Orange County Elections : SAMSON Pushes Ahead With Effort to Alter Santa Ana Council

It was after 6 p.m. Thursday and Jim Lowman allowed that he had probably “goofed again.”

Lowman, spokesman for the Santa Ana Merged Society of Neighbors (SAMSON), had learned that the group had missed last week’s filing deadline for campaign spending reports. “Hell,” he said, “if we have to pay the $10 late fee, we’ll pay it. It’s not a problem.”

There have been a few blunders along the way for Lowman and SAMSON. In each case, the group has managed to stumble through, and Friday, the Santa Ana city clerk decided not to charge a late fee because there was no indication of “willful” intent to file late.

All their errors may be forgotten if the group can come out winners on June 3. If voters in Santa Ana decide to support a SAMSON-authored proposition calling for ward elections and a directly elected mayor, the group will have succeeded in radically altering the face of local government in the county’s second-largest city.

The most immediate change would come in November, when elections are scheduled for three of the city’s seven council members.

If next week’s proposition--Measure C--passes, the November ballot will be distinctive mostly for its clutter. All seven council members will have to run in their respective wards (council members currently represent wards but are elected on a citywide vote) and the mayor’s office will be up before all the voters for the first time (the council currently appoints the mayor for a two-year term). Most observers expect a crowded field for the mayor’s office. If the measure passes, the mayor will be a non-voting member of the council except in the case of a tie, when he could

cast the deciding vote. The mayor could also veto any council action; five votes would be needed to override the veto.

Councilman John Acosta said he would definitely seek the mayor’s seat if the proposition passes, while Vice Mayor P. Lee Johnson, Councilman Robert W. Luxembourger and Councilman Dan Young said they would consider it. Luxembourger said he expects some former mayors and others to join in the race too.

Mayor Dan Griset, who is running for state Assembly, will lose his post if the measure passes or if he wins his bid for the Assembly. Griset said, however, that he is “at the point of moving on or out” of his political career and would not have remained on the council anyway.

“The whole political landscape changes (if the proposition goes through),” said Young, who is up for reelection in November regardless of the outcome. Young, who said he is remaining neutral on the issue, said he will not be surprised to see some SAMSON members running for office.

Young’s neutrality was echoed by four of his peers. Only Acosta and Councilwoman Patricia A. McGuigan said they were standing firmly against Measure C.

Acosta said he has no objection to the concept of a directly elected mayor but can’t support a ward system. Therefore, he can’t support Measure C since it combines the two concepts.

Responsive to Wards

Wards would mean councilmen would need only be responsive to voters in their areas instead of the whole city, he said. “I can’t see why anybody with any intelligence at all would give up the ability to have access to seven council members,” he said.

As an example of how ward systems alter allegiance, he cited the Board of Supervisors’ recent decision to place a new county jail on a site near Anaheim Stadium. Only District 4 Supervisor Ralph B. Clark, whose district includes Anaheim, voted against the plan.

If Santa Ana had a ward system now, Acosta said, a plan to put a sports arena downtown would not have been voted down when nearby residents protested. “We would have broken ground on the Westdome already,” he said. “Mr. Griset would have gone down fighting because it was in his ward.”

McGuigan said the idea of giving the mayor veto power is “absurd” and can only set the stage for “real dissension” between the mayor and the council. She believes the veto will be the mayor’s only power because ties on a seven-member council are extremely rare. Without being a regular voting member of the council, the mayor essentially becomes a figurehead, she said.

Various Groups

SAMSON, which concocted its plan to change Santa Ana shortly after threatening to attempt a recall of all seven council members in December, consists of several diverse groups, some at odds with each other but all sharing a dissatisfaction with various decisions of the council. Included are Santa Ana firefighters, a group that successfully fought to prevent destruction of Santa Ana Stadium to make way for a new sports arena, an organization designed to defend Latino immigrants’ rights and opponents of a plan to close a north-central neighborhood to commuter traffic.

Lowman, a member of the latter group, admits that SAMSON lacks the political sophistication of its opposition. The record bears him out.

In January, the coalition missed a deadline for filing crucial papers with the city clerk in its petition-gathering effort and lost 16 days of a tight timetable. In February, City Clerk Janice C. Guy rejected petitions when City Atty. Edward C. Cooper ruled that SAMSON had used the wrong forms. Earlier this month, invitations to a fund-raiser listed Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) as the featured speaker before Robinson had agreed to attend. He subsequently declined.

Lowman admitted that part of Measure C’s intent is to make it easier for a council member who angers a segment of his ward to face a recall because opponents would have to gather only about 2,000 signatures to force an election. While Acosta describes such a system as one that would invite “constant chaos,” Lowman argues that “chaos would be an improvement over what we have now.”

Lose Control

Fellow SAMSON member George Hanna, arguing that only two cities in California with more than 200,000 residents have non-ward elections, said he believes the same power structure has controlled City Hall for too long. “They will lose control if Measure C passes,” he said. “And why shouldn’t the people have more access to their government?”

Backers also expect the ward system to give minorities better access to City Council seats, and some Latino candidates are expected to emerge if the proposition passes.

Another effect of the measure would be to force Young, Luxembourger and Johnson, who would normally be running for four-year terms in November, to run for two-year terms while the other four seats would run through 1990. (The two-year terms would keep council seats on an alternating schedule so all seven seats are not up for reelection at the same time.)

Lowman said he is counting on the group’s volunteer strength to make the difference in a door-to-door and flyer campaign. “Our manpower and about $10,000 will be enough to fight the $50,000 we expect them to raise,” he said.

The opposition is centered in two political action committees, one formed by the local Chamber of Commerce and another a group of residents and businessmen that frequently becomes involved in local politics, the Good Government Committee. In campaign statements filed Thursday, the two groups reported expenditures of about $25,000 so far.

Full-Scale Campaign

Michael Metzler, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, said there will be “a full-scale campaign” conducted in the days remaining before the election, including mailers and some door-to-door work.

Metzler said he believes a change in the City Council could affect the city’s aggressive development efforts and make council members responsive to their own wards rather than the entire city. “We believe in the greatest form of democratic participation. . . . Measure C will be the least amount of democratic participation,” he said.

He said the mayor’s veto power, accompanied by a solid three-vote support, could wind up giving one person a lock on City Hall decisions. “We think that’s not just bad government, that’s dangerous government,” he said.

Lowman, stressing that it’s been a difficult task to hold together his wide-ranging coalition, stresses repeatedly his main point. “The thing we’ve had in common all along,” he said at a recent SAMSON meeting, “is that we don’t think we’ve had a City Council that is responsive to the people. This is going to solve that problem once and for all.”