SAN DIEGO COUNTY ELECTIONS : Even MacDonald Is Stunned by His Victory Margin

Ever careful, John MacDonald was playing it cautious as Tuesday night lapsed into Wednesday morning, refusing to claim victory even while he continued to hold a huge lead over Clyde Romney in the race for the 5th District seat on the county Board of Supervisors.

But there was no hiding it. Behind that “Aw, shucks” grin of his, MacDonald knew that he had something big on his hands. His eyes were bright, his step had a bounce to it, and the words of a gracious victor bubbled from his mouth with unusual clarity.

What MacDonald had was an astounding triumph, a 59.8% to 40.2% drubbing of Romney in a race that both camps had rated a toss-up.

“I had a very good feeling about this election,” MacDonald, an Oceanside city councilman and former community college president, said after Romney conceded defeat shortly after midnight. “It’s the same feeling I had when I ran for the City Council in 1982. I couldn’t bring myself to say, ‘You’re gonna win it,’ but I felt good.”

How did Romney feel?

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through,” Romney said Wednesday as he sorted through the reasons for his defeat. “It’s like being run over by a truck. We didn’t see it coming at all.”

Romney, an Escondido lawyer and former aide to Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), said he had considered that he might lose the race. But never did he think he would lose by such a stunning margin.

“The one thing I feared most was a very close loss which would have raised questions in my mind of whether there was one more thing we could have done to win,” he said. “But it’s apparent that no matter what we would have done, the result would have been the same.”

Despite the lopsided outcome, or maybe because of it, MacDonald and Romney supporters and campaign observers spent much of Wednesday wondering what factors combined to bring MacDonald such a decisive victory.

Here’s a recap of the products of those discussions:

- Eckert voters. Although incumbent Paul Eckert’s reputation was tarnished by his third-place finish in the primary, almost 25% of the voters in that race chose Eckert, so the candidate in the general election who could attract the most Eckert voters was likely to gain a big edge. Eckert remained officially neutral, but several of his strongest backers worked behind the scenes to persuade their friends to side with and give money to MacDonald.

In Oceanside, Councilman Sam Williamson, who backed Eckert in the primary, sided with MacDonald in the general election. In Vista, school trustee Lance Vollmer and real estate agent Margaret Ferguson backed MacDonald. In Hidden Meadows, it was Eckert mentor Al Steinbeck; in Fallbrook, Chamber of Commerce manager Al Diederich; in Valley Center, businessman Pal Anderson; in San Marcos, Councilman Corky Smith. Among mobile home park residents, it was Syd Notkin; in Escondido, Jim Rady; in Carlsbad, Claude (Bud) Lewis.

MacDonald speculated that one reason he was able to attract so many Eckert backers was that Romney attacked the incumbent supervisor in the primary while MacDonald did not.

“I think there was some resentment, some bitterness between those two campaigns left over from the primary,” MacDonald said.

- Last-minute mailer. His polls showing that many Republicans perceived him to be a Democrat, MacDonald sent a mailer to 40,000 likely Republican voters in the final week under the title “How Do You Choose Between Republican Candidates?” The piece said Romney had worked for law firms associated with building contractors and real estate brokers, pointed out that he had quit his Solona Beach school board post after just one year in office, and noted that a “special interest group” planned to spend as much as $70,000 on Romney’s behalf. The mailing didn’t disclose that the group referred to was the county Deputy Sheriff’s Assn.

Romney labeled the mailing a “hit piece” and said it was reminiscent of the campaign of travel trailer manufacturer Johnnie Crean in the 1982 race for the 43rd Congressional District seat, when voters upset by Crean’s tactics made Packard the fourth person in history to be elected to Congress on a write-in vote.

In his own final mailing to 50,000 likely voters, Romney added a red stamp that said “Please ignore innuendo and misrepresentation in the Johnnie Crean style hit piece mailer from my opponent.”

“We’ll never know the effect that had on the race,” Romney said Wednesday.

- Packard partisans. When Romney decided to run for supervisor a year ago, he said he hoped to generate the same kind of fervent volunteer support that helped elect Packard, much of which came from fellow members of the Mormon church. Even though Romney won Packard’s endorsement, several of the congressman’s closest supporters went with MacDonald, and the volunteer army Romney hoped for never fully materialized.

Glenn McComas, Packard’s 1982 campaign chairman, supported MacDonald. So did finance chairman Jim Gaiser and office manager Betty Buckner. Packard issues researcher Fran Aleshire stayed neutral because her husband, Carlsbad City Manager Frank Aleshire, would have to work with the eventual winner. Others close to the inner circle followed suit.

Bud Kunz, who organized Packard’s 7,000 volunteers in 1982, began this campaign in the same role for Romney but backed out a short time later, citing business commitments. Kunz, who supported Romney, said he thought Romney was unable to generate the Packard-style enthusiasm for his candidacy because there was no one like Crean to rally against.

“We (in 1982) had someone to run against,” Kunz said. “I don’t think there was anything in this race to motivate them to get in there and really work hard. There was no real excitement. They were both good guys.”

MacDonald’s volunteers hit their peak in the week before Election Day, making what Allen estimated to be 30,000 contacts with potential voters. One of the campaign’s key tactics was to have supporters send out simple, typewritten and copied postcards to their neighbors, fellow club members and people on their Christmas card lists, urging them in a friendly and personal manner to vote for MacDonald.

