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"Closet Republicans" keep low profile in liberal California
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Anything goes in ultra-tolerant California -- anything, that is, except being a Republican, forcing some supporters of conservative US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) into the political closet.
In a state so permissive it spawned America's first-legally sanctioned gay marriages, the Hell's Angels biker gang and a string of quirky religious cults, many California Republicans feel they must keep mum about their politics to avoid clashes with friends and colleagues.
"Alternate lifestyles can be out in the open here, but I have to be in the closet," quipped Jack Laettner, a registered Republican and chief prosecutor in the Democrat-dominated San Francisco area city of Oakland.
"In the (San Francisco) Bay Area, there is too much apologizing. This is a crazy place to live," he said of the area's famously liberal politics that he says have left him feeling isolated both at work and at home.
"When you have Christmas at your house, and 20 of your wife's relatives come over, you don't talk politics," Laettner, 48, confided.
"They are all as liberal as the day is long ... Even if something good happened with Bush or (Attorney General John) Ashcroft, you don't want to talk about it because the knee-jerk reaction is just incredible."
While not all of California is as liberal as the areas around the main cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, a Field poll early this month found that 49 percent of Californians support Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) against 40 percent for Bush.
Bumper stickers with slogans such as "Bush/Satan 2004" and "Dubya Stands for Whore" indicate the high and outspoken level of hostility towards Bush, particularly in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Even though the liberal state now has a Republican governor in Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites), who is extremely moderate within his party, it is a traditional Democratic bastion, especially during presidential elections.
And in the state's metropolises, conservative Republicans are all too aware of their minority status and tread very carefully.
"You have to be careful, no matter what you do for a living," said 57-year-old Gary Schellenberg, a sheriff's captain in Alameda, east of San Francisco, who has learned to keep his political views to himself.
"You don't want to alienate yourself from your peers, your subordinates, or your supervisors. I've learned to accept my place in society, which is a little cubby hole," he said.
Schellenberg and his wife, Linda, confine expressions of their conservative views to home, discussing them only in private settings with the half-dozen like-minded couples with whom they "flock together," he said.
Many California Republicans only feel liberated when they travel to more conservative states where their views are more commonplace.
But Schellenberg said he finds himself in a no-win situation; when he visits the US south he is pounded by locals for living in a state derisively dubbed "the land of fruits and nuts" or even "America's Sodom and Gomorrah."
In overwhelmingly Democratic Hollywood, those who come out of the closet as Republicans say they get a very chilly reception from disbelieving colleagues and claim they even fear losing work.
Sony Pictures movie producer Mike DeLuca, one of relatively few industry figures to come out openly as a Republican, told Details Magazine that Tinseltown colleagues reacted to his revelation as if he had been "exposed as a serial killer."
Catherine Brinkman, state chairwoman of California Young Republicans, said she has faced open hostility from fellow residents of the Golden State appalled by her pro-Bush politics.
"There is a lot of aggression, they hate Bush and they seem to hate anyone supporting Bush," she told AFP.
When Brinkman parks her car, she pulls off her Bush bumper stickers for fear of being targeted by opponents of the president.
"I know people who have had their car damaged, their houses have gotten eggs thrown at them," she said. "It is not easy the life of a Republican here, you know."
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