Changing of the Guard for Orange County GOP : Incoming Chairman Sees Party’s Role as ‘Anchor to the Right’ for State : ORANGE COUNTY NEWSMAKER

“Midge, I’ve been hoping to hear from you,” Thomas Fuentes said, instinctively firing the Fuentes grin into the telephone.

“Yes, just as we did four years ago. This year, there will be dancing, community entertainment, singers and dancers, high schoolers serving as ushers, and then we will have around-the-room televisions to show the hoopla from the nation’s capital.

“Remember last time, you folks at the inaugural committee put on that live nationwide broadcast by satellite that brought us live coverage of the President and the First Lady as they traveled through Washington going to the various balls, et cetera?”

“Sure. Sure. That’s basically our main question. Then, we thought if there was any way of getting a message from the President to greet our people, we’d like that; the White House has always been every good about sending those messages.”

A message was important. The invitations were already out for what promised to be the political extravaganza of the year, hosted by Orange County’s own master of political hyperbole.

“Super. Super. Midge, nice talking to you. Bye-bye.”

Even before he hung up the phone, his eyes were aflame. “That was . . . the inaugural committee,” he explained. “Last time, they had a great deal--they had a satellite set up, and our screen was 14 feet high and 20 feet wide. So wherever the President was, you were with him, and, I mean, you put that up on the wall, and it was just like, it was phenomenal, just phenomenal. It’ll be a real hoopla.”

In this case, fanfare is important. Fuentes, the one-man social arm of the Orange County Republican Party, has hosted literally scores of election-night extravaganzas, gourmet fund-raisers and intimate, expensive cocktail parties over the years, but the Jan. 21 “Gala Inauguration Evening” in honor of Ronald Reagan is expected to mark Fuentes’ first major event as Orange County Republican Party chairman.

If all goes as Fuentes has planned, he will be unanimously elected tonight by the Republican Central Committee to replace four-term veteran Lois Lundberg in the party’s top Orange County post. (The groundwork, of course, has been meticulously laid. Fuentes has personally telephoned each member of the committee to ensure each vote. He has even planned a reception afterward at the Ambrosia Restaurant in Costa Mesa to celebrate, complete with the best hors d’oeuvres.)

Fuentes, occasionally dubbed the Prince of Orange for his exotic gourmet excursions that offer belly dancers and Broadway production numbers for dessert, is as much a part of the Orange County Republican Party as the familiar red, white and blue elephant on the party’s letterhead.

He has served as its first vice chairman for the past four years. He is a member of the Republican State Central Committee. He was president of the Young Republicans at both Santa Ana and Chapman colleges and, at 22, won election to the county central committee.

Volunteer for Charities

Fuentes also has served on the boards of directors of countless charitable groups. He founded and presides over a nonprofit organization that distributes 450,000 pounds of food each month to the poor, and he acts as director of communications for the Catholic Diocese of Orange.

Acquaintances joke that they can’t criticize Fuentes for fear of divine retribution, yet the prospect of the amiable Fuentes at the helm of the Republican Party has aroused a stir among the faithful about what direction the party --still flush from the 1984 Reagan landslide and enjoying a registration edge of more than 157,000 --may take under his leadership.

“I think it’ll be absolutely 100% different. I don’t think there’s one area in which it will remain the same, except my hope that it remains powerful,” Lundberg said recently.

Privately, a number of Republican leaders say they expect the party’s most conservative wing to take on a great deal more influence under the leadership of Fuentes, who in the most recent elections has thrown his considerable fund-raising abilities behind such conservative candidates as Orange County Assemblymen John Lewis (Orange), Nolan Frizzelle (Huntington Beach) and Gil Ferguson (Newport Beach) and state Sen. Edward Royce (Anaheim).

“There is a general concern that the direction of the county committee maintain a certain degree of balance. Tom has tended to identify himself with the far right,” said one Republican legislator.

“I admire Tom very, very much. Obviously I wish him well--and I worry about him,” Lundberg said. “I don’t mean this the way it sounds, but I think even my enemies would have to say that I did not lean, or let any segment take over or become dominant. I’ve had a 20-year history of politics in Orange County, where I’ve seen the right wing fight the left wing, and the moderates fight each of them, and they all fight each other, and the party go down the drain.”

The trouble started just about the time that Fuentes’ invitations to tonight’s Ambrosia reception arrived in the mail, and it was learned that he had already designated a new executive director for the county party organization--Greg Haskin, a former employee of the state party organization and the Senate Republican Caucus who managed Ferguson’s bitter primary campaign last year in the 70th Assembly District.

Ferguson emerged the victor in a field of seven candidates in a campaign that had become a battleground for the Republican Party’s moderate and conservative wings. Some of the county’s most powerful moderate party leaders, including Supervisor Bruce Nestande, Sheriff Brad Gates and a number of corporate presidents, lined up behind candidate Ken Carpenter.

When Nestande heard about the hiring of Haskin, he was immediately on the phone to Fuentes.

