ELECTIONS : La Follette, Spillane Loan Large Sums to Their Campaigns

Preparing for a last-minute burst of activity before Tuesday’s primary, Marian W. La Follette has poured $149,000 of her own money into her campaign for an open state Senate seat, bringing the total amount she has loaned her campaign to $199,000.

In a similar strategy, retired Thousand Oaks airline pilot Bill Spillane has loaned $300,000 of his own savings to his race for the Republican nomination in the newly drawn 24th Congressional District, which encompasses Thousand Oaks and portions of the west San Fernando Valley.

La Follette said she made a $50,000 loan to her campaign on Friday, followed by a $99,000 loan on Saturday, to blanket the 19th State Senate District with mass mailings of campaign brochures. The district, covering most of Ventura County’s cities, stretches from Oxnard to the San Fernando Valley.

“I just didn’t want to let people down,” said La Follette, an independently wealthy widow. La Follette moved to Thousand Oaks earlier this year to compete with Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) and Fillmore City Councilman Roger Campbell for the Republican nomination in the 19th District.

“A lot of people believe in this campaign, and I didn’t want to halt the campaign because of a lack of funds,” said La Follette, who served in the Assembly from 1980 to 1990. “We are going to win.”

She said the loans were necessary to put her on equal footing with Wright, who has been able to raise far more from political action committees during the campaign.

But Campbell and Wright’s campaign manager said they were outraged that La Follette had reached deep into her own pockets to boost what they said was a flagging campaign.

John Theiss of Wright’s campaign called the hefty loan a “pathetic” attempt by La Follette to buy a Senate seat. “It’s a last-ditch effort by a desperate candidate,” he said. Wright could not be reached for comment.

Campbell, who has managed to raise only $13,382 to challenge his better-known opponents, lashed out at La Follette and Wright for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their campaigns and for courting special interest groups. He pointed out that Wright had collected $25,500 from doctors’ political committees alone.

“It seems to me that both are making efforts to buy the election,” said Campbell, who was endorsed Tuesday by Ventura County Sheriff John V. Gillespie.

“What it comes down to is one is controlled by special interest money and the other would like to be,” Campbell said. “It’s time we got rid of business-as-usual-politics in Sacramento.”

Last week, Wright reported raising $189,682 this year while spending $247,156 on her campaign. Several of her contributions of $5,000 or more came from large corporations, developers and political action committees representing real estate, insurance, and medical groups.

At the same time, La Follette reported raising a total of $157,541 this year and spending $143,051. Her contributions included the $50,000 personal loan as well as $10,000 from retiring Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), who now occupies the 19th District seat.

La Follette said she hopes that her campaign will be able to reimburse her for the loans. “But if something happens and I’m not, it isn’t going to put me out on the street.”

Meanwhile, Bill Spillane, 56, said Tuesday that he decided two weeks ago to dig into his savings to jump-start his congressional campaign, which to that point had raised less than $10,000.

Among his eight rivals for the GOP nod in the newly reapportioned 24th District is another self-financed candidate, Korean-American businessman Sang Korman, who has put $330,000 of his funds into the race and has vowed to spend “whatever it takes” to win.

Spillane said most of the money he loaned his campaign has already been spent on cable television and print advertisements and on sending six postcard-size campaign mailers to all Republican households with a strong history of voting.

Spillane’s literature stresses his record as an Air Force fighter pilot and his support of abortion rights and the elimination of some capital gains taxes.