Idyllic Town of Arcata Swept Up in Political Tempest : Lifestyles: Old guard conservatives are trying to dislodge New Age liberals. A City Council offer of haven to Desert Storm deserters touched off a simmering conflict.

Retired forester Jerry Partain is so fed up with the “radical” image of his hometown that he has devised new geographic coordinates to conceal where he lives: “I tell people our house is five miles south of McKinleyville.”

Recycling consultant Lynne Canning, on the other hand, calls her community “a gem . . . a magical piece of nirvana.” Arcata, she boasts, is “creative, progressive. It nurtures diversity.”

As these colliding viewpoints make perfectly clear, there’s a little disagreement raging up here in the redwoods. Two distinct cultures are dueling over the soul of this eclectic North Coast college town, and the clash has disturbed the communal calm of Arcata to a degree not experienced since the tumultuous days of the Vietnam War.

There are many like Canning who passionately defend the status quo in this isolated corner of Humboldt County. Artists, entrepreneurs and avid environmentalists, they have controlled local government for two decades and account for Arcata’s image as an enclave for liberal politics and New Age ideas.

Their foes are the old guard--the loggers, fishermen and other pioneers whose ancestors built this picturesque town. For years, they have hovered on the fringe of civic life, fretfully watching Arcata evolve into a place dramatically out of step with their beliefs. Now they are waging a noisy quest for power, aiming to regain control of the reins in a City Council election next month.

“We’ve got a real mess up here,” said Don Kolshinski, a 33-year resident who sells hot dogs and harvests public opinions on the city’s attractive downtown plaza. “Everybody is mad at everybody else.”

So it seems. City Council meetings--once sparsely attended--are now crowded, rancorous events, highlighted by long speeches from angry residents. In the streets, there are dirty looks and name-calling. Voices speak heatedly of betrayal, and of revenge.

The schism has been widened, most agree, by the decline of the region’s historic timber and fishing industries. This trend has left many members of older generations feeling vulnerable and bitter toward those they fault for the change.

“I think Arcata is a focal point for all the frustration and anger people on the North Coast are feeling these days,” said Jim Adams, an energy consultant. “A lot of people are looking for someone to blame. This place, because of its image (as a haven for radical environmentalists), has sort of become the lightning rod for all this pain.”

The hostilities that have cleaved Arcata erupted 14 months ago, on a chilly evening in January, 1991. Hours after the first American bombs fell on Baghdad, the City Council proclaimed Arcata a sanctuary for military deserters and others opposed to the Persian Gulf War.

The vote, while unanimous, ignited a nasty backlash that included boycotts of Arcata businesses and death threats against “un-American traitors” on the council. But that action--which was quickly rescinded amid contrite apologies from some council members--merely “set fire to the rocket,” said Partain. Arcata had already been ready to blow; the sanctuary dispute just lit the fuse.

The chasm dividing Arcata is rooted in its evolution from a town of timber families, fishermen and small business owners to its modern status--as a bastion of environmentalism and small-is-beautiful beliefs, where unorthodox approaches to life and business are welcome, even encouraged.

Old Arcata was like most of the rest of Humboldt County still is today. The blue-collar good old boys ran the show, and traditional conservative values dominated in political and social life.

But in the 1960s and early 1970s, Humboldt State University, which perches on a wooded hill overlooking town, doubled in physical size and enrollment. For the first time, a majority of its students were drawn from outside the region.

Like many other young people of that era, those pouring into Arcata wore their hair long and held unconventional views. Seemingly overnight, the tranquil town of restored Victorians set on a gentle slope above Arcata Bay had been invaded, transformed.

Humboldt State students used their numbers to elect one of their own to the Arcata City Council. Two other left-of-center candidates joined him, and Arcata’s pioneers--who had dominated the local political landscape forever--faded glumly into the woods.

“I remember when that first student, the first hippie longhair, was elected,” said Monica Hadley, a local columnist and former owner of the Arcata Union. “When I first saw him I thought he was a tramp. . . . Everything changed then.”

Arcata has since metamorphosed into an economically diverse, ecologically conscious island in the heart of California’s depressed timberlands. Set around a central square landscaped with primroses, the community is home to a rich array of shops where patrons can buy everything from a tofu omelet to sessions with an herbal therapist or foot reflexologist.

On the streets, there is abundant evidence of why many refer to Arcata, population 15,000, as “the Berkeley of the north.” Men with bare feet and shaggy hair recite poetry or swap philosophy on the plaza, and patchouli-oiled women with pierced noses and long, tie-dyed skirts shop with environmentally friendly canvas bags at the natural foods co-op.

Colorful bins scattered about the sidewalks are proof of the town’s award-winning recycling program, and down on the waterfront, a marshy wildlife preserve serves an unusual dual function--as the last step in the city’s innovative sewage treatment system.

