GOP electoral initiative back in play

Two Republican political consultants are trying to revive an initiative to change how California's electoral votes are tallied in next year's presidential election, seeking support from major GOP donors including Rep. Darrell Issa, who financed the 2003 gubernatorial recall.

Sacramento-based consultant Dave Gilliard, an Issa adviser, is spearheading a drive to collect at least 600,000 more signatures by mid-November for an initiative that would divvy up California's electoral college votes by congressional district. The June 2008 initiative could provide next year's Republican presidential candidate with an additional 20 or more electoral votes in Democratic-leaning California.

Qualifying the initiative at this late stage will cost at least $2 million to pay for signature gatherers. Neither Gilliard nor fundraiser Anne Dunsmore named their donors, but Gilliard confirmed they hope to get support from Issa. The Republican congressman was unavailable Monday because he was monitoring fires in his San Diego-area district, a spokesman said.

"He's one of the people being talked to, but I can't confirm that he's involved yet," Gilliard said.

In 2003, Issa spent $1.7 million to finance signature-gathering efforts that qualified the gubernatorial recall for the ballot. He had intended to run for the office himself but dropped out when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the race.

Gilliard said he is confident the new campaign can raise enough money to gather the necessary signatures by Nov. 13, the secretary of state's suggested deadline to submit petitions for the June ballot. He also said he believes the campaign can go several days beyond that date.

If the campaign cannot gather enough signatures in time, Gilliard said it would attempt to place the initiative on the November 2008 ballot. He has been advised the initiative would still take effect in next year's presidential election if approved on the same ballot.

The Electoral College initiative was considered all but dead last month when GOP consultant Tom Hiltachk walked away from the proposal he had filed with the state, as did spokesman Kevin Eckery. They abandoned the campaign shortly after Democratic critics questioned a $175,000 donation from Paul Singer, a financier of Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.

But Gilliard said he believes there remains enough time to collect the roughly 600,000 additional signatures needed to qualify the initiative for the ballot. Eckery said Hiltachk's group collected 75,000 signatures, while Gilliard estimated the number was somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000.

The new campaign, which calls itself "California Counts," has hired Mike Arno, whose firm gathered the first batch of signatures for Hiltachk and has been circulating petitions since the weekend, Gilliard said.

The campaign has gathered volunteer support from the National Tax-Limitation Committee and Tony Andrade, an activist who filed a similar initiative with the state earlier this year.

"Right now it's not fair when 49 percent of people in California can vote for a candidate and have no voice in the presidential election," Gilliard said.

Democrats have charged that the initiative is little more than a GOP ploy to take away 20 or more electoral votes in California, equivalent to the number of the votes in Ohio. Only two states currently divide their electoral votes by congressional district, Maine and Nebraska.

"This is polling at 25 percent," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant working on the opposition campaign. "I'm not sure what they're ultimately going to accomplish. This is electorally dead on arrival and by moving forward, it's only going to brand the Republican Party as the party of election fraudsters."

Lehane also questioned whether Giuliani is behind the latest effort. Dunsmore, a Los-Angeles based GOP fundraiser, resigned last month as Giuliani's deputy campaign manager for finances.

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