Leavens Walks a Green-Tinted Line

Her fingernails may not show it, but there’s no mistaking that Carolyn Leavens loves the fertile land she has farmed for nearly four decades.

The 57-year-old rancher running for Susan K. Lacey’s seat on the Ventura County Board of Supervisors speaks with relish of planting lemon seedlings, rearing four children and balancing the books on her family’s 800-acre citrus and avocado ranch.

Her hero is Norman E. Borlaug, a Nobel laureate who developed grains that flourish in Third World countries. She describes the lettering on her big pastel campaign signs as “agricultural, or orange-leaf green” on a peach background.

Some of her comments might sound like pastoral cliches were they not obviously sincere.

Leavens’ background has also helped in a more practical way, allowing her to tap the pockets and bend the ears of many old ranching families. The names Teague, McKevett, Thille and Jewitt adorn her campaign contribution roster--as do those of local power brokers from the Bank of A. Levy, the TOLD Corp. and Utt Development.

But in spite of rallying some prominent backers, Leavens, a forthright, white-haired woman with cornflower blue eyes, has also risked alienating voters bent on keeping every acre of open land in Ventura County untouched.

Of the five candidates vying for the seat that includes Ventura, most of the Ojai Valley and the Saticoy-Montalvo area, Leavens alone favors revising the longstanding county guidelines that govern growth and green space. If she is to wrest control from Lacey, a two-time incumbent, Leavens will have to convince no-growth advocates and environmentalists that some change in those guidelines is not only inevitable, but also beneficial. And she will have to walk an ideological tightrope between the seemingly contradictory interests of ranchers and developers while forging her own identity.

Leavens, who has served on civic and state boards for years but never held elected office, must collect more than 50% of the vote in the June 7 primary for an outright win. If no candidate does that, the top two contenders will square off in November.

Leavens and Lacey also face competition from writer/consultant Robert W. McKay, a former president of the California Wildlife Federation; real estate agent Herschel M. Johnson, a 23-year U.S. Navy veteran, and Gary Wean, an Oak View businessman.

Leavens has been endorsed by five past presidents of the Ventura Chamber of Commerce, Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia) and Reps. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ojai) and Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), to name a few.

John Sullard, a Ventura councilman, said a win by Leavens “would show a political shift from Democrat to Republican and . . . to more pro-growth.”

Leavens dismisses this as nonsense, contending that the election last year of Republican Madge Schaeffer, who represents the Thousand Oaks area, did nothing to interject partisan politics into the supervisorial board.

Cites Leadership Roles

The political neophyte does not see her lack of experience as a stumbling block. Instead, she cites her leadership roles in agricultural and taxpayer organizations for more than a decade.

Starting in 1976, Leavens served on the board of the Ventura Taxpayers’ Assn., the watchdog organization that analyzes bonds and propositions. She was the 1982-83 president.

“She can analyze dollars and cents. She stays well-educated and well-informed on issues,” said Del Pickarts, a former president of the taxpayers association who worked closely with Leavens.

Also in 1976, Leavens founded the Ventura affiliate of the 5,000-member California Women for Agriculture and became its first president. She moved steadily up the ranks, serving as state president in 1981 and, from 1983 to 1985, as president of the 35,000-member American Agri-Women, the national umbrella organization of women farmers and ranchers.

For a decade, Leavens also sat on boards that help advise the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its state counterpart, and served on agriculture advisory councils for several University of California campuses.

Traveled to Capitals

It was as an officer of women’s farm groups that Leavens first traveled to Sacramento and Washington to meet legislators and lobby for laws favorable to ranchers. Leavens also has testified before the Assembly Labor Committee and at Environmental Protection Agency hearings on issues that range from seasonal farm labor to the use of pesticides.

In land-use matters, Leavens was part of a citizens’ committee that helped advise the Local Agency Formation Commission on a regional land-use program.

But Leavens said the political spirit did not move her until last fall, when she began a stint on the Ventura County Grand Jury.

Her assignment was to attend Board of Supervisors’ meetings, take notes and report back to the grand jury. And Leavens recalls some things that disturbed her.

“It’s nuts . . . the way they treat business people. The county makes it too tough right now for industry to move in. They’re not even thinking about increasing the tax base,” said Leavens, who in her campaign has stressed the need to attract high-tech, clean industry that would create more local jobs.

In December, Leavens hired Santa Barbara political consultant John L. Davies to conduct a feasibility study and, after analyzing the results, decided she had enough public support to run.

Lacey’s Strongest Opponent

She has since emerged as the strongest contender to Lacey and the only other candidate who has raised a significant amount of money--$18,000 by early April.

