Boxer rebellion: California Republicans can't find a strong candidate, but this time it may not matter.

Mr. Robinson is national-issues writer for Investor's Business Daily.

LOS ANGELES 

Ever since Ronald Reagan's departure from the political scene, California has been short on conservative politicians with national stature. Party infighting and a lackluster back bench have reduced the Golden State's offerings to the current governor, Pete Wilson --who for years has clashed with his state's conservative activists --and the quickly rising attorney general, Dan Lungren.

The lame-duck governor's position as California's leading Republican certainly won't be threatened by the candidates currently vying for the right to challenge Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. Some see grounds for hope in the fact that both the surviving candidates, State Treasurer Matt Fong and multimillionaire Darrell Issa, plus three-term Congressman Frank Riggs (who has already dropped out), have sought to be known as "the conservative" in the race. "These candidates show how tremendously healthy the Republican Party is," says Shawn Steel, California Republican Party treasurer.

In other quarters, the dearth of rising stars is giving rise to despair. "What this race says is that the conservative movement is not viable in California," says conservative pollster Arnold Steinberg of Steinberg & Associates. "We don't come up with good candidates." Indeed, there may be only one person who can save this year's lackluster GOP field: Barbara Boxer herself.

Sen. Boxer is an arch feminist of the stiletto-heel-to-throat variety. She hasn't caught on with Californians outside her home base of Marin County in 16 years, and she never will. She is likely to prove in November that there still is no cure for Republican disarray quite like an unreconstructed liberal opponent.

When Barbara Boxer won her Senate seat in 1992, the climate was more than favorable -- it was the "Year of the Woman," and President Bush had given up on campaigning in the state -- and her staff made the most of every opportunity (remember the last-minute smear against her opponent, Bruce Herschensohn?). Now she is trying to sell her feminist liberalism in a midterm election in the Year of the Intern.

Sen. Boxer's number-one campaign issue is "reproductive rights": "For every assault on a woman's right to choose, I fought against those who would force us to return to the days of back-alley abortions." One of her major accomplishments, supporters say, is a domestic-violence hotline. And she is unrelenting in her crusade to ban "junk guns" and require child safety locks for guns.

When she was in the House, where she served for ten years, Mrs. Boxer was the highest-spending member. She was also virulently anti-business. But with the election drawing near, she has been trimming her sails. She now would allow exportation of encryption technology -- a critical issue to potential donors in Silicon Valley. (In 1995, she betrayed the high-tech sector by vociferously opposing tort reform.) Sen. Boxer has even come out for targeted tax cuts, proving that the debate over taxes is no longer about economics but is now about freedom versus social engineering.

But if a conservative philosophical tide has altered even Barbara Boxer's course it has hardly swept in a bumper crop of GOP candidates to oppose her. It says more about her than about them that Sen. Boxer hasn't broken 50 per cent in any matchup the pollsters have tested.

Rep. Frank Riggs -- who may actually be the sort of rising star the party needs -- entered the race too late and was unable to make headway against the two candidates who were there ahead of him. A March Field Poll showed him the favorite of only 4 per cent of likely primary voters, against 15 per cent for Darrell Issa and 11 per cent for Matt Fong.

Issa, 45 years old, is a wealthy San Diegan who earned his estimated $250 million making and selling car alarms. His campaign warns that "he'll spend whatever it takes" to win. He has already spent $4 million in a television and radio ad blitz that is clearly paying off.

How is it a man with no political experience can best a state official and knock a sitting congressman out of the race? Issa is courting conservatives with a barrage of ads urging the elimination of the IRS, supporting a state ballot initiative to stop bilingual education, and zinging Barbara Boxer as a liberal. And when he delivers his message in person, Issa electrifies audiences.

At a recent convention of the California Republican Assembly, the state's largest grass-roots group, he announced that he had a new speechwriter -- Barbara Boxer. He read one of her fundraising letters which begged for cash to stop the "conservative millionaire": "He opposes abortion on demand; he wants to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts; and he wants to repeal the ban on assault weapons." At the end of each count in this indictment, Issa proudly declared: "Guilty as charged."

So what's not to like? Critics point out that Issa has not always sounded so conservative, and they wonder if his spots will stay changed. Issa explains that he became pro-life in the early Seventies when he discovered that his paternal grandmother died at 24 from an infection following an attempted abortion. But he told the San Diego Union-Tribune in February that "Abortion is something that has always been with us . . . it is something you attempt to manage, not to end." In his days as a big GOP donor, Issa often backed pro-choice, liberal Republicans. In San Diego, he funded moderates running against conservative State Assembly candidates Bob Trettin and Howard Kaloogian. (He did later support Trettin and Kaloogian in the general election.)

As recently as 1994, Issa told the San Diego Union-Tribune, "I am a proud liberal Republican." Fong supporters use this quote in their faxes to GOP players around the state. "There seems to be a willing suspension of disbelief in the party," says Catherine Rayner, a political consultant and former field director for the hard-right Allied Business PAC. "Issa's operatives and his own deep pockets have reshaped his image in time for the election. But there are some of us who remember who he is."

Issa was able to overtake Fong, the previous favorite, because of the longtime officeholder's one major weakness. An Air Force Academy graduate, the 44-year-old Fong is articulate, precise, and clearly intelligent in one-on-one conversation. But on the podium he turns from cautious into downright timid. Writes one Bay Area columnist, "In a sea of somnolent speeches at the Republican National Convention, the state treasurer's speech stood out for its sheer catatonic wonder."

So far there have been two occasions on which Issa and Fong have squared off: the state Republican convention in Burlingame, in Northern California, and the CRA convention, which took place in Southern California. Both times, Fong failed to engage the audience. At the CRA convention, for example, instead of giving this Reaganite crowd some red meat, Fong droned on about numbers in loan programs and fiscal health. The result? Issa got two-thirds of the vote, and Riggs came in second.

On the abortion question, Fong holds to Steve Forbes's 1996 position: attempting to reduce the number of abortions through measures such as parental-consent laws and partial-birth-abortion bans, but permitting abortion without restriction for the first sixty days of a pregnancy.

In his attempts at self-promotion Fong is eerily reminiscent of the 1996 GOP presidential candidate -- "My strong suit is that I'm somebody who has practical experience. I've sat across the table from Democrats and Republicans and I get things done" -- and they will probably work as well for him as they did for Bob Dole.

This race is most notable for its no-shows. Gov. Pete Wilson's choice, San Diego mayor Susan Golding, was once the favorite, but she blew all her cash before the race even started.

Meanwhile, the California GOP is in one sense the victim of the national GOP's success. The 1994 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives created a new outlet for Republican ambition. Both Rep. Chris Cox and Gingrich ally Rep. David Dreier chose not to run for the Senate this time. "Everybody wanted Chris Cox to be in this race," says Shawn Steel. "But he thinks he can do more good where he is."

That may be true, but it is of little comfort to a California GOP that has failed to elect a senator since Pete Wilson moved to the governor's mansion. The only hope is that Barbara Boxer will help the state GOP and the conservative movement where they have failed to help themselves.