California, Here He Comes?: The president and that troublesome state - President Bush making plans to win in California, in 2004

National Review, June 11, 2001 by Byron York

'I really believe that the week before the election, we were within five points in California," says Gerald Parsky, a little wistfully, as he describes George W. Bush's presidential campaign in the nation's largest state. Parsky, an investment banker in Los Angeles, chaired the Bush effort in California, and even though the GOP ticket was soundly whipped-Al Gore won the state by 12 percentage points-Parsky has become an extraordinarily influential figure in Bush's circle of advisers. Virtually unknown in Washington, Parsky talks to top Bush aide Karl Rove several times a week (that's in addition to their regular politics-and-policy phone conversation every Sunday). He's deeply involved in some of the president's top-priority initiatives, including Social Security reform and the selection of federal judges. And on top of that, he's playing a key role in a project that Bush has been quietly pursuing since last Election Day: the effort to repair California's badly broken GOP and help the president win reelection in 2004.

Parsky, 58, fits the Bush-administration type: a high official in the Ford years (assistant secretary of the Treasury) who went on to a successful career in business before joining the 2000 campaign. Parsky got to know the first George Bush in the mid 1970s and kept up with the Bush family through the years, but didn't join the ranks of W. supporters until much later. "I met [Parsky] in '97," recalls Rove. "He was recommended by a number of people, including Bush 41, as somebody we ought to get to know." By late 1998 and early 1999, just before the Texas governor announced his presidential campaign, Parsky was regularly visiting Austin to give advice. "I felt that [Bush] was conservative, as I am, but at the same time he felt the need to reach out to people who felt left out by the Republican party," Parsky remembers. "The theme of expanding the reach of the party was very important in California."

After the election, Parsky chose not to come to Washington with the new administration, preferring to stay on as chairman of Aurora Capital Group, the investment firm he founded in 1991. But he stayed in close touch with the Bush team, which quickly tapped him for several projects. Some of them, like his appointment to the Social Security commission, relate directly to his experience in government and the capital markets. But others, like the judicial-selection process, have placed Parsky in a new role, dealing with what is perhaps the most contentious issue facing the Bush administration.

For months now, the White House has been preparing for intense fights over federal judicial nominations. The administration faced a particularly grim situation in California, with its two liberal Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, who could, if they chose, block any White House choice for any seat in the nation's largest and most politically important state. In mid March, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales called Parsky with a request for help.

The president had made a power-sharing deal with the two senators, agreeing to the creation of a new system to select candidates for the federal district courts in California. Gonzales asked Parsky to oversee four new committees that will cover different geographical regions of the state. The White House, through Parsky, will appoint three people to each committee, and Feinstein and Boxer will also appoint three. The committees will select candidates for each judicial position, and it will take four votes for a candidate to win a spot, which means at least one Democrat will have to agree to each nominee; Parsky will have the final say on nominees.

Some conservatives accused the White House of caving in to the Democrats; Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot called the deal a "huge and unusual concession." But past administrations have also bargained with senators over judges, especially at the district level (while maintaining tighter control over appeals-court nominations). Bush's move was, more than anything else, a bow to the realities of California politics. "It's definitely a trial system," Parsky says. "The White House could have said, 'We'll just pick our people and we'll let you know,' but rather than do that, they've said, 'Let's get the senators involved.'" Although it's unclear precisely how the arrangement will work, it's safe to say it will produce less conservative candidates than the administration would select on its own. Choosing his words carefully, Parsky says only that the committees will look for "people where ideology isn't the overriding qualification, while recognizing that the president is a conservative."

The White House's relatively weak bargaining position stems not only from the fact that the Senate is split 50-50, but from Bush's poor showing in California last November. It's hard to overstate how different the political world would be if Bush had won the state-and it's also hard to imagine Bush winning there in 2004. But that is Parsky's job in yet another assignment that is critically important to the White House: overseeing the rebuilding of the California state Republican party.