The organizers of the PEARL Project are getting a cordial — if cautious — welcome from the Republican Party.

In what they describe as an effort to promote good government over partisanship, Corvallis residents Pat Canan and Irma Delson last year changed their voter registration from Democrat to Republican and launched a movement they call People Energizing a Republican Left.

After quietly converting about 200 Benton County residents to the GOP, they went public last month in an interview with the Gazette-Times. While Canan and Delson had already lined up the backing of party moderates such as state Rep. Frank Morse, they hadn’t directly approached the local GOP leadership.

On Jan. 14, they had their first meeting with Chairman John Bell and a half-dozen other members of the Benton County Republican Central Committee.

Delson called the exchange “an open, friendly, congenial conversation,” and Canan said, “We got to know them as people.”

But things got just a little bit tense when the discussion came around to the “L” word. Bell asked what was intended by the term “left” in the group’s name, “and it got very quiet,” Canan recalled.

“I was just curious,” Bell explained this week. “What did ‘left’ mean to them? And I’m not sure it was clear either to us or to them.”

Nevertheless, the meeting ended on a friendly note.

“When we left, one of the women there gave me a very warm hug,” Delson said. “We all understood we were in different places on the continuum.”

Bell invited the couple to attend the party’s next gathering “and just see where this leads us down the road.”

“We think the umbrella is big,” Bell said. “We certainly welcome them and their friends, and we’d like to see a lot more people come over to Republican principles.”

Central Committee member Stella Guenther also characterized the meeting as friendly, but she echoed Bell’s note of caution.

“We all agree that if we don’t do something to stop this polarization of our country we’re going to hell in a handbasket, and I don’t want to go there,” she said.

At the same time, Guenther said, she had some initial doubts about the motivation of these recent GOP converts. While they’re glad to see their ranks increase, local Republicans want to be sure the PEARL Project isn’t a backdoor attempt by Democrats in disguise to water down the ticket by drawing support away from strong conservative candidates.

“I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt,” Guenther said, “(but) we will watch them.”

Meanwhile, Delson and Canan have continued to meet with their backers in the moderate wing of the GOP and are pursuing ways to extend their reach beyond Benton County.

On Jan. 18, they gathered at a friend’s home with around two dozen PEARL Project converts to talk about the movement with several Republican leaders. Among those present were former state Rep. Tony Van Vliet and John Frohnmayer, brother of former Oregon Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer and head of the National Endowment for the Arts in the first Bush administration.

Later this month the couple plan to meet with Morse, who has emerged as a leading Republican moderate in the Legislature and is prepping for a re-election run.

And in March they’ll attend the Dorchester Conference, the annual gathering of the GOP faithful in Seaside. While Canan and Delson won’t be presenting — first-time attendees aren’t allowed to — they’re hoping to do a little caucusing about the PEARL Project with party regulars from around the state.

“I want to see what their take is on it,” Canan said.

They’re not sure where the movement will go from there, but they intend to approach moderate Republicans at the national level to see if there’s any interest from that quarter. On their contact list so far: Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Rep. Pete McCloskey of California, who has come out of retirement to challenge Republican incumbent Richard Pombo.

“We’re really trying to figure out how do we encourage and attract people to public service who have a different mindset, who are truly hands-across-the-aisle people and who view their constituency as 100 percent of the people,” Delson said.

Aside from some disparaging letters to the editor, the couple say they have received overwhelming support for their cause since the Gazette-Times published an article on the PEARL Project Jan. 8.

And they remain convinced that their message of bipartisan cooperation and depolarized debate has the potential to resonate with a national electorate that is tired of divisive Democrat vs. Republican bickering.

“I think there’s a growing recognition that we’re serious, that the idea is serious and that this could catch on,” Canan said.

Van Vliet, who represented Corvallis in the Legislature for 20 years, said he doesn’t know how far the PEARL Project can expect to go. But he said Canan and Delson have sparked a good deal of discussion among local Republicans and given the party’s moderate wing a lift.

“They’ve generated a lot of interest,” van Vliet said. “I give them credit for that.”