ELECTIONS ’88 : Slow-Growth Fight Was Bitter to End

By the time the end came for Orange County’s slow-growth initiative and the people who had made it their own, the crowd had already thinned out and even those who remained were having trouble keeping the faith.

For a campaign that had been so bitterly contested, the end was almost anti-climatic.

“There’s no way we’re going to win,” Tom Rogers, one of the slow-growth leaders said after viewing figures showing the measure falling behind.

Rogers conceded defeat around midnight. By then, most of the people who had gathered at the Red Lion Inn at Costa Mesa for what was hoped to be a victory party had already left. Even the bar had closed early.

There were sadness, disappointment and some disbelief. And in the end, as in the beginning, there was bitterness.

“If we lose,” said Norm Grossman, one of the leaders of the movement to put the brakes on Orange County’s rapid urbanization, “we will have lost for the wrong reasons. We will have lost because of deceptive advertising. And that would hurt. To lose because of lies and deceptions will be hard to take.”

It was a different mood, of course, over in Irvine at the headquarters of the opponents of Measure A. The bars stayed open late, and time and again cheers rang out as fresh vote totals were announced, reflecting a widening lead for those who voted against the slow-growth initiative.

The loudest applause came at 11:55 p.m. when an unconfirmed rumor swept the crowd of some 75 people that Rogers had conceded defeat. The rumor was confirmed minutes later, and another wild cheer broke out.

“I think it’s a great victory,” said John R. Simon, head of the opposition. “Now we can get our freeways and we won’t lose our jobs.”

Responding to complaints by Measure A co-author Belinda Blacketer that his group had stolen the election through deceptive advertising, Simon countered that “the other side started it. They got a big head start with untruthful statements.”

Lynn R. Wessell, a “No on A” campaign consultant, said he was encouraged by the results but was “still interested in seeing what the south county does. But they’d have to win the rest of the precincts by 60 to 65% and I don’t think they can do that.”

Wessell spent most of the day at the “No on A” campaign office directing paid workers and volunteers who went door to door urging residents to vote.

Wessell had been up until 4 a.m. Tuesday putting up campaign posters in the south county to greet voters on Election Day.

Wessell’s well-funded phone banks in four campaign offices around the county had already identified areas where the initiative was strongly opposed, and the callers began working on those areas Monday to get out the vote. On Tuesday, about 500 campaign workers hit the streets to try to lure voters to the polls, Wessell said, about half of them volunteers.

It had been a costly campaign. The anti-slow growth group raised $1.75 million, outspending supporters of the initiative by more than 33 to 1. Wessell said the group had spent all of it by late Tuesday.

Times staff writers Dianne Klein and Michael Flagg contributed to this report.