Buchanan’s Backers Try to Block Endorsement of Bush

BURLINGAME, Calif. — Patrick J. Buchanan’s operatives went on the offensive Friday to stave off efforts by state Republican Party leaders to award an unprecedented pre-primary endorsement to President Bush.

As hundreds of delegates to the Republican State Central Committee gathered for their semiannual convention, the battle over whether to endorse the President for reelection heated up.

The pro-endorsement faction--led by party conservatives such as state Chairman Jim Dignan--claimed that it had the votes to carry out its plan on the convention floor Sunday. To make an endorsement, two-thirds of the voting delegates must agree to suspend central committee rules.

“I think our party is going on the record supporting our President,” Dignan told reporters. “We are going to show that our party is unified behind the President.”

But supporters of Buchanan, the conservative television commentator who startled the Bush campaign with a closer-than-anticipated second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary, accused state party leaders of using “trickery” to give an edge to the President.

“George Bush is taking unfair advantage,” said Jon Fleischman, a Buchanan supporter and representative of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom.

“Patrick J. Buchanan is being shut out of the process, and that frankly disgusts me.”

Fleischman, who is also a member of the party’s 100-member executive committee, claimed that Bush supporters were pressuring--even threatening--delegates who oppose suspending the rules to allow the endorsement.

The Buchanan campaign made an unexpectedly strong appearance at the convention, being held in a hotel near San Francisco International Airport, with posters plastered throughout the lobby and about 25 placard-waving supporters chanting “Let’s go, Pat!” lined up outside a press center.

Buchanan’s backers are buttonholing delegates and asking them to vote against the rule change that would permit the endorsement, according to the campaign’s California coordinator, Richard Neff. But he declined to say whether he thought they would be successful.

For his part, Dignan was nearly boastful, saying he was confident that the convention would endorse Bush. For him and many of California’s Republicans, an endorsement is one way to assert the state’s role in presidential politics now, before the June 2 primary. By June, they figure, it will be too late for California to make a difference, while other, smaller states will have been allowed to set the agenda.

“It’s pretty bad for the largest state in the union to have to be dictated to, based upon the votes of small states,” Dignan said. “Why should California take a back seat to states smaller than some of our counties?”

Some sources have said that the move to endorse the President began as a ploy by the state’s Republican conservatives to gain clout in the 201-member delegation that will represent California in the Republican National Convention.

On Friday, Dignan denied that this was the motive for the endorsement. But he conceded that the White House was surprised by the effort.

And Gov. Pete Wilson, a staunch Bush supporter, only joined the effort recently, after initial misgivings. There was some concern among the state’s Republican moderates that the effort would fail and backfire in a stinging embarrassment for the President.

While few doubt that the majority of convention delegates will support Bush, achieving the two-thirds vote to suspend the rules is regarded as a more difficult task.