Dispute Erupts Over Choice of Beauty Queen : Pageant Director Criticized by Angry Ex-Board Members

Robert Speights couldn’t get over how unfair it all was.

Speights said that no newspaper had even covered the Miss Ventura Pageant that he, as the event’s executive director, had so painstakingly staged nearly two weeks ago.

But ever since the pageant’s five-member board of directors resigned immediately after the Aug. 13 crowning of a newly transplanted Northern California contestant considered an outsider, Speights’ telephone hadn’t stopped ringing with inquiries from reporters.

Finally in the spotlight, the former hairdresser who runs a dress shop in Oxnard was putting his foot down. There would be no photographs or interviews with Debra Filstrup, the 24-year-old former Concord resident whose triumph last week had precipitated the ruckus.

“This thing has lost its momentum and there’s nothing else to say,” Speights said, straining to contain his voice as his two terriers snapped in the background.

But if momentum had dwindled, it wasn’t evident to those who attended the Ventura County Fair parade Friday, where protesters mistook fair queen Erica Fuchs for Filstrup and booed her.

Favoritism Charged

Neither was it evident to the board members who resigned, including Ventura Mayor Jim Monahan and his wife, Suzanne, who criticized Speights and his wife, Karin, this week. One of the board members who quit, Tony Soares of Camarillo, a florist, was out of town and could not be reached. The other two board members, florists Bob and Sheelah Henry of Oxnard, would say that their “actions speak louder than words.”

The Monahans accused the couple of allowing Filstrup to enter the contest late, violating local pageant rules that require contestants to attend every practice. And they characterized Robert Speights as an ambitious director caught up with preserving the local pageant’s record of having Miss Ventura County place within the top 10 contestants in the Miss California Pageant.

They also accused the Speights of favoring participants in the contest--which feeds into the Miss America Pageant--and using the local contest as a steppingstone to their recently attained positions as fashion coordinators for the Miss California Pageant. Meanwhile, two other board members who previously resigned, Don Johnson, publisher of the Santa Paula Daily Chronicle, and Margie Moritz-Arem, an Ventura businesswoman, claimed that the Speights mismanaged pageant funds.

“They’re only in it for the glory,” Monahan said. “They don’t care about a local person winning. They think you have to win period, and however you do that is fine.”

State pageant officials, however, disagreed, describing the Oxnard couple as unstinting volunteers who have selflessly devoted themselves to the local pageant since reviving it three years ago.

‘Sour Grapes’

“Bob and Karin Speights do an excellent job and really support their contestants,” said Robert Arnhym, president of the Miss California/Miss America Pageant.

The resignations should, instead, be attributed to so much “sour grapes,” Beth Williams, a pageant field representative, said. “Maybe their favorite girl didn’t win.”

State officials said they had understood that the Henrys and Soares were planning to resign to devote more time to their businesses.

Filstrup, a recently enrolled student at Cal State Northridge, was entitled to participate in the Miss Ventura County pageant under a provision in the state rules that allows women to enter the pageant nearest to their residence, workplace or school, Williams said. Cal State officials confirmed Filstrup has registered there for the fall semester but would not say when she enrolled. With no contest in Northridge, Ventura had the closest contest, she added.

Besides, Williams said, Ventura County benefits from having the strongest possible candidate for the Miss California pageant, which is held every year in June. “Everybody loves a winner,” she said.

But not Monahan, who accused Filstrup of being “a ringer.”

He said the Speights caved in under pressure from Williams to admit Filstrup, a seasoned beauty pageant contestant known throughout the state to pageant officials and a gift for piano playing that she had honed over 16 years. Williams, however, said Filstrup, who is familiar to state officials because she’s entered several contests, went through the same channels any other beauty pageant contestant.

“She knew that her girl in Concord had a talent that far surpassed anything we had,” Monahan said. “She didn’t care whether it violated our rules.”

Monahan, who maintains the board should have authority in these and other policy matters, said the board had previously voted against admitting Filstrup because she would not be able to attend every practice, a prerequisite of participation. But after conferring with state pageant officials, Speights allowed her to compete anyway, Monahan charged.

State officials said Filstrup was allowed to enter after they learned that other contestants also would be missing practices.

But the board members were further angered, Suzanne Monahan said, when Robert Speights ignored their requests to see Filstrup’s proof of enrollment at Cal State Northridge.

Even if admitting Filstrup, who moved to Northridge after the pageant, did not go against the letter of pageant law, the action violated the spirit of the contest that had been portrayed as a means to give scholarships to local residents, Jim Monahan said.

