Rancho Santa Fe Residents Form 1st PAC Group for Homeowners

When ranch residents have a yen to suggest some change in national policy, all they have to do is to convince J. Neil Reagan to call the White House and have a little chat with his kid brother.

And if it’s local politics they seek to change, there is always a quorum of retired and active business and government leaders around to schedule a quiet lunch with a politico or two who could bring their propositions before the San Diego City Council or county Board of Supervisors.

Now the affluent estate community has added another weapon to its arsenal of political clout, forming one of the first political action committees (PACs) designed to function as a lobbyist for a town. This up-front political effort signals a new direction for Rancho Santa Fe power brokers, who have long sought to wield their political clout behind the scenes.

Rancho Santa Fe residents are going public with their lobbying efforts, inviting their neighbors in and forming an official Rancho Santa Fe Area Political Action Committee, which will be empowered to donate money to the candidates who support their views.

That might not be news if it occurred in a labor union or an activist group. But when Rancho Santa Fe proposes a lobbying effort and vows to “tell it like it is,” politicians are going to listen.

Lynn Montgomery, spokeswoman for the state Fair Political Practices Commission, said the FPPC is the watchdog agency over PACs and views them exactly as candidates’ fund-raising organizations, requiring financial activity statements and fining the groups for failure to comply with state law.

Federal laws require further filings by PAC organizations, she said, but the restrictions against political donations to and from PACs are generally the same as the state’s: No donations to PACs from corporations or groups, only from individuals, and no restrictions on the amount of PAC funds given to politicians as long as the donations are reported properly and in a timely manner.

Mark Zerbe, spokesman for the San Diego branch of the political watchdog agency, Common Cause, expressed surprise that a group of residents would choose to use a PAC for the lobbying efforts.

PACs, Zerbe said, “carry a negative image that most people would choose to avoid. I have never heard of a homeowner group forming a PAC.”

Another political watchdog organization--the Commission on Campaign Financing--is studying the emergence of just such homeowner PAC groups seeking to have a more prominent voice in local, state and federal political decisions.

Bob Stern, general counsel for the privately-financed commission, said that PACs have blossomed because of a federal law restricting business and labor groups from donating to campaigns.

PACs have no state restrictions on the amounts they may donate to legislators but must meet local and federal limits, he said. Most local groups forming PACs do so because of tax considerations requiring that they separate their political activity from existing homeowner associations.

Rancho Santa Fe Area PAC officials play down the dollar signs when describing the newly formed group, calling themselves “lobbyists” and stressing the impact of a “single voice” speaking for the wealthy communities clustered in the San Dieguito basin inland from the coastal communities of Solana Beach, Cardiff, Encinitas and Leucadia.

Attorney Kenneth Wood, chairman of the newly formed PAC, agrees that the organization is an unusual one, “the only one of its kind that I’ve heard of” representing the special interests of a group of unincorporated communities with similar concerns.

Wood said he has yet to study the state and local laws “because we just don’t have the money yet to become active. When we do, we will be ready to meet the requirements that exist.”

The PAC’s potential for swaying political opinion is “fantastic,” Wood said. Not only is there a reservoir of money in the San Dieguito basin, but there is a reservoir of political talent and experience that will help the group in its efforts to convince politicians to vote as the Rancho Santa Fe PAC would have them vote, he said.

Marcia Van Liew, vice chairwoman of the political action committee, said that so far its membership stands at 23. The group has raised several thousand dollars in unsolicited membership fees of $50 per year, she said, and “several people have given more than the minimum amount.”

She concedes that the organization has yet to gain a notch on its political guns or send an opponent to the showers, but then its only three months old.

Paul Wassmansdorf, one of the founders of the group with Van Liew, said, “We are still wading through the organizational matters, discussing just what names should go on the letterhead and such.” The group has not delved into the real meat of political action, he said.

Van Liew, a former board member of the Rancho Santa Fe Assn.--the unincorporated village’s version of a city council--sees the need to reverse the community’s public image from one of isolation to activism.

“We don’t want to be in a position where we are always taking a negative view, opposing everything. We want to tackle the problems of this area and help to find the solutions,” she said.

To do this successfully, the infant organization is recruiting leaders from surrounding communities of like interests and problems: Whispering Palms and Fairbanks Ranch to the south; Lomas Santa Fe, Montecito and Sun Valley to the west, and Val Sereno, South Pointe Farms, Hacienda Santa Fe and Rancho Cielo to the north and east.

Perhaps, Van Liew said, there will be a time when the coastal cities--incorporated and unincorporated--and the inland towns and San Diego suburbs will be included among the PAC members. But, she said, that time is not now.

“What we’re doing is circling the wagons,” said former county Supervisor Lee Taylor. “We’re being surrounded, and it’s a wise thing to do.”

Taylor, Van Liew, Wassmansdorf and Wood are the founders of the Rancho Santa Fe Area PAC. Among the members are Bill Dominguez of Carlsbad, chief aide to Taylor when he was a county supervisor; Ted Gildred, one of the developers of Lomas Santa Fe, and Dr. George Watkins, Whispering Palms leader and secretary of the PAC board.

This affluent midsection of the North County coast has a common enemy--growth. Slowly, but at an increasing pace, Rancho Santa Fe and its satellite estate communities are being hemmed in by rows of tract housing. Already, narrow winding Rancho Santa Fe roads are congested with traffic from less affluent areas.

“If there was anything that spurred the start of our organization, it was the county’s proposal to widen Paseo Delicias (a main road through Rancho Santa Fe) to four lanes,” Wood said.

PAC members have already had a quiet breakfast meeting with an Escondido neighbor, state transportation Commissioner Tom Hawthorne. They were learning the ropes of highway politicking and the problems they must surmount if they are to achieve their most immediate goal: construction of two major east-west highways bypassing Rancho Santa Fe but linking Interstate 5 on the coast with Interstate 15 inland.

The PAC knows it will have fierce opposition from the coastal communities of Leucadia and Del Mar, and inland from Poway, in attempting to turn these paper roads into asphalt and concrete realities. Opposition is also likely from within PAC ranks when Fairbanks Ranch residents learn that two-lane San Dieguito Road, which now dead ends at their doorstep, is part of a planned state highway linking Rancho Bernardo and Del Mar, which the PAC is supporting.

An even more formidable obstacle is the lack of road funds at every level of government. But, Van Liew explained, “That is where we can get involved by supporting state legislation to increase gasoline taxes or seeking some other methods of financing,” such as developer fees and even road tolls similar to Oceanside’s financing of a new bridge by charging the motorists who use it.

Road building is the first goal of the PAC because traffic has reached a level in Rancho Santa Fe that soon will turn its two-lane streets into “narrow parking lots,” she said.

After the PAC gets organized, it plans to branch out into other fields of political activity, including keeping records of how politicians who represent the area are voting on issues affecting the San Dieguito Valley area. As elections approach, PAC officials plan to make recommendations to members on whom they should vote for and whom they should vote against.

Although three of the four founding members of PAC are former Rancho Santa Fe Assn. board members, the new PAC is taking an arm’s-length attitude toward the community’s governing body, accepting them as advisers and members but barring them from the PAC executive board.

“We don’t think we should tell them how to run their affairs and vice versa, although I think that the two groups will be together on most issues,” Wassmansdorf said.