Republican and proud

"No - I love George Bush!" Deputy Mayor Lee responds. And that's the end of it.

After more than 25 years in San Mateo, the 74-year-old Arizona native knows he's a political minority in an area often deemed the most liberal in the United States. That does not bother him, though partisan extremism and stereotypes does.

"(Some Democrats think) that we're all extreme right-wings, that we're not individual thinkers and that we immediately follow the party line on the national level - they're wrong," he said.

Lee said partisanship does not matter in community politics since city councils deal with non-partisan issues, such as transit, urban sprawl and redevelopment.

"We learned to disagree without being disagreeable," he said. "When we make a decision, we move forward with the vote without arguments, which is something we don't see enough at the federal and state levels."

Attorney Dennis Zell, of Janet Fogarty and Associates, agrees that party affiliation rouses debate in state politics, but said it also affects local races somewhat.

For example, Zell said as a candidate currently running for the non-partisan Burlingame School District Board, he must still convince the teachers' association that he, a Republican, truly supports wage increases for teachers and is not merely paying lip service.

"I fear the teacher's union will say 'No, not Zell - let's knock him out early,'" he said.

In state and district elections, however, the Republicans' challenge is larger. Neither the National Party of Republicans nor the state party do much to back Bay Area district candidates.

When Zell ran for state Senate against incumbant Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, in 2002, he received no money from the Republican Party, little from businesses and individual donors and spent less than $20,000 on his campaign, he said.

"You could put Dennis Zell with an R and Daffy Duck with a D after the name, and Daffy Duck would still win," Zell said.

Catherine Brinkman, San Mateo County executive director for the California Republican Party, had a similar experience running for state Assembly in District 19.

"I was called a sacrificial lamb," she said. "That's what they call you because the (Republican) registration is so bad … you don't have a chance."

Both Zell and Brinkman said Bay Area Republicans and businesses fear post-election retribution from Democrats if they publicly support Republican candidates.

"It's not cool to say you're a Republican in this area," Brinkman said. "I hear time and time again, 'I thought I was alone, I feel like I'm on an island here,' (but) you're not alone. There's a strong and growing community of Republicans in the Bay Area, you just don't always hear them."

Among the nearly 700,000 people who live in San Mateo County, 360,473 are registered voters, out of whom 91,529, or 25.4 percent, are Republican registrants and 177,092, or 49.1 percent, are Democrat registrants, according to the official election site of San Mateo County. Another 77,388 people, about 21.5 percent, had declined to state a party as of Aug. 1.

Though Republican registration is up along with registration overall, there's a 0.3 percent drop in Republican registration from a year ago.

Some Republicans said they disagreed with the direction the party took following the far-right Republican takeover in the 1990s. The "cultural warfare" espoused by religious conservatives like Pat Buchanan in the 1990s turned many away from the party, Zell said. California women and minorities were goaded by the anti-choice and race-conscious banter, while moderate Republicans stayed silent, he said.

Lee, the San Mateo deputy mayor, said he despises extremism, whether expressed by the liberal, anti-military radicals who spit at him when he returned from Vietnam as a Marine Corps veteran of 20 years or touted by the intolerant anti-choice, anti-science outskirts of the Republican Party.

During the 2004 presidential election campaign, Karen Kennedy, president of the Mid-Peninsula Republican Women Federated, got a first-hand look at left-wing extremism of the worst kind. People would smash windows and throw eggs at the association's headquarters and someone even purposely ran into a member's car at the parking lot, Kennedy said.

Some Republicans were run off roads for displaying Bush-Cheney bumper-stickers, said Marilyn Canon, the first vice-president of the Mid-Peninsula Republican Women Federated.

Even Kennedy's "staunch" Republican husband was wary about erecting Bush signs on their lawn until Kennedy took the matter in her own hands.

"It was important to me because I wanted a Bush sign in front of my house," she said. "After we did it, eight houses on my street had (Bush) signs outside."

Going door-to-door to register voters in 2004, Kennedy said she learned many people were afraid to come out as Republicans.

"They thought all on their street were Democrats, but as it turned out most were Republicans," Kennedy said laughing.

Some, she said, would hide their Bush-Cheney placards inside and in their backyards afraid that anti-Bush extremists would damage their homes.

Kennedy and Canon said they worry about partisan politics sneaking into public education as a result of the Democratic foothold on the teachers' association.

"Republican teachers don't even speak up because they're afraid of being harassed," Kennedy said. Canon added, "You didn't used to know the teachers' political affiliations, but now you do."

For example, Kennedy recalls how her 11-year-old grandson came home from school heatedly reiterating all negative things Democrats say about Bush.

"His teacher had told him everything in school and not one person would go and challenge that," she said.

Yet, leaving the Bay Area is not an option, all said. As relatively moderate Republicans, some said they have been chastised as too liberal and heckled as "pro-abortion baby-killers" by party members nationally.

"When it first happened … I was like 'pro-abortion? I don't know anyone who is pro-abortion,' Brinkman said. "They may be pro-choice or pro-birth control pills, but no one is pro-abortion and no one is a baby-killer."

Moreover, Brinkman said she probably would not receive her party's vote in a conservative, rural area.

"(On a national scale), a lot of (Republicans) have said 'you're so liberal, I can't believe you're in the party' and I just sit there and say 'well, you know what? At the end of the day, I'm from the Bay Area, born in San Francisco, I have an R behind my name - that's enough!" she said.