Slow-Growth Battle Is Building Up : Ballot Measure Opponents Seen Gaining Ground

Conservative, Republican Orange County threatens to hand its most powerful industry a crushing political defeat--unless a hastily assembled campaign can win over voters in the next few weeks.

Political experts say voters are so frustrated by traffic jams that they may vote for a slow-growth initiative in the June 7 primary even if they believe it will hurt the building industry and the county’s economy.

The building industry fears the initiative would shut down construction in the county. But it also fears a big win in Orange County will give slow-growth groups around Southern California more momentum.

“If it wins by a big margin, the impact on local and state politics will be enormous,” said John R. Simon, a Newport Beach lawyer and treasurer of the anti-initiative campaign.

“Those 96,000 signatures (gathered to get the initiative on the ballot) scared the hell out of every politician in the county. And it scared Sacramento too.”

Simon hopes to raise $1 million for billboards, radio advertising, pamphlets and phone banks. That amount is not enough to buy massive television advertising.

Opposition campaign leaders won’t say how much has been

raised, although next week they will be required by election laws to disclose finances. In mid-April the campaign reported raising $230,000.

Lynn R. Wessell, a consultant who has been hired to direct the opposition campaign, said that because some voters may actually be attracted by a message saying the initiative will halt construction, he plans to stress a simple theme: The initiative will actually make traffic worse.

“The key issue is that it’s an overstated, mislabeled measure,” Wessell said.

“The way it’s titled, people signed it on false premises. It won’t take one car off the street.”

The anti-initiative group, in fact, taking its cue from the initiative supporters, who call themselves Citizens for Sensible Growth and Traffic Control, is calling itself Citizens for Traffic Solutions.

That’s the main theme of the pamphlets that hired campaign workers are handing out door-to-door in the county’s neighborhoods. “What threatens to make traffic EVEN WORSE?” the pamphlet asks.

“Measure A,” it answers.

Another message the campaign wants to get across is its contention that the measure will greatly increase local taxes.

“Instead of solving our traffic problems,” workers at phone banks around the county are telling those likely to vote, “it will increase them, cause a loss of jobs and raise our taxes.”

Tom Rogers, a former chairman of the county Republican Party and a leader of the slow-growth group, thinks that approach is working.

“I think it will be close,” he said. “The allegations of tax increases are having an impact on the uninformed person.”

A poll conducted for the Orange County edition of The Times by Mark Baldassare & Associates in February found 73% of voters in favor of the initiative, 13% opposed and 14% undecided.

Wessell said the campaign’s polls show a majority of voters still in favor of the initiative, although the support has been eroding and opposition growing.

But there is a logistical problem both sides must overcome: Orange County is a tough place to run a campaign, with no major television stations of its own and no real urban center on which to focus.

That makes reaching the voters tougher, because buying Los Angeles television time for a county political campaign is both expensive and inefficient.

So Wessell is running what one observer called “an old school, old-fashioned” campaign, a strategy in which his Los Angeles-based Wessell Co. has specialized. Described by Rogers as a “hired gun” for developers in Southern California, Wessell said he has beat most of the dozen slow-growth measures he has been hired to fight.

Wessell’s approach to fighting slow-growth initiatives changes depending on the local community, but he has won City Council votes, referendums and initiatives in places as diverse as San Clemente, Union City and Butte County.

At the heart of the campaign are 130 telephones in four offices around the county where paid workers and some volunteers call homes around the county to identify supporters and attempt to sway undecided voters with a short script. The campaign has about 200 people working for it. Some of them are volunteers but most are paid $7 an hour.

So far the campaign has also thrown up five billboards and is advertising on 10 radio stations in Orange County and Los Angeles. The radio ads are interviews featuring the same people the campaign sends out to debate slow-growthers and also hammer on the traffic theme. The campaign also has workers in neighborhoods handing out pamphlets.

But Wessell concedes he could have used more time than just the few weeks he has had so far. Simon, a self-proclaimed “political novice,” fired his first political consultant and says he had trouble until recently rallying opposition to the initiative.

That’s because until recently the building industry was hoping the initiative would never even come to a vote.

The Building Industry Assn., a trade association for home builders that has much to lose if the initiative passes, until recently pursued a courtroom strategy rather than a political offensive.

The group sued to have the initiative removed from the ballot, contending that it unconstitutionally restricts builders’ rights to use their land and illegally imposes a building moratorium.

The state Court of Appeal said in April that the builders’ arguments were not strong enough to justify removing the initiative from the ballot.

Political experts said the suit may have alienated some voters. They also said the builders’ slow response to the initiative might have been due to their inexperience in handling a voter revolt, particularly because their industry had long been admired in the county for its flamboyant, individualistic entrepreneurs.

On the other hand, the suit and a series of negative reports on the initiative from county government and Chapman College have kept initiative supporters on the defensive since the measure qualified for the ballot in February.

Because the opposition campaign started late, Wessell said it has yet to attract many important allies outside the building industry.

The campaign needs those allies to enhance its credibility and show voters that it is supported by a broader group than just builders.

The campaign has lined up endorsements from Roger W. Johnson, chairman of Western Digital Corp., the county’s largest technology company, and some local chambers of commerce, but has obtained few other endorsements from big companies outside the building industry.

Polls conducted for the Orange County edition of The Times show not only a majority of voters in favor of the initiative but a majority of local business executives as well.

“There’s a new era in Orange County,” said political consultant Michael Nason of Nason Lundberg & Associates.

“If the initiative passes, it’s a new ballgame out there.”