“I thought that we were going to help some young ladies go to school,” he said. “I didn’t envision that all of a sudden you were going to have out-of-towners involved and taking Ventura County money and going home with it.”

Later, three of the five other contestants interviewed complained that they knew from the moment Filstrup began attending practices that she was going to win because of the special attention that she received from the Speights.

“They would pull her off to the side and talk to her,” said Michele Allen, an 18-year-old contestant from Ventura. “They were directing all their statements and instructions to her.”

Two contestants complained of hearing Speights ask Filstrup whether she would have any trouble driving to Ventura from Northridge “when you win, Debra.”

“Then he said, ‘If you win. If you win,’ ” Allen said.

Their suspicion also was stoked when parents of contestants learned that two of the six judges had disqualified themselves over a conflict of interest. The judges were the former musical trainer and the executive director of the last pageant in which Filstrup participated in San Francisco, said Rose Lembke, field operations director for the Miss California/Miss America Pageant. The Speights said Filstrup has participated in several pageants across the country.

Critics complained that judges, whom state officials admit are a tight-knit group, could have influenced each other.

The coup de grace came just before the winner was announced at the pageant, . As her competitors stood idly by, Filstrup changed from a simple evening gown into an elaborate sequined one, contestants said.

“She obviously knew that she was going to get it or she wouldn’t have done it,” Allen said. “It was kind of stinky.”

In a telephone interview, Speights denied all charges.

Speights said that he showed the board members proof of Filstrup’s university enrollment, and that he is bewildered by their failure to acknowledge that he did. Speights said he and his wife purposely distanced themselves from all contestants to avoid the appearance of favoring any competitor. And if directors didn’t realize that contestants from outside the area could participate, it is their own fault, he said.

“They knew the rules,” Speights said, “and if they didn’t, they should have. A lot of people involved were poorly informed or they didn’t attend a meeting where it was discussed or they did attend the meeting but were too preoccupied to absorb it.”

‘Creative Listening’

As for the “when you win” comment to Filstrup, Speights chalked it up to “creative listening. Psychologically, a whisper can sound like a shout.”

State officials said the situation is an isolated incident, born of nerves sharpened by illnesses among several board members and their families, including a death in one member’s family and back surgery in another’s. But Speights’ critics disagree. They said it was a culmination of a string of problems with the Speights, whom one former board member said behaved “like God.”

“When you asked a question, it was like, ‘Don’t ask this question. We don’t want to be bothered,’ ” complained former board member Don Johnson. “You got the feeling they were hiding something.”

So strong were those feelings that Johnson resigned from the board two years ago when, the publisher said, Speights failed to cooperate with an internal audit of the pageant’s funds, about $25,000.

“Two times we asked the executive director to straighten out the books and he said he’d take care of it, but it was never done,” Johnson said.

Checks Raised Questions

Most of Johnson’s questions concerned checks made out to the Speights’ own company, Robert’s Fashions, he said. Johnson said he was perplexed by the lack of receipts to justify the expenses.

“You begin to wonder what they were for,” he said.

Speights, meanwhile, denies that any questions have ever been raised about the pageant’s finances. Asked about checks made to his dress shop, he said, “I have nothing to say about this whatsever. If they want to press something formal, then I’ll produce receipts.”

Another former board member who looked into the pageant’s finances also complained “that we attempted to do an audit, but we could never tie up all the loose ends.” In the end, however, the board member, Margie Moritz-Arem, said she resigned a year ago over another matter.

Moritz-Arem, a Ventura resident who manages her own commercial properties, said she disagreed with Speights’ use of his company’s accountant, Alice Debeau, to do the pageant’s books. Speights denied that his accountant was involved with the pageant. Debeau couldn’t be located.

“I’m not saying that she was doing anything wrong,” Moritz-Arem said. “It’s just that there’s an appearance of impropriety.”

Other members expressed concern about Speights’ alleged disregard of the wishes of the board, which allegedly would rule one way on a matter only to find at the next meeting that their wishes had not been followed. Speights denies ever having been uncooperative.

“I don’t have any problem with myself,” he said.

The worst example, Jim Monahan said, occurred when the Speights used a hypnotist to treat last year’s Miss Ventura County, LaTonya Herrod, for unspecified “emotional problems,” despite board members’ objections.

“It totally blew us away,” he said. “The girls don’t have these kinds of problems.”

Speights said board members never discussed using a hypnotist, a technique designed to give “contestants as much of an edge as possible.”

“There was never a vote and there didn’t need to be a vote,” he said. “We’re in charge and we decide these things.”