Ventura Mayor Chosen to Play a Unifying Role

Greg Carson, Ventura’s new mayor, always dreamed of being a politician.

“I can remember he always said he wanted to be in politics,” said Carson’s mother, Joan Wink. “And someday, when he got to be President, he would buy me a fur coat.”

“Did I say that?” the 33-year-old mayor and nursery owner said, smiling and blushing. “I did not.”

But Carson, who rode into his City Council office on a wave of pro-business, anti-incumbent fervor and one of the most expensive campaigns in Ventura history, admitted that political ambition gripped him early in life.

Ambition carried him into student council offices in grade school, high school and college.

It also helped him win a job guiding campaign spending from 1985 to 1988 for the California Farm Bureau Federation, which operates one of the most influential political action committees in Sacramento.

However, it was Carson’s skill as a go-between--honed while overseeing student clubs at Buena High School and introducing California’s farmers to its legislators for the PAC--that helped persuade the council to make Carson the mayor.

“I do perceive him as a good sort of go-between, a moderator,” said incumbent Councilman Gary Tuttle.

“He’s got a good sense of humor . . . and the personality that could sort of bring most everybody together on the issues,” Tuttle said. “And he has already shown in the first week of putting together committees and talking to us that he is definitely going to be a mayor for all sides.”

By naming Carson mayor, the council bucked a longstanding tradition of putting incumbents in the top city seat.

The radical move was meant to steer away from the bickering that sometimes has erupted on the council between pro-business Councilman Jim Monahan and the remaining slow- and moderate-growth council members.

But Carson’s election as mayor also was intended to mollify slow-growth politicians who worried that the newly elected pro-business councilmen--Carson, Tom Buford and Jack Tingstrom--would join Monahan to outvote the three slow-growth members, Tuttle, Todd Collart and Cathy Bean.

“We weren’t afraid that he would cut us out of the loop,” Tuttle said. “And he hasn’t.”

But some politicians warned that Carson’s inexperience in Ventura politics may hobble him at first.

“I think that overall he doesn’t have a lot of experience with particular issues, but he’ll pick that up fast,” said Steve Bennett, a slow-growth advocate who came in fifth on a write-in candidacy in November’s election.

Former Deputy Mayor Donald Villeneuve, a slow-growth advocate who lost his reelection bid to Carson and the other pro-business candidates, was more critical.

“His statements during the campaign do not really indicate any real program,” Villeneuve said. “The statements he made in every one of the forums I listened to were very vague generalities and indicative of apple pie and motherhood, with some reference to the existing policies that the council has for four years been focused on.”

Carson, a bachelor, may be the youngest mayor in Ventura’s history.

The great-great-great-great-grandson of Charles and Julina Pinkard Johnson of Missouri, who settled on a Saticoy farm in 1876, Carson grew up in Ventura, living with his mother and two sisters.

He recalls spending much of his childhood swimming, riding bikes and clambering around in the barrancas near his home with friends. Carson also remembers neighborhood tough guys throwing baby birds down gopher holes.

“I used to rescue them,” he said. “And 50% of the time they didn’t live.”

In sixth grade, he ran for election as his class representative on the student council at Cabrillo Junior High School, won and learned to love politics.

That year, the council asked the school administration to drop a dresses-only rule for girls and allow them to wear pants. The administration agreed, Carson recalled.

“It was as if I did the whole thing, with the girls gathering around me and congratulating me and thanking me, and I said, ‘Whoa, I didn’t do it,’ ” Carson recalled with a smile. “Very few people get to make the decisions that affect the masses.”

At Buena High School, Carson worked on the student government as clubs chairman, helping student organizations recruit more members and present their budget requests for the council.

“He was the kind of person that could see both sides and try to find the mutually satisfying common ground for all concerned,” said former Assistant Principal Bob Cousar. “He had a lot of talent working with the youngsters and he was quite successful working with staff members.”

Classmate Kathleen Shanahan, now a political publicist who worked for Vice President George Bush’s office, said Carson was a stickler for parliamentary procedure at student council meetings.

Shanahan said she sometimes forgot to ask verbally to be recognized.

“I’d raise my hand, and he’d say, ‘You’re out of order,’ ” she said. “It was all very collegial, but it was also, ‘Look kid, I thought I was the hotshot, too, but I play by the rules.’ He took his job as seriously as you take anything in high school.”

After a brief stint as a waiter, Carson began working at the Mound Nursery, first handling stock and later as a salesman, recalled nursery owners Ruth and Ralph Curtis.

After college, he began a small landscaping business and managed two rental properties. But in 1981, when a man his grandmother was dating in Santa Paula murdered her and killed himself, Carson felt he had to leave, he said.

He took a job with the Farm Bureau Federation in Sacramento, touring California to educate farmers about lobbying efforts for pro-farmer legislation in Sacramento and Washington.

After a few years, Carson was promoted to chairman of the federation’s PAC, where he analyzed political campaigns and recommended which candidates should receive the committee’s financial support.

In all of 1983, FARMPAC’s gifts to election campaigns for the Legislature totaled $20,700, according to Common Cause, a Sacramento citizens watchdog group. By 1988, spending had increased to $75,750 for the last six months of 1988 alone.

But while Carson wanted the PAC to move more into urban areas to drum up support for its causes, the PAC’s board of directors disagreed.

“The board of directors wasn’t able to do that, and at my age, I didn’t want to keep the status quo,” Carson said. “And I never felt at home there. Ventura was always home.”

So he left.

“Most of us thought that he might have some future political aspirations,” said federation spokesman Clark Biggs. “Very personable, a quick study, very bright. He was politically astute. He might either do that (politics) or start a big business and get really rich.”

After traveling for a year, Carson came home to Ventura. He moved into a rental house he owned in the east end of Ventura and bought the nursery from the Curtises.

He spruced up a weathered barn there and installed a flower shop and gift shop, added a landscaping company, and boosted business considerably, said Ralph Curtis.

Carson likened politics to his work at the nursery.

“I think if you’re a politician, you’re somewhat of a salesperson,” Carson said. “Listening to people, trying to find out what they want, and you try to answer their needs.” However, now Carson faces one of the most complex jobs he has ever had.

As mayor, Carson will cut ribbons, read proclamations and act as figurehead for the city.

But like predecessor Richard Francis, he also will be a lightning rod for the City Council that has been divided by infighting and scarred by public criticism for its work on controversial issues such as earthquake-proofing laws and the dredging of the Ventura Keys waterways.

“I think the expectations have been built awfully high,” Francis said. “It’s going to be difficult for him and the rest of the council to accomplish everything that was implicitly promised in the campaign.”

Francis said some pro-business forces have been making heavy demands for a vote on state water by June. This is an impossible goal, the former mayor said, because not all the water studies commissioned by the city will be finished by then.

Meanwhile, the council must review trash and water rates, decide whether it supports the proposed Weldon Canyon landfill and choose whether to approve condemning the Ventura Marina Mobile Home Park so its residents can buy it from the owners.

The hardest thing for Carson to face will be his constituents, Francis said.

“It’s astounding how many services people believe government should provide,” Francis said. “It’s a constant refrain: ‘Government should do X, but don’t take it out of my pocket.’ And that’s a constant tension.”