Doesn’t Anybody Like California? : Doesn’t look as if Newt Gingrich does

Has the Anybody-but-California philosophy, long a staple on Capitol Hill, taken root in House Speaker-in-Waiting Newt Gingrich? Sure looks that way.

As he gets his House in order, Gingrich hasn’t selected a single California Republican to chair a committee or hold any other powerful leadership position. Reducing the clout of Republicans from the most populous state, with its gold mine of electoral votes, is unfair and shortsighted.

Gingrich’s first slap at California took place earlier this week when he bypassed longstanding seniority rules that would have propelled Rep. Carlos Moorhead of Glendale, the dean of California’s Republicans in the House, to the chairmanship of either the Energy and Commerce Committee or the Judiciary Committee, both important posts. Moorhead, the ranking minority member on both committees, thought he had the job in the bag. Wrong.

There is no shortage of veteran talent in the delegation. Gingrich has asked the tireless David Dreier of San Dimas, elected to the House in 1980, to help redesign House rules, and he has named Bill Thomas of Bakersfield and Howard P. (Buck) McKeon of Santa Clarita to the GOP transition team. That’s a start. The popular Jerry Lewis of Redlands, elected in 1978 (the same year Georgia sent Gingrich to Congress), is a logical choice to chair a powerful appropriations subcommittee that controls the federal purse. But the Georgian stung Lewis last year when he engineered his ouster from the GOP leadership. Seems that Lewis was considered pragmatic rather than blindly loyal. Oh, what a sin!

There is also no quantitative shortage of California Republicans. The 52-member House delegation will be evenly split if Republican Susan Brooks is determined to be the winner in the final vote count in her match-up with Jane Harman. Gingrich will need those Republican votes to push his agenda.

It’s Gingrich’s game, and irreverence for seniority may not itself be bad. But, if the Republicans want to maintain their new control of Congress, and possibly regain the White House in 1996, they cannot afford to slight California.

In the Senate, fortunately, Californians can still rely on the hard work of Dianne Feinstein. With most of the absentee ballots now counted, no question remains that the Democrat has prevailed over Rep. Michael Huffington (R-Santa Barbara) after surviving the costliest congressional campaign in history. She can be counted on to find common ground with the Republican majority and to force California onto Washington’s new agenda. The Times congratulates her on her hard-fought reelection.