ELECTIONS INCUMBENCY : Challengers Milk Rising Voter Anger

Republican Carey Rogers said she is running against an incumbent state senator in the spirit of humorist Will Rogers, a distant cousin who used to open his stand-up act with the prayer: “God help us, the legislature is in session.”

Democratic candidate Anita Perez Ferguson attacks the record of a longtime congressman from Ventura in radio ads that echo her campaign theme, “It’s time for a change.”

Oxnard mayoral candidate Scott Bollinger decided to challenge the current mayor because of what he says has been “corruption, cover-ups and kickbacks” at City Hall. “We simply need someone with enough common sense to run the city like an honest business,” he said.

In Ventura County and beyond, politicians of all stripes are running on platforms built on anger. The specifics vary, but each is interested in tapping the undercurrent of voter frustration with politics as usual in Washington, Sacramento and even Oxnard.

“This is a very common theme in political contests,” said Alan Wyner, political science professor at UC Santa Barbara. “If they face entrenched incumbents, they have to persuade voters that there is something wrong with the incumbents.”

Traditionally, the anti-incumbent theme of “throw the bums out” is a mainstay of challengers. But public opinion polls measure growing disgust over budget fumbling, political scandals and partisan wrangling in the state and federal capitals.

The results of Tuesday’s election will demonstrate if this anger, now loosely focused on faceless institutions, can be channeled into defeating specific incumbents.

To be sure, a few contests have no incumbents, such as the matchup between Republican Vicky Howard and Democrat Bill Davis for county supervisor in the 4th District that encompasses Simi Valley and Moorpark.

But entrenched incumbents are trying to hang onto their seats in Ventura County’s two congressional races, four state legislative races, nine school board races and contests for mayor or council in seven of eight cities holding elections.

To get reelected, even some incumbents have turned anti-incumbent.

“I’ve been referred to as an anti-Congress congressman,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), who is challenged by Democrat Richard Freiman in the 21st Congressional District. “I would consider myself one who has continued to fight the Establishment.”

Gallegly’s boast is not uncommon among Republican lawmakers serving in the Democrat-controlled Congress or Legislature.

“My constituents didn’t elect me to go to Sacramento to go along and get along,” said Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) in a recent debate with Democratic challenger Ginny Connell. “They elected me on the platform of being sick and tired of business as usual in Sacramento.”

As a measure of anti-Establishment zeal, McClintock was one of the first state legislators to embrace the inherently contradictory position of supporting three-term limits for all Assembly members while running for his fifth term.

“It’s really ridiculous,” said Mary Rose, a Democratic consultant to Connell’s campaign. “They are both running against Sacramento.”

Establishment-bashing is not limited to the state and federal capitals. In the mayoral race in Oxnard, Mayor Nao Takasugi has shown that he can fight City Hall as well as any of his five challengers.

Taking aim at Councilwoman Dorothy Maron, his top opponent, Takasugi hand-carried a campaign letter to voters’ doors complaining that “the illegal back-room deals clearly made by council members must end.”

Oxnard’s races are often combative, but other cities are not immune to appeals to dump incumbents.

A disgruntled Thousands Oaks developer has independently spent $20,000 on a mass mailing to 25,000 households urging city residents to vote for virtually anybody but “power-hungry” Mayor Alex Fiore and longtime Councilman Lawrence E. Horner. Seven challengers seek to replace these two incumbents.

School boards, each with their own set of sensitive issues, have sparked battles between sitting board members and challengers.

In Camarillo, five candidates say they want to unseat two incumbents on the Pleasant Valley Elementary School District board because low salaries and poor morale are forcing good teachers to leave. In Port Hueneme, six challengers say the Hueneme Elementary School District board has served too long and ignores parental concerns.

The big question that looms for Tuesday is whether these appeals can translate voter anger into acts of electoral aggression in the voting booth.

“If you look at the political geography, the only incumbents who are in trouble are those who have very strong, well-organized opponents,” said John Davies, a political consultant in Santa Barbara. “It only works when you have candidates who can take advantage of the anti-incumbent mood.”

Political experts said most incumbents have little to worry about, given their tremendous fund-raising advantage, gerrymandered districts and base of supporters.

“I would be very surprised to see large numbers of incumbents lose at the congressional, state senatorial or Assembly level,” said Professor Jonathan Steepee, chairman of the political science department at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

The lack of competitiveness has created a new outlet for voter anger: the statewide ballot initiatives to limit legislative terms. Proposition 140, the most severe of two such initiatives, restricts lifetime service to eight years in the state Senate and six in the Assembly.

Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura) said he believes Proposition 140 gives disgruntled voters a chance to vent their anger by enacting a law that will throw the rascals out.

About his own political future, Lagomarsino is confident that he will win despite Anita Perez Ferguson’s ads that try to capitalize on voter resentment of Congress.

“There is always that kind of talk,” Lagomarsino said. “In the past it’s always come down to, ‘Yeah, let’s get rid of all of these guys except our own.’ ”

The same holds true, Lagomarsino said, for the area’s Democratic state legislators, Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) and Assemblyman Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria). “Hart and O’Connell are very popular,” the congressman said.

Unlike the Republicans, these two Democrats do not try to drape themselves in the robes of outsiders. Instead, they attempt to distinguish themselves as legislators who are a cut above their colleagues.

Hart, who faces long-shot challenger Carey Rogers, notes in a political mailer that he “was ranked first in integrity” in the state Senate by the California Journal, a magazine about state politics.

O’Connell, running against Republican Connie O’Shaughnessy of Santa Barbara, is campaigning as the area’s all-star legislator who has won dozens of awards.

In O’Connell’s television ad, the camera scans pictures of professional sports heroes, such as Magic Johnson, O.J. Simpson and Babe Ruth. “If he were an athlete,” the narrator says of O’Connell, “he would have earned a nickname by now.”

Mindy Lorenz, the first congressional candidate from the Green Party, is mounting a write-in campaign because her fledgling party does not have enough registered members to be recognized by the state as an official party.

But in this election season, her Populist message is nearly lost in the chorus of major party politicians striking the same theme.

“People are fed up with politics as usual,” Lorenz said. “We need new, clean people inside our government, who are standing for the issues they believe in and not swayed by big-moneyed interests.”