“The duties of the party are to number one, raise money for general election candidates, number two, registration, and number three, get out the vote. You can’t be messing around in primaries and honestly and truthfully fulfill that role,” Nestande said. “He (Haskin) was involved in a very tough primary fight. Now the question is, can he rise above that and work for the whole party?”

Fuentes has tended to dismiss the issue.

“Everyone has the right to voice their opinion, and I just have to put that in the computer and make the best choice I can,” Fuentes said. “I have a keen regard for Bruce’s opinion, but by that time, I had already made the selection.”

A number of party leaders say the issue is far from resolved, however. “With Nestande and Fuentes, it’s really getting to be an undeclared war,” said one. “The soldiers are already lined up.”

Soldiers? Tom Fuentes? The former seminary student who still clasps his hands, prayer-like, whenever he is trying to make a particularly important point? The man of whom state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) said simply: “I’d love to have the concession where he buys his roses”?

“First of all,” he says (the hands clasped), “in the course of these next few years, it’s my hope to never speak in the first person: I. As party chairman, it’s vital that with the executive committee, we speak as we. There is a more conservative leadership across the board, I would say, in the complexion of the county party. But what is conservative? My name will be placed in nomination by Sen. John Seymour, and it’ll be seconded by Gil Ferguson. Take your choice. I mean, you apply the titles. I’m committed to be the chairman of all the Republicans in the county . . . . It’s not going to be by my doing that the party moves in any philosophical direction.”

Nonetheless, Fuentes has his own ideas about what it means to be a Republican in Orange County.

“The figure that is probably most telling is the fact that we’re 157,172 more registered Republicans than Democrats in Orange County today. That figure is awesome to me, and probably the most burdensome number that I have ever seen, because we have to in this new term maintain and increase that margin.

‘Anchor to the Right’

“I see Orange County as an anchor to the right for the California ship of state, and winds gust from the left from West Los Angeles and San Francisco, and in our role as that anchor to the right, we have to be very vigilant about maintaining that registration edge.”

Fuentes credits former Supervisor Ronald Caspers for much of his political rearing. He worked as an aide to Caspers for four years in the 1970s. Caspers’ boat was lost at sea with 10 aboard--including Caspers --in 1974. (Fuentes would have been aboard the Shooting Star himself on the voyage to celebrate Caspers’ reelection to a second term but decided against going at the last moment.) None of the 10 aboard was found.

Fuentes had hoped that he would be appointed to replace Caspers. When he discovered that there was a one-year residency requirement that he did not meet, he decided to carry out an earlier plan to enter a seminary and study for the priesthood.

Before going, Fuentes staged one of his greatest fund-raisers ever--a going-away party that netted him $10,000 from friends and colleagues.

A year later, Fuentes was back. “I found that the pace of seminary life and that monastic setting was just all too slow for me. I could never turn the motors off to slow down to that pace which is required to serve in the capacity of priesthood.”

‘Spiritual Quality’

“Tom has a spiritual quality about him,” says Stan Oftelie, director of the Orange County Transportation Commission. “He has a real warmth about him. I could see Tom Fuentes as a priest. He has the quality of knowing everyone in the congregation. He gives me the belief that, yes, he knows what my problems are and he sympathizes with them.”

Pictures of various bishops, archbishops and the Pope cover the wall of Fuentes’ office at Robert Bein William Frost and Associates (a civil engineering firm where he serves as executive vice president), along with pictures of Fuentes and Barry Goldwater, Fuentes and Gerald Ford, Fuentes and Richard Nixon.

Memorabilia from Nixon’s visit to the county in 1982 line the entire hallway outside his office. “I had the honor of being his host and master of ceremonies,” he said. “He was so very gracious. I’ll just read you this because it’s my most treasured note. It says, ‘Dear Tom, In the many years during which I have attended literally thousands of such affairs, I have never heard an emcee handle the occasion better. You were crisp, in charge, and inspirational. The party is fortunate to have your leadership, and I am greatful for your friendship. With warmest regards, R.N.’

Ironically, the party chairmanship will cost him an event that, for Fuentes, would undoubtedly top even a day with Richard Nixon: a personal audience with the Pope.

Tomas Clavel, former archbishop of Panama, recently asked Fuentes to be his guest on an all-expenses-paid trip to the Vatican, and Fuentes eagerly accepted.

“I’ve been in (the Pope’s) presence before, but this was going to be that kind of situation,” Fuentes explained, pointing to a photo of himself standing side-by-side with an archbishop. He learned, however, that the group would not be returning until later this week--two days after he would be elected chairman.

“So I put my wife Jolene on the plane with the archbishop,” he said, not a little sadly. I don’t know, a lot of people tell me my priorities are all mixed up. But I guess that’s the irony of accepting responsibility. I envy them. I just envy them.”

Then, as usual--as always--he brightened and flashed the Fuentes smile. “I guess you could say I lost my wife and my American Express card. They left home without me!”