In speeches and public comments, Leavens has proposed building a bridge across the Santa Clara River to extend Kimball Road to Almond Drive and alleviate traffic along Victoria Avenue. She favors a limited, regional airport in the Camarillo area.

And she lambastes Lacey for allowing 6,200 acres of agricultural land to be annexed or developed by the county’s 10 cities in recent years. (Lacey responds that the overwhelming majority of the land in question had long been slated by city and county guidelines for eventual development.)

What talents would Carolyn Leavens bring to the Board of Supervisors?

Colleagues say she forms strong opinions but is willing to listen to others and reassess her position if new information is presented.

“I’ve seen her in situations where she hasn’t gotten what she wanted, and she handled it well. She’s a good worker as well as a good leader,” said Laurena Johnson, executive director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau who served with Leavens on the board of American Agri-Women.

‘Hard, Leading Questions’

Louise Willey, who along with Leavens served on the state advisory board for food and agriculture, said Leavens was known for asking “hard, leading questions. . . . She was able to forge in and get the meat of whatever the speaker was talking about.”

Privately, some city and county officials say there’s a big difference between serving on a state advisory board and drawing up public policy for a county with a $500-million budget. Some also express concern that Leavens’ agricultural background is too narrow to qualify her for supervisor.

Ojai’s outspoken former mayor, Councilman Frank McDevitt, said he fears that Leavens does not understand the complexities of county issues.

“My concerns are that she’s talked about how open space ought to be opened up to development. That would throw this valley wide open,” McDevitt said.

Davies, Leavens’ political consultant, contends that his candidate is not pro-development, but that the media has chosen to cast the battle between Lacey and Leavens in simplistic terms.

Lacey repeatedly has opposed any attempts to tamper with the guidelines that now prohibit development on nearly 500,000 acres of open land in Ventura County.

Development Inevitable

On the other hand, Leavens acknowledges that some development is inevitable. Her tentative plan to deal with it would be to swap fertile farmlands now slated for development for unproductive lands in unincorporated county areas where building is precluded. This, she said, would preserve prime agricultural land while allowing marginal properties to be put to better use.

Of her own properties, Leavens estimates that about 10% yield marginal harvests and could be sold off if her plan is ever implemented. But she adds that her family has no intention of giving up ranching.

“We are in agriculture to stay. We hope our grandchildren continue to farm so long as it is profitable,” she said.

But Leavens quickly adds that the county should provide some way out for those who no longer wish to farm--such as older, weary farmers whose children are not interested in the family business.

Still, Leavens is sketchy on just how much land such a proposal would open to development and how county officials would determine which farmlands to protect.

But Leavens believes that she, as a lifelong farmer, is well-equipped to address the issue in office.

The aspiring supervisor was born in the small town of Ephrata in eastern Washington and lived on a nearby farm. Although she studied music at Whitworth College in Spokane, her future fused forever with farming when she met her husband Paul--who came from a prominent Ventura family--at a freshman mixer. She married him several years later and they moved to Ventura to farm 100 acres of beans on land owned by his family.

Worked in Nursery

In those days, Leavens worked in the ranch’s citrus nursery and cared for a family pig. In 1955, when she set up a bookkeeping system, the ranch’s annual budget totaled $17,000.

Today, Leavens Ranches employs 30 full-time workers plus seasonal pickers, and its budget is about $2 million.

Leavens’ civic involvement began in those early days when she joined the PTA, worked as a Sunday school teacher and began serving as an elder in the Presbyterian church in Santa Paula. She also joined the Ventura Dance Club--a ballroom dance group--and the Ventura Master Chorale, where she sang alto.

In 1976, with her children grown, Leavens’ interest ranged further afield. She helped draw up the goals of the 5,000-member California Women for Agriculture, which stresses classroom education and public relations on farm and food issues.

Johnson of the Tulare Farm Bureau said that when Leavens was president of the state group in 1981, she started farmers’ fairs, which allowed visitors to buy fresh produce at prices that farmers charge distributors.

That same year, Leavens toured Agri-Women conventions throughout the country to speak against what many in ranching consider excessive government regulation of pesticides, and honed what would become a forceful delivery.

Student of Pioneer Women

While on the road, she also began collecting biographies and journals of American pioneer farm women. She still haunts museum gift shops and bookstores in rural areas in search of such tomes.

“What courage those women had to have to survive, left alone to do the farming and raise kids while the husbands were gone for months at a time to do the animal trapping,” Leavens said.

She identifies strongly with those historical characters and said she sees herself as a modern-day pioneer.

Indeed, it’s hard for her to imagine any other life.

“There are some people who feel that all we’re trying to do is sell off our land so we can make money,” Leavens said. “But any farmer will tell you they’d rather be farming than anything else in the world.”