Rural-Coastal Split : Eckert Faces Voter Ire Over Growth Stance

If Margie Hartman and Anne Omsted ever met, they might find they have a few things in common.

Hartman, from the North County community of Valley Center, likes the peace and quiet she finds in her rural town, where there are no sidewalks and street lights are rare.

Omsted, who lives in a semi-rural section of coastal Leucadia, values the open spaces, canyons and greenhouses that make her neighborhood distinct.

Both women moved to where they live today so they could raise their children in neighborhoods near to city services, yet still free of urban problems.

But when it comes to their views on San Diego County Supervisor Paul Eckert, who is seeking a third term representing the 5th Supervisorial District, Hartman and Omsted could not be more different.

“Paul has always been very loyal to the people of Valley Center,” Hartman, a real estate agent, said. “Before Paul, nobody listened to us. Nobody cared. They sat down there in San Diego and made the rules without knowing anything about us. Paul has been a very good supervisor for Valley Center.”

Omsted says she knows a different Eckert, a stubborn man who has not only allowed but encouraged real estate developers to build housing projects that have damaged forever the quality of life in her part of the county. Eckert’s biggest failing is that he does not listen to his constituents, she says.

“You go out on one of our roads and it’s just ridiculous,” Omsted said. “You go into a quiet neighborhood and there’s a condominium project sitting there in the middle of nowhere. It’s bizarre. It’s not right. The Board of Supervisors did that, and since Paul Eckert is our supervisor, he has to take the blame.”

Not everyone in Valley Center likes Eckert as much as does Hartman, who is a personal friend of the supervisor and sees him socially. And Omsted, who helped manage the campaign for one of his opponents four years ago, is more fervent than most Leucadians in her disdain for Eckert.

But the two women are in many ways representative of their communities, which have long given Eckert the best and worst of times.

In 1982, when Eckert beat back a challenge from businessman Bill Saltzman and housewife Elizabeth Matthews, he won 70% of the vote in Valley Center and just 27% in Leucadia, compared to the 54% he won districtwide. The percentages were similar when Eckert was elected for the first time in 1978.

And if Eckert, 52, is to win a third term on the board this year, he will have to continue to score big in rural enclaves such as Valley Center to stem the damage he could suffer as his six primary election opponents attempt to spread the ill will bred in Leucadia.

To Eckert, his performance in the two communities is a matter of his ability to communicate with the differing constituencies.

“There are a lot of inconsistencies in that area,” Eckert said of Leucadia and the broader San Dieguito community of which it is part. “Some of the richest and some of the poorest people live there. Some people who really identify with the community live there, and there are some people who don’t identify with anything. It’s a real dichotomy of incomes, people, everything.

“Communication is very difficult along the coast, and particularly in Leucadia,” Eckert said.

But in Valley Center, Eckert said, he has always felt at ease.

“From the first time Diane (his wife) and I walked into the community, we started talking with people and made lifelong lasting relationships,” he said.

Valley Center, a town of about 11,000 people 10 miles north of Escondido, has a conservative nature that meshes well with Eckert’s own philosophy. About 60% of the voters there are registered Republicans, compared to about 40% in Leucadia. Suspicious of the lawyers and career politicians who more and more seem to dominate local ballots, Eckert’s Valley Center supporters say they like the fact that he was successful in the moving business before he entered politics.

In an area where agriculture is still dominant, Eckert has supported chicken ranchers assailed by neighbors who don’t like flies, and he has tried to help dairy farms survive amid attempts to cut the size of their herds. “He’s been very helpful toward agriculture, very sympathetic to the problems we have,” said George Armstrong, an egg rancher and chairman of Eckert’s Valley Center campaign committee.

But most of all, Eckert’s supporters say he has been more visible and accessible in Valley Center than any of his predecessors. He helped them get permanent quarters for the library, chose the community as one of two in the county to have an experimental local design review board for new development, and traveled to Oregon with local residents to study a novel sewage system similar to one that will soon be constructed in the area.

