Bond Calls on Buchanan to Quit California Race : Republicans: The GOP chief says challenger will not be allowed to address the convention unless he backs Bush. Candidate’s camp reacts bitterly.

WASHINGTON — Republican challenger Patrick J. Buchanan should drop out of the California primary and will not be allowed to address the GOP convention this summer unless he endorses President Bush ahead of time, Republican Party Chairman Richard N. Bond said Wednesday.

Bond’s words drew harsh retorts from Buchanan’s camp, underlining the continuing division within Republican ranks--a split that potentially could harm Bush’s reelection chances in the fall.

Buchanan’s sister and campaign manager, Angela (Bay) Buchanan, responded with a sarcastic rejoinder to Bond’s suggestion that her brother quit the California contest: “Tell Little Richard we’ll see him in Orange County.”

Bond started the latest testy exchange at a Washington breakfast with reporters, where he stated and then repeated a seeming ultimatum to Buchanan.

Buchanan’s role at the convention is “an open question that will not be addressed . . . until after he endorses President Bush and gets out” of the race, Bond said. “I don’t think any of these future discussions are going to take place until he drops out.”

Buchanan “has a right to run,” Bond added, but “after the time he is mathematically eliminated, it would be best for Pat and best for the President and best for the party to withdraw.”

That time likely will come soon. If current trends hold, Bush, who now has 963 delegates, would reach the 1,105 he needs to clinch the nomination no later than May 5, when Indiana and North Carolina hold their primaries.

“After that point,” Bond said, Buchanan would hurt both Bush and the party by “going out to California, with 54 electoral votes, to stir up more negatives about George Bush.”

In a Los Angeles Times poll of registered Republicans nationwide taken March 27-29, 54% said Buchanan should drop out of the race, and 36% said he should keep going. Bush was preferred over Buchanan, 81% to 11%.

On Tuesday, Buchanan had said Bush would make a “terrible mistake” by excluding him from the convention, scheduled for Houston in August. Excluding him would “cause an uproar and antagonize” conservative Republicans and other Buchanan supporters, the GOP challenger said, adding that he might even hold a “counter-convention” nearby to protest.

On Wednesday, as Buchanan campaigned in San Francisco and Sacramento, his advisers expanded on that threat.

Bond “should know that threats and innuendo are no way to approach Pat Buchanan,” Bay Buchanan said in a statement. “Rich Bond would be advised to take a Dale Carnegie course prior to the convention if he has any intentions of unifying the party.”

“The Bush campaign can play the convention in one of two ways,” said Buchanan’s political director, Paul Erickson. “They can play it smart, which is to give Pat Buchanan the opportunity to address the convention, or they can play it dumb, and that is to reside in their own arrogance of false general-election strength” and ignore the voters who have supported Buchanan in the primaries.

Even if Buchanan has no mathematical chance of winning the nomination, his candidacy still has a point, Erickson said. “Buchanan’s presence in the Republican primary is the only way to keep George Bush honest,” he said. “Within 24 hours of Pat Buchanan’s departure from the race, George Bush would abandon whatever small semblance of conservative values he has maintained.”

Buchanan himself renewed his vow to continue his campaign through the California primary.

“They say (I’m) losing the delegate count, and they’re right,” he said in Sacramento. “(But) presidential primaries are about more than delegate counts and nominations. They are about where we’re going as a nation.”