VanderKolk’s Upset of Schaefer Official : Election: Absentee ballots do not change the 102-vote edge the political neophyte had over the incumbent.

Slow-growth advocate Maria VanderKolk capped an improbable rise from political obscurity on Friday, defeating incumbent Supervisor Madge L. Schaefer by 102 votes in an upset described as the most stunning in a Ventura County campaign since the 1920s.

VanderKolk, a 25-year-old businesswoman who moved to the county just 21 months ago, retained the slim edge she had built over Schaefer in Tuesday’s election when 1,066 absentee and questionable ballots were counted Friday.

VanderKolk received 50.2% of 23,526 votes, or 11,814, to win a seat on the powerful five-member board. She assumes the $47,844-a-year position in January.

Schaefer, a veteran of 20 years on government boards in Thousand Oaks and the county, said she will not ask for a recount. Election officials said the margin was too large for a recount to change the outcome.

“I’m just on top of the world,” VanderKolk said Friday after two days of waiting for the final results. “But I have never in my life experienced such stress.”

The long-shot challenger, who did not file against Schaefer until the March 9 deadline, said her victory demonstrates the depth of voters’ concern about preserving open space in the 2nd District, which stretches the length of the south county from Port Hueneme to the rolling hills east of Thousand Oaks.

Ken Bauer, a supporter who VanderKolk said knocked on more than 1,000 doors during the three-month campaign, said, “This has certainly restored our faith in the American system.”

The VanderKolk campaign spent only about $10,000 but enlisted a core of 20 volunteers, most from the local environmental group Save Open Space. Eventually about 75 workers, environmentalists drawn from Malibu to Ojai, canvassed for her.

They focused on Newbury Park, Westlake Village and Oak Park, where she won by margins as high as 2 to 1.

By comparison, Schaefer hardly campaigned at all.

She said she spent $8,000 on a poll early this year which told her that voters in her district were not particularly concerned about the environment. She did no door-to-door canvassing. She left half of her $40,000 treasury untouched. And then she spent most of the week before election in New York City on county business.

Schaefer, always outspoken, acknowledged that the New York trip was a mistake but generally refused to second-guess her halfhearted campaign. And she rapped her opponent as “clearly a one-issue candidate.”

“I hope she will rise to the occasion,” said Schaefer, during an upbeat and sometimes emotional news conference at her Thousand Oaks office.

Tears brimmed in her eyes as she cited her record. “I feel very proud that people thought enough of me to elect me four different times in four different races.”

She cited her bluntness, which both friends and opponents have said hurt her in the campaign, as an attribute. “I’m as subtle as a train wreck. I like to think that that’s a virtue. I’m not a very good politician, but I think I’m a fine legislator.”

Schaefer, 48, said she already has received several lucrative offers to enter private industry. “Do you realize,” she quipped, “what you can make a week in Tupperware?”

In addition, Schaefer said her husband, Bruce, an airline pilot, is trying to persuade her to rest after eight years as a Thousand Oaks councilwoman and four as a supervisor.

“He is waving all sorts of incentives to have me come home,” she said. “He has said he will take me to a strange and exotic place I haven’t been for 12 years, the kitchen.”

While Schaefer was regrouping after her first political loss, VanderKolk emphasized her ability to do the job she has captured so unexpectedly.

“Some people have said I had better be a quick study,” she said, “and I can assure you that I am. That’s not a concern of mine.”

VanderKolk is a 1986 honors graduate from the University of Colorado, with majors in political science and business. She is a manager for a product-licensing firm in Woodland Hills.

Though unsure about when she will leave her current job, VanderKolk said she will start almost immediately to collect agendas and background documents that are prepared weekly for the Board of Supervisors.

“I’ll start talking with people on all sides of the issues and try to formulate my ideas on each issue,” she said. “I feel up to speed on growth issues, but, as people have pointed out, there are a lot of other issues before that board.”

VanderKolk and officials from Thousand Oaks and the county have said the challenger’s win can be attributed mostly to the rise of a local and regional movement to check growth that is sprawling from Los Angeles.

The point is demonstrated by her 2-to-1 margins in six precincts in Oak Park, an east-county community next to the Jordan Ranch, whose proposed development was a key issue in the campaign.

“Jordan Ranch gave us a compelling issue,” VanderKolk has said. Developers have proposed construction of 750 homes and a golf course at the ranch, owned by entertainer Bob Hope.

VanderKolk opposed a land swap that would make the subdivision possible. Schaefer favored the deal because it would turn over 5,700 acres of parkland to state and federal agencies and would leave the ultimate decision on the development with the supervisors.

Schaefer has said that she is a moderate on growth and that her record has been distorted by VanderKolk.

As word of VanderKolk’s victory spread Friday, veteran political observers expressed astonishment at her strong showing.

Former County Supervisor Thomas Laubacher, who lost to first-time candidate John Flynn in a major upset in 1972, said the victory is the most unexpected in a county race since the 1920s.

“I would say it is the biggest,” said Laubacher, whose family moved to the county before the turn of the century.

“There were close elections back in the ‘20s and ‘30s when most of the competition was between friendly rivals, ranchers and the like,” he said. “But this is different, a total unknown beating an incumbent who has been active for many years, such as Madge.”