“In his first term, he did more things for Valley Center than the four supervisors we had before him,” said Pal Anderson, who owns a travel agency in Escondido and lives in a sprawling ranch house in Valley Center’s northern end. “He supported the planning group here. If the planning group didn’t want it, he would go to bat for them down at the Board of Supervisors.”

In Leucadia, though, Eckert has been unable to shake his reputation as a bully who forces his view of the world upon an unwilling constituency. In an area where growth overshadows all other issues, Eckert’s frequent votes in favor of amendments to the community’s general plan have attracted the wrath of several vocal activists who want to free the area from county control by incorporating as a city.

Many of those activists live in Anne Omsted’s neighborhood on the bluffs above the Batiquitos Lagoon, where Eckert was drubbed in 1982, winning just 19% of the vote. With narrow, winding streets--many of them deadends--and greenhouses, individual homes and a lack of apartments, the neighborhood’s funky character has changed little in the seven years since Eckert took office.

“It’s quiet here,” Omsted said. “The people are nice. There’s an ambiance I really like. I really feel blessed in this area. God willing, it’s going to stay this way.”

But Omsted and her neighbors have seen other parts of Leucadia and San Dieguito--once semi-rural like their own part of town--developed with condominiums and apartment houses. They fear their neighborhood could be next.

“This area is unique,” said Bill Dean, who runs an advertising agency out of his home. “It’s been relatively unchanged for 20 to 25 years. The houses have been going up, but it’s been one at a time. It’s almost like our own little protected garden. People like the quality of life here so much they’re a little more ready and willing to go out and protect it.”

Stewart Walton, an electrical engineer who lives down the street from Dean, said he believes the ill will between Eckert and the community on growth issues has spilled over into other matters.

“There has grown up an antagonism for one reason or another,” Walton said. “If he chose to, he could probably be very charming and interested, and come to our meetings and so on. But he has antagonized so many people that it’s not a pleasure for him to come to San Dieguito, and it never will be.”

There are signs that the chinks in Eckert’s armor so visible in Leucadia are beginning to spread to other parts of the district. Citizen groups in Fallbrook and Rancho Santa Fe are talking seriously about incorporating to escape county rule. In Pauma Valley, some community leaders are upset about loss of ambulance service and the county’s inability to build a bridge over a main road that frequently is flooded.

Even in Valley Center, several senior citizens are angry at Eckert because they believe he has mishandled planning for a senior center there.

Still, few political observers believe Eckert is in serious trouble in the rural areas--where about a third of the district’s votes can be had. The 5th Supervisorial District stretches from Encinitas up the coast to Oceanside and inland beyond Escondido to the Imperial County line.

The candidates running against Eckert--Carlsbad Councilman Richard Chick, Escondido resident Edmund Fitzgerald, Vista Mayor Mike Flick, Oceanside Councilman John MacDonald, Carlsbad private detective Richard Repasky and Escondido attorney Clyde Romney--are little known outside their home towns and have done almost nothing to penetrate the areas Eckert has dominated in the past.

Only Romney, a former aide to Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), is mounting a serious challenge in such Eckert strongholds as Valley Center and Pauma Valley. Romney is quietly picking up endorsements and attending coffees and cocktail parties in private homes, building upon contacts he established while working for Packard.

Eckert “has strong support in some elements, but he has strong opposition among those who don’t appreciate his style of leadership,” Romney said of his rival.

Romney, confident that Eckert will do poorly in the cities, said he hopes the six challengers can hold the incumbent supervisor to little more than a majority in the rural areas. Through this strategy they hope to deprive Eckert of the 50%-plus-one he needs in the June 3 primary to win reelection and avoid a run-off.

“The presence of so many candidates on the ballot has already created serious problems for Eckert,” Romney said. “He faces the problem of a death from 1,000 cuts. If he tries to hold off an attack in one area, he gets hurt in another. There simply aren’t enough votes in those rural areas to offset what he’s going to lose in the cities.”

But Eckert’s supporters discount any notion that he is weaker today in rural North County than he was four years ago. They say the increased attention focused on the race this time will help attract more Eckert voters to the polls.

“I think he’s going to do better than ever,” Anderson said. “I think his vote is going to be even bigger this time because there’s so much more publicity.”