Losing ground among voters, the California Republican Party is trying to re-energize its ranks by spreading a simple message: We'll protect your wallet.
Whether the no-tax mantra will be enough to reinvigorate a party on the political ropes is unclear. But it was the theme of the day Saturday at a downtown Sacramento hotel during the party's twice-annual gathering.
Some Republicans believe they may have found a strategy to at least help stop the bleeding within the party -- rail against tax increases and anyone who supports them. Criticism of the recently enacted state budget plan, which closes a $42 billion budget hole through June 2010 with spending cuts, tax hikes and borrowing, was a popular theme.
Activists voted to reprimand the six GOP lawmakers who voted for the compromise budget package that was signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week. The measure approved by a GOP committee also denied the six any party funding for the 2010 election, a step that will affect freshman Assemblyman Anthony Adams of Hesperia, who is up for re-election.
"A no-tax pledge needs to mean something," said Jon Fleischman, a party vice-chairman from Southern California who introduced the measure. "If we don't respect the meaning of the pledge, we'll no longer be able to use it to defeat Democrats."
A majority of convention delegates will have to approve the measure Sunday for it to take effect.
Both the likely front-runners for next year's GOP nomination for governor said raising taxes during a recession was the wrong move.
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State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner said the legislative budget package will go down as one of the worst decisions ever made by California's Legislature. He said it relied on budget gimmicks and shaky revenue predictions.
Poizner called the increases to the state sales tax, personal income tax and vehicle license fee regressive and said they would force people to cut back even further in spending. If revenue fails to come in as projected, lawmakers will be dealing with another midyear deficit even though they already approved the budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year.
The Silicon Valley entrepreneur said he would never raise taxes as governor. But he also criticized those who sought to reprimand the six Republican lawmakers who provided the votes to reach the required two-thirds majority for the spending plan.
He said it was not the most effective use of leaders' time and warned that the GOP, which has been slipping in voter registration for years, needs to modernize.
"The California Republican Party is in trouble," he told a gathering of reporters. "We have to do some serious rebuilding."
Poizner said he would try to cut bureaucracy in education, streamline government agencies and resort to borrowing but offered few other specifics on how we would reduce a deficit in the tens of billions of dollars without tax increases.
Poizner's rival, former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, delivered a similar message during a luncheon speech, where she sought to persuade convention delegates that she was the one to carry the party's banner next year.
She also blasted the budget compromise, which called for $15.1 billion in cuts and $12.8 billion in tax increases. She was introduced by a conservative favorite, former Massachusetts governor and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who endorsed Whitman's candidacy.
Whitman, who like Poizner is considered a political moderate, is seeking to win over party faithful who may be skeptical about her commitment to GOP orthodoxy. She apologized for failing to vote in several recent elections and acknowledged that she joined the Republican Party in 2007 after being registered as an independent.
"I'm a Republican, and you'll find I'm a darn good one," she said. "I've committed myself to running for one of the toughest chief executive jobs on the planet because I believe Republican ideals, truly and consistently applied, will save this state."
Schwarzenegger was a no-show, opting to attend this weekend's National Governors Association meeting in Washington, D.C.
A motion to lampoon the governor by having the party apologize to former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis for its role in his 2003 recall failed in the resolutions committee.
The anti-tax fervor did not deter one of the most vilified Republicans from showing up at the downtown Hyatt Regency. State Sen. Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria cast the decisive budget vote in the Senate after wrangling a number of concessions from Democrats and Schwarzenegger.
That includes a measure headed to the June 2010 ballot that would replace California's party primary system with an open primary. The Democratic and Republican parties have opposed such efforts in the past.
Speaking with reporters, Maldonado said party members who want to capitalize on the anti-tax fervor to reinvigorate the party's base risk losing a more important constituency -- the broad center of the California electorate.
As of last fall, Democrats had widened their registration edge over Republicans to 12 points, 44 percent to 32 percent, while decline-to-state voters have grown to almost 20 percent of the California electorate. The GOP also lost seats in both houses of the Legislature in November.
Maldonado urged his fellow Republicans to adapt to changing times, something they have been slow to do in the past.
"I want to be the messenger for the Republican Party, to the fastest-growing population in California," he said, referring to independents. "We need to change. If we don't change, we're going to go back to the old ways, and we're going to continue to lose."
