OC Money Boys Join Forces to Boost GOP Registration

Win one for W: OC’s biggest GOP donor groups and the Irvine Co. are funding a massive voter registration drive. The longtime Lincoln Club and the upstart New Majority are each kicking $100,000 of “soft money” into the unprecedented effort, and the Irvine Co. is adding $50,000. One focus will be Hispanic precincts in central OC, where GOP registration is weakest. The donors plan to hire an executive director and keep the operation accountable to a hand-picked board, raising questions about where local party chairman Tom Fuentes fits into the picture. All three of the organizing entities have been critical of Fuentes; the socially moderate New Majority tried unsuccessfully in March to loosen his control of the conservative Central Committee. But there are signs of hatchet-burying: The new group is stressing that it wants to coordinate its efforts with those of Fuentes, and meetings are being held to accomplish that end. The group also plans to put a Central Committee rep on its board, in addition to one from the George W. Bush campaign, one from state Senate minority leader Jim Brulte’s campaign forces, one from the Irvine Co. and two each from the NM and the LC. For his part, Fuentes hosted New Majority critics Tom Tucker and Mark Chapin Johnson at the party’s own gala voter-registration fundraiser last week at the Hyatt Regency Irvine. LC prez Michael Capaldi was the driving force in getting the two OC money groups together. This is a real unity thing,” Tucker says Another shoe drops in the pro-El Toro airport camp: Peggy Ducey is stepping down as executive director of the OC Regional Airport Authority, a coalition of north OC cities. She plans to do consulting. No word on a replacement, if any Opera Pacific will be announcing its largest donation ever, over $1 million, this week at the company’s new Santa Ana HQ Three OC companies are on Business Week’s Infotech 100: Broadcom (No. 17), Powerwave Technologies (18) and Conexant (77). Snubbed: computer products distributor Ingram Micro,it didn’t make the list even though smaller competitor Tech Data of Clearwater, Fla. did In the wake of Air Touch Cellular’s changeover to Verizon, there’s another big name change afoot in the wireless world. Pacific Bell Wireless will soon have a new identity, an outgrowth of its parent SBC’s merger with Bell South. The new name is pending. “The working name is ‘Newco,'” quips PBW southern region prez Steve Sitton.