- Voter turnout. Turnout was a low 56.4% in the 5th District Tuesday, and that factor probably favored MacDonald for several reasons.

First, older voters tend to be more regular voters, so the lower the turnout, the greater the impact they have. MacDonald, 65, was thought to be stronger among older voters than the 43-year-old Romney.

Secondly, lower turnout usually favors the candidate with the more committed following, since these people have a reason to vote even when others decide to skip the trip to the polls. MacDonald consultant Nancy Allen said she thought MacDonald had the more faithful supporters.

“He’s been in the community a long time,” she said. “A lot of people wanted to go vote for John MacDonald. He had a lot more people who were really looking forward to voting for him.”

Finally, the turnout was higher in the MacDonald strongholds of Carlsbad (60.6%), Oceanside (56.6%) and Encinitas (53.9%) than it was in Escondido (51.1%), where Romney lives and had hoped to do best.

- Ballot designations. Allen said one of her pre-election polls showed that voters preferred MacDonald’s title of “City Councilmember/Educator” to Romney’s “Governmental Relations Counsel” by an astounding 55% to 13% margin.

“Some people do make up their minds in the voting booth,” Allen said. “If that is the only piece of information they’ve got in front of them, that’s real lopsided.”

MacDonald was also listed first on the ballot, a distinction Romney had in the primary and one the effect of which political consultants have been debating for years. But almost all political professionals agree that being first on the ballot helps more than it hurts.

- Endorsements. Romney believed his endorsements from the county Deputy Sheriff’s Assn. and the County Employees Assn. would carry weight with the voters and provide a source of campaign volunteers. When MacDonald criticized Romney for benefiting from thousands of dollars of independent expenditures from the deputies, Romney didn’t mind the attack because he thought the debate would only reinforce in people’s minds his connection with law enforcement, a favorable trait in conservative North County.

But many observers believe that MacDonald’s repeated reference to Romney “taking money from special interest groups”--a charge that wasn’t completely true since Romney never actually received the money that was spent on his behalf--may have turned some voters away from the Escondido lawyer.

“Those groups are thought of as labor unions, and labor unions aren’t all that popular in North County,” said Carlsbad Councilman Richard Chick, a MacDonald supporter.

- The “racism” charge. Romney’s October telegram to an Immigration and Naturalization Service official, in which he referred to “gangs of illegal aliens . . . looking for work or homes to rob” brought allegations of racism from two leaders of San Diego’s Latino community and prompted an advertisement in the San Dieguito Citizen in which a group of residents said Romney’s remarks were “insulting to the intelligence of the people in the 5th District.”

Romney was stung by the criticism, particularly because his mother was in the forefront of the early civil rights movement in the Los Angeles area and, according to friends, had instilled in him a sensitivity toward minorities and the underprivileged. But, except for the word “gangs,” Romney refused to retract any of the harsh language he used in the telegram.

“From a personal standpoint, I’m sorry I won’t have the opportunity to serve as an elected official and demonstrate that, far from being a racist, I’m quite the opposite,” Romney said Wednesday.

- Media. Although both candidates said they believed that news coverage of their campaigns was even-handed, MacDonald won the endorsements of more newspapers. MacDonald was the choice of the San Diego Union, the Tribune, the Oceanside Blade-Tribune, the San Dieguito Citizen and the Fallbrook Enterprise. Romney was endorsed by The Times, the Escondido Times Advocate and the Coast-Dispatch newspapers.

In addition, Romney for months was the subject of harsh criticism on the pages of the Blade-Tribune, where columnist John Mamaux labeled him a “carpetbagger” and criticized Romney for an arrangement though which Packard paid him as a consultant for several months after he left the congressman’s staff. The Blade-Tribune also published a sharply worded pre-endorsement editorial attacking Romney and praising MacDonald under the headline “Whom Do You Trust?” MacDonald’s son, Kirk, works in the newspaper’s advertising department.

- Issues. Romney and MacDonald agreed on almost every issue in the race, but Romney repeatedly answered questions at forums with more focus, detail and background, a factor he thought would play to his advantage as voters watched the two candidates debate.

Instead, MacDonald, realizing his inferior debating skills, refused to be drawn into confrontations with Romney. Many times, after Romney would give a fact-filled and thought-out answer to a query, MacDonald would simply say “Me too,” or “Ditto,” then add a thought or two of his own.

By the end of the campaign, it was clear that this tactic was frustrating Romney, and he confirmed as much Wednesday.

- Style. At the height of the fall campaign, Romney angrily rejected the notion that many North County residents were intimidated by his smooth, articulate and confident style and felt more comfortable with the familiar MacDonald’s low-key, sometimes bumbling manner. Now, analyzing his defeat, Romney believes those impressions may have been a major factor in the outcome of the race.

“I think John compares favorably with North County’s other regional and state elected officials,” he said. “I just don’t think North County is ready for an aggressive, hard-charging young man who’s willing to get out there and shake the boat.

“I guess the thousands of people I talked to at the shopping centers and at their doors who smiled politely and said they’d consider me must have gone back and said, ‘No, we prefer someone a little softer, someone a little more like we are.’ ”

Allen agreed that MacDonald was particularly well-suited to North County, much of which still clings to a folksy, country atmosphere even as the region grows at a rate equal to almost any in the nation.

“If you look at the profile of the North County officeholder, it’s a moderate, someone that’s a problem solver, not somebody that’s ambitious or somebody that makes a big show,” she said.