Slow-Growth Battle Is Building Up : Backers Have Simple Strategy, Little Money

In March, after the slow-growth initiative was placed on the June 7 countywide ballot, there was a crisis management meeting among the measure’s proponents in Laguna Beach.

Although more than 95,000 voters had signed petitions to qualify the Citizens’ Sensible Growth and Traffic Control Initiative for the ballot, builders were already paying lawyers thousands of dollars to attack the measure in court, and the proponents’ campaign committee was broke.

Not to worry, the gathering was told by Tom Rogers, a San Juan Capistrano rancher and leader of the pro-initiative campaign.

People will see that the builders are behind the anti-initiative campaign, Rogers argued, and newspapers will report the links between the builders and Citizens for Traffic Solutions, the main anti-initiative organization. The election can be carried, he assured his troops, through a maximum of free publicity, coupled with public anger about traffic.

“The builders will waste tons of money,” Rogers told a reporter following the March strategy session. “People will see through the builders’ campaign. Traffic is the key issue. People are just fed up.”

The strategy was elegant in its simplicity. Polls showed that traffic is the voters’ top concern, and that about three out of every four residents favored the initiative.

During the March meeting in the office of lawyer Belinda Blacketer’s office, a decision was made to set up a legal defense fund, which has collected $10,000 to $20,000, according to Russ Burkett, a San Juan Capistrano investment counselor. Blacketer and Tustin lawyer Greg Hile, who represent the pro-initiative campaign in court, have deferred more than that amount in legal fees, but they have declined to discuss how much more.

Separately, a decision was made at the March meeting to attempt a mailing to voters just before the election.

“That’s the only strategy they could pursue,” said veteran Orange County political consultant Harvey Englander. “They believe that the weight of people’s frustration with traffic will be sufficient to carry the campaign, and given the fact that they have no money, I believe it has been largely successful.”

Englander added: “There are holes in the initiative that will be attacked in paid media during the next three weeks, and they may have no way to respond. But I think you’ll see that the ‘Yes on A’ people will try to get their message out by generating newspaper stories, and to that extent, they will be successful. . . . And I think they’re going to win. The economy has remained strong, and that has allowed the ‘Yes’ campaign to be David versus Goliath, not David versus average citizen.”

The basic strategy is still sound, Rogers and other initiative proponents said this week.

With some fine-tuning, it is what voters are likely to see from the pro-Measure A campaign in the three weeks remaining. Targeted mailings are planned. One theme: “Slow growth comes to Orange County--How to Understand the Initiative.” Another, larger mail effort may contain the message that “developers are trying to fool you again. Don’t let them,” according to Rogers and Burkett. And the proponents will accuse the opposition of telling lies.

Rogers and Burkett said they may have to borrow $10,000 to $20,000 for mailings.

“Never underestimate Tom Rogers,” cautioned Michael Nason, another Orange County political consultant. “He’s been around for a long time and he’s one of the few people I’ve ever met who is able to win consistently while being outspent by huge amounts.”

However, Nason said he would run the pro-Measure A campaign differently, using radio spots and more direct mail if money was available, and mentioning other positive goals of the initiative besides reducing traffic congestion.

“I think the ‘No’ side is going to try to confuse the voter as to who is on which side. . . . If they’re able to confuse enough voters during the last three weeks of the campaign, it could come out a lot tighter than I have projected it will so far.”

Rogers and Nason have known each other for 25 years. Nason is the public relations-media production consultant to the Rev. Robert Schuller and the Crystal Cathedral; Rogers is a former county Republican chairman.

Nason, who is managing a candidate in the 42nd Congressional District’s GOP primary, said his own polls show that the initiative will win by at least a 2-to-1 margin.

What’s more, Nason said, campaign workers say they are running into large numbers of people door-to-door who “do not think the initiative goes far enough” in curbing growth.

Still, Norm Grossman, a Laguna Hills aerospace engineer who is one of the slow-growth campaign board members, said, “There’s bound to be some slippage in our support because we started out unbelievably high to begin with.”

There’s never been any disagreement within the campaign about the basic strategy, Grossman said.

“We have no money, so we can’t do anything different at this stage anyway.”

“Our big rally was getting the signatures to qualify this thing,” Rogers said. “How can you top that?”

There has been pressure from some initiative supporters to hold press conferences that would have served as vehicles to attack companies or individual politicians, and to talk about interlocking business interests and conspiracies.

Until now Rogers has resisted such pressures. “He’s the most moderate person in the group,” Burkett said. “Greg sits there and mostly listens. Belinda talks about general policy and principles. . . . I worry about how much whatever it is we’re talking about is going to cost.”

There are no pancake breakfasts to raise funds, no rallies. Just a steady stream of negative remarks about the anti-initiative campaign, told primarily to newspaper reporters and small audiences at public forums.

“If I had to summarize in a few words what this initiative is all about,” Hile, the campaign treasurer, told a group of Young Republicans at such a forum last week, “the builders say this will cost jobs and lead the county into a recession. That’s what they want you to believe. They’re trying to confuse the issue. The real issue is mitigating the damage you cause when you develop. It’s that simple.”

Observing that attendance at such forums has been dropping off, Burkett speculated that “voters probably have made up their minds. They’re thinking: Don’t confuse me with details. Stand aside. Lemme push the button.”

But earlier this month, when Burkett realized that Citizens for Traffic Solutions was hiring hundreds of people to walk precincts and staff banks of telephones in order to contact all likely voters at least three times, a decision was made to send out 15,000 fund-raising letters to people who had indicated support for the ballot measure.

Burkett would not say how much money has come in as a result of the mailing, but estimates there has been a 10% response rate. “We get back triple our investment in fund-raising letters,” Burkett said. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”

Nor would Burkett reveal how much money the group has raised and spent since the end of the year. In February, the group reported that it had spent $30,871 as of Dec. 31. The next mandatory financial disclosure documents are due to be filed next week.

Asked why he doesn’t employ a campaign manager, Rogers recalls how he and a ragtag group defeated a heavily sponsored 1-cent countywide sales tax in 1984 with less than $200,000.

“I don’t need a campaign manager,” he said. “We’re very efficient. That’s how we win.”