Ship’s Pilot Joins Harbor Commission : Oxnard: Supporters say Ray Fosse’s election indicates that voters don’t care for the district’s present configuration.

Ray Fosse succeeded in becoming the first candidate to unseat an incumbent in the Oxnard Harbor District Commission’s 53-year history and also outpolled the two commissioners that voters returned to office.

“There might have been some magic in being first on the ballot,” said Fosse, 52, a ship’s pilot at the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Port Hueneme. “There were a lot of people who backed my campaign, and we walked a lot of precincts.”

Supporters said Fosse’s strong showing in last Tuesday’s election, after failed campaigns in 1986 and 1988, indicates that voters support doing away with the district’s present configuration. The district includes Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Camarillo and parts of Thousands Oaks and unincorporated areas. Fosse, a resident of Oxnard, endorsed the Local Agency Formation Commission’s attempts to rein in the boundaries to Oxnard and Port Hueneme, the two cities most affected by its operations.

But Edward J. Millan, who advocates holding an election on the issue, said his and Stanley J. Daily’s reelections suggest that voters want to maintain the larger district. Millan and Daily are both from Camarillo.

“After running so many times, he had a good sense of how to win,” Millan said. “Both Stan and myself, we were very low-key.”

Of the 85,893 ballots cast, Fosse received 34,314 votes. Millan got 29,355 and Daily received 27,949. Daily, a former Camarillo mayor, also won election to the Camarillo City Council and said he intends to serve in both posts.

Commissioner Steve W. Socks lost the seat he was appointed to earlier this year.

Fosse’s victory in the field of six candidates was welcomed by Port Hueneme City Manager Dick Velthoen, who has butted heads with the commission and port administration in the past and who wants the district downsized.

“We have someone now who is in the marine industry and represents the local area,” Velthoen said.

“He has a lot of exposure to the district and its operations and an understanding of how the port works from the bottom-up, not the top-down,” he said.

Fosse said his first priority will be to mend fences with municipal officials and port employees.

He said they were treated with disdain by port officials and the commission, whose members voted unanimously on all issues in the last year.

Daily said that under the commission’s committee format, disagreements have been resolved before the issue goes to a vote of the full panel.

“Anyone who questions the propriety of something gets branded an enemy of the port, and they get confrontational about things that should be negotiable,” Fosse said.

“I don’t intend to be the guy who sits in the corner and votes no on everything, but when things do come up that are less than palatable to me, it’s important that the record shows someone said ‘No.’ ”