Orange County Election ’86 : Newport Beach : Attention Shifts From Council to Measure A

Election, Part II, became the new show in this coastal city, only hours after the curtain fell on Part I, the election for four City Council seats.

The next balloting takes place Nov. 25, when city voters will decide the fate of the Irvine Co.’s proposed $300-million expansion of the Newport Center shopping and business complex. A yes vote for Measure A in the special election would approve the expansion project. Its supporters launched a campaign Wednesday night with a fund-raising event at Newport Center.

Meanwhile, Tuesday’s election produced mixed results for slow-growth advocates who oppose expansion of Newport Center.

Philip Sansone and incumbent Councilman Donald A. Strauss, both of whom oppose Measure A, were elected Tuesday. But two other opponents, slow-growth candidates Allan Beek and David Shores, lost to incumbent Councilwoman Evelyn R. Hart and Planning Commission Chairman Clarence Turner. Hart voted against the Newport Center expansion last summer, but Turner strongly supports it.

“I don’t see how the supporters of Measure A can take any comfort from Tuesday’s election,” Strauss said Wednesday. “I see a core of about . . . 10,000 voters who supported the slow-growth candidates, and in a special election, I think those voters will turn out when many other voters won’t. The Irvine Co. has its work cut out for it, but I might add that the Irvine Co. is already working diligently to get Measure A passed.”

But David Paine, a consultant for Citizens for a Better Newport, the group promoting Measure A, said Wednesday that the outcome of council elections augurs well for the expansion plans. “The speeches against Measure A didn’t turn out to be a big attraction to the voters,” he said.

Paine said he thinks Sansone was elected from the Corona del Mar area of the city because two pro-Measure A candidates in that district, Patrick Michaels and Michael Lapin, divided the pro-development vote.

Mayor Philip R. Maurer, a strong supporter of Measure A, said Wednesday: “The election Tuesday was good news in many ways. The voters overwhelmingly reelected two incumbents and elected . . . the incumbent chairman of the city’s Planning Commission.”

If the voters were hostile to the current city administration or “in a throw the rascals out mood,” Maurer said, incumbents would not have won as they did. “I’m very optimistic about Measure A,” he said.