Former GOP officials urge party to "come back to mainstream"
By David Postman
NEW YORK — As the Republican National Convention opens today starring some of the party's best-known moderates, a group of former Republican officeholders says that lineup is only stagecraft designed to soften the look of an increasingly right-wing party.
A newly formed organization of former GOP officeholders will use a full-page ad in The New York Times today to urge their party to "Come Back to the Mainstream." They want to shift the party and President Bush to the left on the environment, stem-cell research, foreign policy and judicial appointments.
"There are a whole host of areas where I personally think the administration has gotten too harsh, too partisan, too unwilling to reach across the aisle to get good answers to tough problems," said former Washington Gov. Dan Evans, one of 17 former GOP officials who signed the ad.
It's an attempt to mobilize moderates. Or as the group's president, Jim Scarantino, put it, "energize the moderates to assert themselves."
"Moderates' greatest crime has simply been they have been too moderate," said Scarantino, a New Mexico lawyer and former head of Republicans for Environmental Protection.
He says moderate Republicans could be a major electoral force in what is expected to be a close presidential race.
"Without their votes, it would be likely that President Bush would not carry many of the battleground states," he said. "We are launching this effort to give moderates the same voice and platform that we have seen extremists use to gain control of the party."
"The extreme right wing has never, ever hesitated to threaten to withhold their votes, resources and financial backing if they don't get their way."
To finance the effort, mostly the ad and a Web site (BacktotheMainstream.org) that Scarantino hopes becomes a forum for disaffected moderate Republicans, the former officials formed an independent political organization. It is a so-called 527 group, named for the part of the IRS code that governs independent political committees that are allowed to accept unlimited donations.
The effort to moderate the Republican Party and Bush's agenda shares professional help with one of the country's best financed and most active of anti-Bush committees. BacktotheMainstream.org uses the same Washington, D.C., public-relations firm and Web-development company as MoveOn.org.
A news conference today by the group was organized by Fenton Communications, which does the same for MoveOn. The group's Web site was registered by AdvocacyInc.com, which lists MoveOn and a host of Democratic candidates among its clients.
The Bush campaign did not respond to calls seeking comment on the group.
Evans and Scarantino said they didn't know of the connections to Democratic organizations. Scarantino said he had used Fenton before, and the Web company was chosen by the son-in-law of one of the new group's founders.
Evans said the former officials, not the hired firms, decide the content of the material.
"I wouldn't be any part of something that was a Democratically-oriented effort to try to detract from the president," Evans said.
Evans has not taken public stands in recent presidential elections. He served three terms as Washington's governor, from 1965 to 1977. That, he says, was the heyday for party moderates.
He has high praise for the Nixon administration's domestic policies.
"The Nixon administration gets trashed for a lot of things, but they started the first Environmental Protection Agency," he said. "They had a pretty healthy environmental record that got obscured by all of the stupid things of Watergate."
Other members of the group include former governors David Cargo of New Mexico, A. Linwood Holton of Virginia, William Milliken of Michigan and Walter Peterson of New Hampshire; former senators Charles Mathias Jr. of Maryland and Robert Stafford of Vermont; and Russell Train, Environmental Protection Agency administrator under Presidents Nixon and Ford.
Their opposition comes as party moderates are headlining the national convention. Tonight, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain speak. Tomorrow night's headliner is California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Thursday, before Bush accepts his renomination, the convention hears from New York Gov. George Pataki.
It's a lineup that has made some Republican conservatives unhappy. It also prompted the moderates of the 1960s, '70s and '80s to form Back to the Mainstream.
The lineup of speakers, Scarantino said, is a "moderate face that is going to be draped over the GOP of Tom DeLay," the conservative House majority leader.
"It's great to put these wonderful leaders up there like George Pataki and Arnold Schwarzenegger," Scarantino said. "But the truth of the matter is that is not the power center of the GOP. It is not their agenda that is the party's agenda nationwide."
Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said too much has been made about the centrist list of prime-time speakers. In an interview last week, he joked that if he didn't have Giuliani speak on opening night in his hometown, "that'd be grounds for me to be impeached."
The party was going for star power as much as ideology.
"A lot of people pay $8 to see Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie theater, and we can provide him for free and get people to watch and hear about the president and his agenda," Gillespie said.
"The fact is some of our more moderate folks are some of our more famous folks."
Conservatives will be speaking, too, including Sen. Elizabeth Dole, whom Gillespie called "a conservative icon."
He said he was not bothered by complaints about the speaking schedule:
"Any party that is big enough to have the governorships of California, Texas, Florida and New York and control the House and Senate and White House is going to be big enough to accommodate some differences amongst ourselves."
Evans isn't so sure. He's an iconic figure in state Republican politics. The lineage of Evans Republicanism lives on in the only two party members to hold statewide office, Secretary of State Sam Reed and Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland.
Though he has long been at odds with national-party policies, Evans says he voted for Bush four years ago.
"I've always been a Republican" and always voted Republican in presidential elections, he said. "I've never once thought about jumping the tracks.
"That doesn't mean that I'm not taking a really long look this year."
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