ELECTIONS ’88 : ORANGE COUNTY : Stanton Expects to Beat May Without Spending Much Money

Four years ago, Roger R. Stanton raised more than $200,000 to run for his second term on the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

But he wound up without a challenger.

Recently, Stanton took out the same $200,000, dusted it off and added another $100,000 in hopes of keeping his seat for another four years. This time he has one opponent, Santa Ana City Councilman Ron May.

But it still looks as though most of the money will go back into the bank because Stanton is the heavy favorite to be reelected June 7.

“There’s no need whatsoever to spend it,” Stanton said. “I don’t like to waste money.”

Don’t expect to hear a lot about this race. The only significant public event of the campaign was a half-hour debate last week on KOCE-TV in Huntington Beach. Voters can expect a few street signs and a brochure in the mail from Stanton; May has a billboard on the Garden Grove Freeway.

This is a lopsided race, partly because of the nature of the turf.

There is a strong advantage to being the incumbent in the 1st District. Because it is the most urban supervisorial district in Orange County, there are city councils that take most of the heat on controversies. Political experts figure that a lot of people in the district don’t even know who their supervisor is, let alone what he does.

“They come to us when there’s a problem, then we go to the supervisors,” said Fountain Valley Mayor George Scott. “It’s kind of like the chain of command.”

The thinking is that so as long as that low profile is maintained, voters will have no reason to unseat an incumbent. There have been three supervisors in the 1st District over the past 20 years, and the first two left office only after they were criminally indicted for campaign fraud.

The district includes the cities of Santa Ana and Fountain Valley as well as parts of Garden Grove, Tustin and Westminster. It is the poorest and most ethnically mixed of Orange County’s five supervisorial districts. It also has fewer registered voters and more Democrats than any other district, although Republicans hold a slight edge in numbers.

May, a 48-year-old high school teacher, was elected to the Santa Ana City Council 15 months ago and was criticized by some colleagues for trying to leave so quickly.

May said he has no paid campaign staff and no list of supporters. He has reported receiving only a handful of cash in campaign contributions.

May is a Democrat and Stanton a Republican; the $61,900-a-year post, however, is nonpartisan.

Stanton, 50, has been endorsed by every elected city official in the district except May. He is a former mayor of Fountain Valley and a former business professor at Cal State Long Beach.

May said, however, that he can overcome the odds by riding the hottest political issue in Orange County politics this year--growth. Not only is the effort behind the slow-growth initiative on the June 7 ballot a blemish for the supervisors, he says, but it also demonstrates that the board lacks vision, a malady that has contributed to a failure to deal with other issues, such as the airport, jails and the economy.

“I think the Orange County voters know in their hearts that it’s time for a change,” said May. “On the big issues, the supervisors have failed to meet the issues and Orange County is now turning from paradise to paradise lost.”

But the slow-growth measure is not the hammer in Santa Ana that it is in the unincorporated and less heavily developed parts of south Orange County.

Even May’s attempt to link the supervisors to traffic congestion in Santa Ana takes some explaining. He says the board’s votes to build new homes in south Orange County will put more cars on the freeways that travel through the 1st District.

Stanton has also targeted his opponent’s slow-growth credentials. May was not active in the drive to put the slow-growth initiative on the June ballot, and Stanton challenged him recently to propose that the same measure be adopted by the Santa Ana City Council.

May ducked the challenge by claiming that Santa Ana recently passed development regulations that already reflect the intent of the initiative and that the law therefore is not necessary.

Tom Rogers, one of the leaders of the slow-growth movement, rejected that response. “Of course it’s an issue in Santa Ana,” he said. “We’d be very happy to work with them to put in the language.”

Stanton--who has criticized parts of the initiative, saying it unfairly restricts some development--has refused to say how he will vote on the measure June 7.

“I’m not going to knock the initiative, and I’m not going to praise it,” Stanton said at the debate with May, which included several heated exchanges. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s the people’s vote.”

May shot back: “That has been the record of Roger Stanton for eight years. He will switch left and then he will switch right, and when it comes right down to it, he will say nothing.”

Stanton has been cushioned from the political hazards of the slow-growth movement by the recent switch in his voting policy on new development. Since the slow-growth measure qualified for the ballot in March, Stanton has voted against 20 controversial development agreements that involve more than 60,000 homes.

Stanton said he voted as he did because he does not believe it is proper to “circumvent” the slow-growth measure by protecting large new developments from its potential impact only weeks before the voters decide its fate.

Critics say Stanton’s change of heart was politically motivated. But it has repeatedly won praise from slow-growth activists at public hearings.

“I’d give him an A for common sense,” Rogers said.

Stanton has actively cultivated support from a wide cross section of his district, and that was demonstrated in the makeup of the audience for his campaign announcement speech. Seated behind the candidate were more than 20 representatives of the Latino community, Vietnamese organizations, Korean groups, labor, local Chambers of Commerce and all of the district’s city councils.

Stanton was also smart enough to lock up much of his support more than a year before the election.

Santa Ana Mayor Dan Young, for example, committed his support to Stanton more than a year ago, before May entered the race. Now, he says, “I wish both of my friends well. I do business with both of them on a daily basis, and therefore I am not going to make any statements on the race because they are both my friends.”

There is one major issue on which Stanton has sought a high profile in the district--crime. It is one of his strong suits--and one of the biggest concerns of his constituents.

Since his first supervisorial race in 1980, he has been strongly supported by state and local police associations.

When May decided to challenge Stanton, he sought the backing of the Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, which had endorsed his 1986 council campaign. But instead, the deputies’ union leaders tried to talk him out of the idea.

Last month, Stanton and Orange County Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks unveiled a program for a new task force of prosecutors to address gang problems.

The issue that has probably brought Stanton the most attention from his constituents, however, has been the county’s search for a new jail site. Several groups and officials wanted the massive new jail facility that is planned for Gypsum and Coal canyons in Santa Ana instead, so it would be close to the courts and the county’s main jail.

Stanton led the fight against the Santa Ana location and, partly because of his experience on the board, the supervisors voted 3-2 to place the 6,000-bed jail outside the city. It is now planned for the district of the newest supervisor on the board, Gaddi H. Vasquez.

Stanton is so confident of the support he gained from the jail battle that he was incredulous when May complained that he hadn’t done enough on the issue.

“There has been an inability of the board to solve the jail problems,” May said.

“He’s displaying a tremendous ignorance of the issues,” Stanton said. “I’m a tough defender of the interests of my constituents. That’s why I don’t have any serious opposition.”

Name: Roger R. Stanton

Occupation: Incumbent

Age: 50

Residence: Fountain Valley

Party affiliation: Republican

Public offices previously held: Fountain Valley City Council member and mayor

Name: Ron May

Occupation: high school government and history teacher

Age: 48

Residence: Santa Ana

Party affiliation: Democrat

Public offices previously held: Santa Ana City Council member, November, 1986-present.