that could best be entitled with the same title of a book on another subject by Pat Buchanan: "Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories."