“Arcata is a thriving, progressive city that has managed to do well despite what’s happened in the surrounding region,” said Humboldt County Supervisor Julie Fulkerson, a third-generation resident and former mayor of Arcata. “Arcatans are laughed at as kooks who wear Birkenstocks and drive Volkswagens. But the fact is, this is a model city, a place that is . . . attracting new industry and creating jobs.”

Perhaps so, but those who pine for the old Arcata have been gritting their teeth as the City Council’s liberal majority took actions such as declaring the community a nuclear-free zone and a haven for refugees from war-torn El Salvador.

For many townspeople, the council’s vote on sanctuary for Persian Gulf War deserters was the final straw, a catalyst that awakened those who had felt frustrated and voiceless for so long. Margaret Stafford is one of them.

“I cried that day, I was horrified,” Stafford recalled recently. “How could they, when we had our troops over there risking their lives?”

Others were wondering the same thing, and gradually, these political outsiders united, deciding that the time had come to wrest power from the “touchy-feely lunatic fringe,” as retiree Don Cline describes the council majority and their backers.

On April 13, they will get their chance, when three City Council incumbents defend their seats against five challengers--including a trio backed by the conservative Committee for a Better Arcata.

The committee has caused quite a stir in Arcata. In a visible statement of their determination, members have rented out a storefront office on the downtown plaza and hung two American flags in the window.

Inside, Stafford and others field phone calls and collect checks from those who are fed up with “this liberal faction that, little by little, has taken over our whole town.”

Their main target is a man who occupies an office just across the plaza from their headquarters--Arcata’s mayor, Victor Schaub.

Schaub, a lawyer who moved to Arcata in 1974, is considered the town’s most subversive force by the old-guard rebels, who have distributed a bumper sticker urging voters to pick “Anybody But Victor.” Schaub wears Lennonesque spectacles and a flowing white beard, and his resume includes time in a Kauai, Hawaii, commune and the anti-Vietnam movement in Berkeley.

One critic, Nancy Barnes, is mad because Schaub “mumbles when he recites the pledge of allegiance” at council meetings. But the mayor’s real crime, foes say, was sponsoring the sanctuary resolution--and making the inflammatory decision to ban public comment before the council vote.

“They hate me because of that, and I have apologized profusely for it,” Schaub said in a recent interview. “But I will not apologize for the substance of the resolution. I believe firmly that we were right about that.”

There have been death threats on the answering machine and curses from motorists. Schaub’s worst moment came one evening a few months after the sanctuary vote.

“I was driving home from a council meeting with my wife and I noticed we were being followed by a police car, for our protection,” Schaub recalled, a crestfallen look on his face. “I cried that night. I love this town, and I couldn’t believe that things had come to that.”

Despite such low days, the mayor resolved he would not be driven from office by “the angry mob . . . of the radical right.

“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished here,” Schaub said. “These conservatives are obsessed with the sanctuary vote. . . . They’ve spent a year looking under every rock and they have found nothing else to criticize us for.”

In fact, the critics feel they have plenty to complain about. The hemp festival, for example. It was billed as a celebration of the productive uses of hemp--as opposed to its use as an illegal smoking material. Organizers wanted to hold the event in a municipal park, and the council agreed, reasoning that the city had no legal grounds on which to deny permission. The conservatives went ballistic.

“This was a big party for drug users and other lowlifes, and they let it happen in a city park, a place for kids and families,” said Mike Trott, a general contractor and co-chairman of the Committee for a Better Arcata.

Then there was the Rush Limbaugh visit. When the right-wing radio crusader came to speak in nearby Eureka, conservatives in Arcata demanded that their City Council issue a proclamation welcoming him. Their reasoning? A similar proclamation was given to Helen Caldicott--a prominent anti-nuclear activist and physician--when she spoke at Humboldt State. The council declined, spurring Limbaugh--who first lit into Arcata after the sanctuary vote--to renew his airwave blitz against the town.

“They welcomed that ecofreak from Australia, but of course they refused to welcome Rush,” griped Lyle Whitledge. “That’s how it goes here. If you’re politically correct, you get whatever you want. If not, forget it.”

Whether there is middle ground to be found in Arcata remains to be seen. Canning, the recycling consultant who moved north from Los Angeles 12 years ago, is hopeful. One day, she says, the polarization may be viewed as a necessary catharsis that, in the end, made Arcata an even better place.

“There has been a lot of ugliness here, and I personally plan to defend Arcata and make sure it isn’t turned back over to people who wanted progress to stop in the 1950s,” said Canning, a liberal member of the City Council. “But I also think we have all learned a lot during this process . . . we do have some common goals.”