Firestone Will Fight Round 2 With GOP Right

By GEORGE SKELTON

Feb. 1, 1999 12 AM PT

SACRAMENTO — Brooks Firestone--vintner, ex-legislator, mauled congressional candidate--was driving through Tennessee on a three-month wine-peddling trip when his car phone rang.

“Brooks, this is Bob Larkin,” the caller announced, as Firestone relates the conversation of two weeks ago. “We’ve got a bunch of people here on a speaker phone who think you ought to run for party vice chairman. Isn’t that right?

“Big cheer.”

Party vice chairman? State Republican Party?

Firestone needs that like another corkscrew. He’s a lifelong political junkie, but why hang out with people on the far right, exposing yourself to kooks?

To put this in perspective, Firestone is a rich, urbane, 62-year-old winemaker who cultivates 500 acres of prize vineyards in the bucolic Santa Ynez Valley near Santa Barbara. His grandfather was Harvey Firestone, the pioneer tire maker; his father, Leonard Firestone, friend of four Republican presidents.

Brooks Firestone, a self-described “passionate centrist,” served respectably for two terms in the Assembly and was starting to run for lieutenant governor--a race he’d probably have won--when party bigwigs (House Speaker Newt Gingrich, ex-President Gerald R. Ford) talked him into running for Congress instead. Big mistake.

The right wing butchered Firestone in the primary. The carnage: A Democrat (Lois Capps) won the U.S. House seat last year. Another Democrat (Cruz Bustamante) became lieutenant governor.

Summing up the right-wingers’ blitzkrieg, Firestone says: “I was a person killing babies. I was taking guns away from farmers. I wanted to eliminate Social Security. . . .”

Yet, Firestone almost immediately agreed to run for the rinky-dink job of party vice chairman. It would put him in line to become chairman in two years.

“I’m like the old Dalmatian under the fire truck. When the bell rings, I don’t even think about it. I just react,” he says, adding: “I think I’ve got the ability to help restore the image and the energy of the party.”

Bob Larkin is a Simi Valley insurance agent and longtime Republican activist who is trying to drag the party back toward the center, back to mainstream voters. He particularly wants to rid the GOP of its anti-abortion plank.

“Women have left us in droves,” Larkin says. “You won’t be able to win another [major] election in California without the women’s vote and you won’t have the women’s vote as long as you have that plank in the platform. It gives the Republican Party a hard-edged, anti-woman look.”

So Larkin and his allies have recruited a moderate ticket to compete for the party’s top leadership posts at its state convention in Sacramento Feb. 26-28. Bylaws require the next chairman to be a northerner, so that excludes Firestone. He’ll run for vice chairman against conservative Beverly Hills lawyer Shawn Steel, the present treasurer. Although Steel lined up many early endorsements, Firestone still has a shot because the pols like his fund-raising ability.

Modesto businessman Nick Bavaro is running uphill for chairman against the heavy favorite, wealthy Silicon Valley software developer John McGraw, the current vice chairman.

The moderates need no better campaign flier than a recent article in the San Francisco Faith, a Catholic publication. It was based on a long interview with McGraw, 36, whose strong anti-abortion quotes quickly became a must-read on the political fax circuit.

The would-be party chairman was quoted as saying, “The most important issue by far is abortion. . . . Compared to that, cutting taxes or any other issue pales.” He proudly told of having gone to churches and distributed politicians’ voting records on abortion. And he said priests should tell parishioners that, if given the option of a “pro-life” candidate, “it is a serious moral issue if you vote for someone who is ‘pro-choice.’ ”

McGraw later issued a written explanation, saying that while those views “reflect my personal moral priorities,” they should not be “confused with the priorities of the California Republican Party [which] represents a diverse and broad spectrum.” But he did not disavow the quotes.

Firestone, who supports abortion rights, would not even utter the word “abortion” when I talked to him. But he did observe that when a party emphasizes “narrow, ideological issues, it’s like the British redcoats wearing red jackets with white crosses. They make great targets for themselves.”

Firestone says he wants “to restore fun, excitement, productivity and electability to the party.”

He’s got barrels of wine, friends with money, lots of time, and savvy and style. Maybe he could liven up this party.