Pringle Listed on Two Delegate Slates

SACRAMENTO â€”  Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle is on a list of potential Republican convention delegates from California pledged to support Bob Dole for president. He is also on a delegate list pledged to Lamar Alexander.

But he has not made a public endorsement of either candidate.

Pringle spokesman Gary Foster said that both the Dole and Alexander campaigns asked Pringle to be on their slates and he accepted.

“He would like to be a delegate for California. They both understood he would not publicly endorse before the primary,� Foster said. Pringle was a supporter of Sen. Phil Gramm, but Gramm withdrew.

The speaker is not the only Californian on two delegate slates. Jon Fleishman, president of the grass-roots California Republican Assembly, is on both the Patrick J. Buchanan and Alexander slates, and Fleishman’s wife, Leslie, is on the delegate slate pledged to publisher Steve Forbes.

State officials said there is nothing to prohibit a person from being on more than one slate.

The deadline for Republican presidential candidates to file their slates of delegates pledged to their candidacies was Monday, and the lists were released Tuesday by the secretary of state’s office.

Dole, whose lead in California’s presidential primary has shrunk in the polls, was still the runaway leader for big-name California Republicans on his delegation. (A Field Poll completed after the New Hampshire and Delaware primaries showed Dole leading, with 30% of the California vote, followed by Buchanan at 18%, Alexander at 13% and Forbes at 12%. A December survey had Dole at 43%, followed by Forbes at 11%.)

In addition to his three state chairmen--Gov. Pete Wilson, former Gov. George Deukmejian and Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren--the Kansas senator’s delegate list includes state Treasurer Matt Fong, Secretary of State Bill Jones, a dozen current or former state legislators and three past state GOP chairmen.

Other familiar names on Dole’s California delegates list include former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, economists and Hoover Institution fellows Michael Boskin and Martin Anderson, and retired Adm. James B. Stockdale, who was independent candidate Ross Perot’s running mate in 1992.

The most familiar political names on the delegate slate for Buchanan are his California chairman, state Sen. Richard Mountjoy of Monrovia and former Rep. William E. Dannemeyer of Fullerton.

Alexander, a former Tennessee governor, lists among his delegates Pringle and Michael Huffington, a 1992 Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Forbes’ list of prospective delegates includes economist Art Laffer, former Reps. Clair Burgener and Ernie Konnyu, Assemblymen Brooks Firestone and Tom Bordonaro, former state Sen. H.L. Richardson and onetime gubernatorial candidate Joe Shell.

The top vote-getter in the primary gets all 165 California delegates.

There were no well-known political figures on the delegate lists filed by Indiana Sen. Richard G. Lugar and talk-show host Alan Keyes. Three other candidates--Gramm, who withdrew after the deadline for the California ballot, Rep. Robert K. Dornan of Garden Grove and businessman Morry Taylor--did not file delegate slates.

President Clinton’s delegation was elected earlier this month at congressional district caucuses around the state. Its 422 members include only a handful of prominent politicians, including state Sens. Tom Hayden of Santa Monica and Hilda Solis of El Monte and Assemblyman John Vasconcellos of Santa Clara.