ELECTIONS VENTURA COUNTY : Winners to Grapple With Future of Growth

Despite a season of sleepy campaigns, Ventura County voters on June 5 may determine the course of growth in a county that traditionally has boasted of its limits on development and its devotion to open space.

The swing vote on two massive housing projects at the Jordan and Ahmanson ranches in the southeast county could be at stake in two races for seats on the Board of Supervisors.

Also on the June primary ballot are tax measures in Santa Paula, where officials hope to repair the city’s historic high school, and in Oxnard, where voters are being asked to rescue a city budget sinking in red ink.

In Simi Valley, the City Council is supporting a measure that would grant low-income senior citizens most-favored status in a tight housing market by giving developers incentives to build dwellings for the elderly.

In the most visible of six races for the state Legislature and the U.S. Congress, voters will be asked to settle a political street brawl between five-term Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) and Hunt Braly, top aide to state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita).

The seven top county department heads--including the sheriff, district attorney and superintendent of schools--are running uncontested. Twelve Superior and Municipal Court judges will be returned to office automatically because no one filed to run against them.

About 300,000 residents have registered to vote in the primary, 47% Republicans and 41% Democrats, county election officials said Friday.

For two months, the 4th District supervisorial race has drawn more attention than any other in the county because Ventura County Community College District Trustee Tom Ely is among five candidates who are trying to replace retiring Supervisor Jim Dougherty.

Ely owes thousands of dollars in gambling debts to Nevada casinos, and the expenses he has submitted while a trustee are the focus of a district attorney’s investigation. A citizens group and the leaders of faculty organizations at all three area community colleges called for Ely’s resignation Thursday.

The race in the 4th District, which encompasses Moorpark and Simi Valley, is interesting apart from Ely’s participation because the winner could be in a position to decide both the Jordan and Ahmanson ranch issues, county officials have said in interviews.

Together, the adjacent developments would bring about 11,000 new residents and 240 acres of commercial, office and retail space into the rolling hills several miles east of Thousand Oaks at the Los Angeles County line.

County officials said the 4th District race--and a slow-growth candidate’s long-shot challenge to Supervisor Madge L. Schaefer in the 2nd District--are developing into a referendum on a county policy that requires development to be clustered in or near cities.

“The 4th District race is a very significant one,” Supervisor John K. Flynn said. “We’ve got some major 3-2 votes coming down the pipeline, and that person will be on the end of those three votes--on the jail site, on Jordan and Ahmanson, on any major land-use or building project.”

Glen Schmidt, a 4th District candidate who was a county supervisor in the 1970s and is now a Moorpark planning commissioner, has said he opposes the Jordan development. The other candidates for supervisor have not taken a stand on the ranch issue.

Schmidt criticized rivals Bill Davis and Vicky Howard, both Simi Valley council members, for accepting contributions from developers. “They would be dead in the water with their campaigns if they didn’t have a lot of development money behind them,” he said.

Davis, who is considered along with Howard to be a front-runner in the race, said he has received a number of contributions from builders while accumulating nearly $40,000 over the last six weeks. But, he said, the contributions mean little except that he has a broad range of support.

Developers “aren’t buying anything,” he said. “I don’t have problems with development provided the developer can mitigate any problems that may arise.”

Both Davis and Howard, as members of the Simi Valley City Council, have indicated their support for a complex land deal that would make possible the construction of 750 houses and a golf course at entertainer Bob Hope’s Jordan Ranch.

Under the proposal, the National Park Service would swap 59 acres of parkland needed for an access road to the subdivision for 1,100 acres of the 2,308-acre ranch. In addition, Hope is donating and selling an additional 4,600 acres in the Santa Susana and Santa Monica mountains to park agencies for a below-market $20 million.

The Hope proposal has been praised by some conservationists as the best deal possible considering the shortage of public money to buy parklands, but the plan has been denounced by critics who say that the Jordan Ranch should not be developed because it is within the boundaries of a national recreation area.

Davis said that he favors the land swap but that he does not know how he would vote if the Jordan project came before him as a supervisor.

Of the proposed Ahmanson project, which would build 3,000 houses and apartments, two golf courses and assorted commercial buildings on 5,477 acres, Davis said: “From what I’ve seen so far, it doesn’t look that bad.”

Howard, who has also been spending heavily on placards and signs in recent weeks, said she too has received developer contributions. She declined to comment on the ranch proposals.

