Antonovich Driven to Campaign Hard by Aggressive Foe: ‘Outsider’ Baxter Ward

“You know what Bob Hope says about politics,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich. “ ‘One day you’re drinking champagne, the next day you’re picking grapes.’ There’s no tenure.”

Antonovich had tenure when he was a Los Angeles high school teacher, but he gave it up for the risks of full-time politics.

Now, not wanting to pick those grapes, he drives many miles each day through a supervisorial district bigger than Delaware in a puzzling and difficult race against a challenger whose ideas he characterizes as “loony,” “weird” and “strange.”

He suffers through breakfasts of huevos rancheros and beans and sits down to lunches of seafood salad from which every bit of flavor has been frozen. Although a reporter accompanying Antonovich never heard him complain, the fare must offend his health-food taste, but not as much as the sight of the slight, 68-year-old Baxter Ward sitting nearby when they meet at debates.

His race against Ward in the 5th District, which extends from the Santa Monica Mountains through the San Fernando Valley to the Pasadena area, has been a difficult one because of the nature of his foe.

Antonovich’s campaign advisers have been confounded by a puzzling finding: Although Ward was a county supervisor for eight years, representing the district until Antonovich defeated him in 1980, many voters do not remember him as a politician.

Instead, they recall him as a television anchor for KABC in the late 1960s and, for a time, in the early ‘80s after his defeat. Thus Ward, despite eight years as a politician, has been able to campaign as an outsider, attacking Antonovich’s record without defending his own.

Then there is Ward himself--always on the attack, his voice polite but his manner unfailingly scornful of rules. In one television debate, Ward ignored the moderator and ended up cross-examining one of the reporters on a panel that was supposed to be questioning him.

In debates, Antonovich often pays no attention to Ward’s attacks, making his own points instead. But he clearly dislikes Ward, and in conversations he likes to portray his foe as an eccentric. He often, for example, talks about the germ-wary Ward’s former reluctance to shake hands--an aversion he overcame when he entered politics years ago.

The same sort of feeling was evident one day last week when Antonovich drove from the County Hall of Administration in downtown Los Angeles to Antelope Valley for a debate with Ward and a meeting with an area newspaper publisher.

Outside the Desert Inn, site of the debate, Sherry Lasagna, head of Antonovich’s Antelope Valley district office, met him. She told him that broadcast reporters wanted to put a microphone around Ward’s neck, but he refused.

“He has this thing about vibrations, about rays,” commented Antonovich, in the quietly scornful manner he uses when talking about Ward.

Demanding of His Workers

Usually, Antonovich is a polite man who speaks quietly, although former staff members say he is a demanding boss who has trouble delegating authority and who gets angry when things go wrong.

Antonovich is more comfortable with broad philosophical concepts than details.

During an interview on a central issue in the campaign, land development, Antonovich turned to his assistant for planning and development, David R. Vannatta, for help in answering details of several controversial projects.

His discussion of his philosophy of land-use is more assured.

Antonovich tends to view these problems through the prism of his own politically conservative, traditional views, influenced largely by his own experience.

Not Without Critics

His critics in the district--environmentalists and homeowner groups--see the problems in a more complex manner, discussing specifically how much traffic a proposed subdivision would generate, researching the impact of new homes on schools, citing figures on air pollution.

For example, growth development advocates frequently cite studies by the Southern California Assn. of Governments that warn that commercial and industrial complexes should be built near new subdivisions in northern Los Angeles County so homeowners can live close to their jobs and not clog the freeways with long commutes into downtown Los Angeles.

They have criticized Antonovich for supporting zone changes that convert commercial zones into areas eligible for residential subdivisions.

In an interview, Antonovich recognized the need for jobs being close to homes and said that 11,000 jobs have been created in the heavily residential Santa Clarita Valley. But, he said, “The people who live in Los Angeles County do expect to have their children living near them and the children expect to have their parents living near them and grandparents living nearby, and there is an obligation that we provide the ability for people to find housing and keep the family strong and the neighborhood, in the sense of the family, strong. So it is a necessity that you ensure that we have an adequate supply of housing while being sensitive to the environment.”

Homeowners Object

Specifically, his philosophy has brought him into conflict with some Santa Clarita Valley homeowners on the issue of schools that have been overcrowded by children from new subdivisions.

School districts and many residents are backing a proposal to impose more fees on developers to pay for new schools. Developers’ organizations oppose them.

Antonovich said he would not take a position in the dispute. “I take the third side,” he said. “We have to be sensitive that fees are not exorbitant. . . . They must be reasonable. I don’t know what that reasonable amount is.”

Whereas parents, interviewed last weekend, were enraged over their children going to school in temporary buildings, Antonovich had a different attitude.

“When I was a student in Los Angeles, growing up, I attended schools in bungalows,” he said. “When I attended Cal State L.A., I attended class at bungalows and when I taught (there) they still had classes of bungalows, so that’s a fact of life. However, I do believe there has to be a better means of constructing schools at cheaper costs. There has to be a better means of permanent construction of our schools at more economical costs.”

Consistent With Background

Those views fit in with Antonovich’s political background, conservative Republican politics, which he embraced as it was becoming dominant in the state GOP.

Antonovich grew up in Los Angeles and attended Marshall High School and Los Angeles City College before graduating from Cal State L.A.

He was a student teacher at Marshall and Garfield high schools and then taught history and government at Wilson, University and Metropolitan high schools in the Los Angeles district.

In 1969, at the age of 27, Antonovich was elected to the governing board of the Los Angeles community college system and quickly won a reputation as an outspoken conservative, especially on the social issues of that tumultuous decade.

Conservatives had taken over the state Republican Party a few years before, and Antonovich, frequently in the news with his conservative stands on the college board, was quickly viewed as a rising young GOP star.

Won His Election

In 1972, he was elected to the state Assembly from his home district in Glendale. In the lower house, he was steadfastly conservative. But there was an easy air of camaraderie in the Assembly in those days, and Antonovich was able to work with Democrats as well as Republicans.

In 1978, Antonovich ran for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. Although he had strong support among grass-roots conservatives, his opponent, Mike Curb, was backed by wealthy GOP kingmakers and won. It was a disappointment, but Antonovich made a comeback two years later when he was elected county supervisor. That year, he had the strong support of Republican contributors and grass-roots workers who believed that they owed him a good effort after some party friends let him down in his loss to Curb.

In 1986, Antonovich ran for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. He lost, and, to the surprise of some of his supporters, ran badly in many areas of his supervisorial district.

Warning Flag

That was a danger sign, a warning that he might have a tough reelection fight this year.