LOCAL ELECTIONS / COUNTY SUPERVISORS : In Debate, Candidates Nasty as They Wanna Be

The race for county supervisor heated up Thursday as Harriett M. Wieder and Joy L. Neugebauer locked horns for the second straight day, this time sharing their political views and trading insults before a lunchtime student crowd at Golden West College.

As she did in a debate taped the previous day, Neugebauer hammered away at Wieder’s spotty attendance at Board of Supervisors’ meetings and numerous abstentions because of conflicts of interest.

“Think what she could have done had she been on the job,” Neugebauer said sarcastically after Wieder had finished reciting a laundry list of accomplishments during her 12 years in office. “How many of you think you could pass your classes if you didn’t show up and didn’t respond when the professor called on you?”

Neugebauer also criticized Wieder for raising almost $300,000 in campaign funds from outside the district, but the incumbent said raising money was one of the necessary evils of communicating with all the voters in the district.

“How do you know what that person stands for?” Wieder said. “One mailing in the district costs $53,000.”

For the first time in a public forum during the campaign, Neugebauer raised the issue of Wieder’s false claim of a college degree, a mistake that helped sink her congressional bid in 1988 and for which Wieder has apologized. Neugebauer read aloud a news article excerpt quoting a Wieder consultant as saying that he was banking on the “short memory” of tens of thousands of voters, and then said: “I’m counting on the hundreds of thousands of voters that demand . . . from their elected representatives ethical behavior.”

Wieder answered that she has apologized for and explained her mistake, and added that she is “not proud of the fact” that she was never able to go to college.

She also pointed out that the honorary doctorate of laws degree that Pepperdine University awarded her this year was a great honor for which she has spent 27 years in public service.

“The degree is something I really cherish, and the mortarboard is something I really worked toward for a long time,” she said.

Wieder, however, was not content Thursday to remain on the defensive; she got in some zingers of her own, at one point suggesting that Neugebauer’s most significant accomplishment in 18 years on the Westminster City Council was “making preserves for the county fair.”

“You know the old political strategy,” Wieder said of Neugebauer’s tactics. “If you have nothing on which to stand, attack.”

Wieder was forced into a runoff when she finished with just over 47% of the vote last June. Neugebauer came in second, ahead of three other candidates.

Wieder said Thursday she thought the four candidates--each of them from a different city in the 2nd District--were “strategically planted” to force her into a runoff, a claim that brought jeers from some members of the audience.

The two candidates did find time in the hourlong debate to clarify their positions on a few issues. Wieder stated that she unequivocally supports a woman’s right to an abortion, and said she still wants the county to pass an ordinance specifically outlawing discrimination against AIDS patients.

Neugebauer, meanwhile, said she would not support such an ordinance because she believes current laws already protect people with AIDS.

“I feel there isn’t any discrimination at this time,” she said. “AIDS is a medical issue, not a social issue.”

Neugebauer also declared herself to be “pro-life,” but in response to a question, said she would not oppose the use of county health workers to dispense information about abortion.

On the issue of building a new county jail, Wieder, who favors putting the jail in Gypsum Canyon, questioned Neugebauer’s statement last spring that she would consider putting the jail on land now used for the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station.

Neugebauer replied by saying that Wieder was putting words in her mouth, but when asked if she would say categorically that the jail should not be built in the 2nd District, she answered that “every site has to be evaluated.”

Both candidates were asked what their policies would be on accepting gifts and honoraria. Neugebauer said she would not accept gifts; Wieder, who came under criticism earlier this year for not reporting gifts routinely reported by other supervisors, said the issue is more one of perception that reality.

“It’s really not a big influence,” she said.