Most recent campaign disclosures, which include only contributions through March 17, show that little fund raising occurred early in the race. No 4th District candidate had collected more than $2,800.

The ranch development issue has been embraced as the central theme of the campaign of Maria VanderKolk, a 25-year-old political novice attempting to unseat Schaefer, 48, a one-term supervisor from Thousand Oaks.

“We feel we can save them all,” said VanderKolk, who is a member of Greenpeace, the National Wildlife Federation and Save Open Space, a group opposing development of the ranches.

VanderKolk, who entered the race in March on the last day of filing, said her campaign has consisted of door-to-door canvassing on weekends, when she distributes fliers printed on recycled paper.

She blasted Schaefer as pro-development, citing the supervisor’s 1987 support of a 1,900-acre country club at Lake Sherwood and her vote last year to allow developers to prepare environmental reports on the Jordan and Ahmanson ranches.

Schaefer, who describes herself as “a moderate in terms of growth control,” said that the Lake Sherwood project is the only major development approved by supervisors since she joined the board and that it is helping to solve longtime water quality, sewer and lake maintenance problems.

Schaefer, a former Thousand Oaks councilwoman, said she hopes the federal government agrees to the Hope land swap.

“It really equates to about 5,700 acres for 59, and certainly the feedback I’m getting about it is very positive.”

But Schaefer, who has received contributions from the developers of both ranch projects, stressed that Ventura County is in no way obligated by the deal with Hope to approve the Jordan development.

“I can tell you that historically developers never get what they ask for here,” she said. “It’s simply a starting point. They do have the right to develop 14 homes right now at Jordan Ranch.”

Incumbent supervisors Maggie Erickson and Susan K. Lacey both said in interviews that they have strong reservations about the ranch proposals. But Flynn, who voted last year against allowing environmental reports for the ranches, said he is uncertain how he will vote when they return to the board.

“I don’t know what my position is going to be yet because I don’t have all the information on this newest turn as far as the Jordan Ranch is concerned,” he said.

In 1988, in the last supervisorial race, in which growth was the central issue, Lacey defeated political newcomer Carolyn Leavens, who had stressed the need to revise the county’s longstanding guidelines that control development and protect greenbelts.

In other local races, ballot measures will be before voters in three cities.

In Santa Paula, school officials are hoping that two-thirds of voters will approve $5 million in new taxes to renovate historic Santa Paula High School.

The school, with stately buildings that date back to the 1930s, is in such disrepair that it now violates city fire codes, officials say. Under the proposed tax increase, property owners would be assessed $30 per $100,000 of valuation annually for 25 years.

In Oxnard, supporters of a proposed 5% utility tax, including Councilman Manuel M. Lopez and Police Chief Robert P. Owens, say that the tax is essential to restore badly needed police and fire services.

However, opponents contend that the tax would not be needed if city government operated more efficiently. The tax, which would cost the average household about $4 per month, would generate about $5 million annually.

In Simi Valley, a proposed amendment to the city’s slow-growth ordinance would give priority to developers who build affordable housing for low-income senior citizens.

The current law allows issuance of about 43 building permits every three months until mid-1996. Twenty percent of the permits are reserved for low-cost senior housing, and the amendment would allow builders to borrow from future permit allocations if their projects are for senior citizens.

Critics of the measure argue that favoring senior citizens leaves out other groups, especially first-time home buyers who increasingly are priced out of the market.

In the congressional arena, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) faces a rematch with Sang Korman, a Korean-American businessman, for the district that straddles Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Gallegly defeated Korman handily two years ago and is expected to do the same in June.

Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura), who won one of the most expensive congressional races in the country two years ago against state Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), faces nominal opposition in the primary from Alan Winterbourne, a systems engineer in Ventura.

Lagomarsino’s most likely Democratic opponent is Anita Perez Ferguson, a former aide to Hart. She also faces minor opposition from Mike McConnell, a construction manager in Ventura.

Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) faces his first primary opponent since he was elected in 1982. Kevin Staker, a Camarillo tax lawyer and political neophyte, is challenging McClintock’s ability to get along with his colleagues in Ventura County and Republican leaders in Sacramento.

Earlier this year, McClintock lost his position as GOP whip, the fourth most powerful leadership position in the Republican Caucus in Sacramento, after he failed in a bid to oust Assembly Republican leader Ross Johnson of La Habra.

Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss contributed to this story.