Democrats Narrow Voter Registration Gap Since Primary : Election: The party has signed up twice as many new members as the Republicans. The GOP continues to dominate county rolls.

Although Republicans still dominate Ventura County voter rolls, Democrats have managed to narrow the gap by registering twice as many new voters as the GOP since the June primary, election officials reported Tuesday.

A Democratic voter-registration drive has registered 12,256 new Democratic voters since June 2 in Ventura County, said Bruce Bradley, assistant registrar of voters. Meanwhile, only 6,015 new Republican voters have signed up with the Grand Old Party.

The Democratic effort has chipped away at the Republicans’ decades-old edge in registration, reducing the advantage from 6% to 5%, Bradley said.

“Republicans have been resting on their laurels,” said Nels Henderson, chairman of the Ventura County Democratic Party Central Committee. He attributed the success to the excitement generated by last month’s Democratic convention and the party’s presidential ticket of Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. “People want to be with a winner,” he said.

His counterpart, county Republican Party Chairman Richard Ferrier, agreed that the opposing party has received “enormous amounts of good press” since the Democratic National Convention in New York.

“It will turn around,” said Ferrier, who expects a boost from this week’s Republican convention in Houston.

Another county Republican leader, Bob Larkin, said his party’s registration efforts have been hobbled by infighting involving old-guard county Republicans and the new faction of antiabortion activists and members of the religious right who have seized control of the Central Committee.

“It has had a very big impact,” he said. “People don’t like to mail money into a controversy. And the volunteers slowed down.”

As of Aug. 12, the last day for which figures are available, there were 149,853 registered Republicans in the county, compared to 134,658 Democrats, Bradley said. That represents a Republican advantage of 45.1% to 40.5%, Bradley said.

Democratic campaign workers hope the gains in voter registration will help Democrats in tight races. Henderson said the leaders of the Democratic ticket, Clinton and Gore, “bring an excitement among voters I haven’t seen in a long time.”

An even more dramatic registration shift in favor of the Democrats may be shaping up in the new 23rd Congressional District, which includes Carpinteria and all of Ventura County except for most of Thousand Oaks.

The district will be the arena for a contest between Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), a three-term incumbent, and Anita Perez Ferguson of Oxnard, an educational consultant making her second attempt for a congressional seat.

As of the June primary, the congressional district had 113,598 Republicans, or 44.1% of all registered voters, compared to 108,510 Democrats, or 42.1%. But as of Aug. 12, the registrar’s figures show that the edge has narrowed to 114,979 Republicans, or 43%, to 113,927 Democrats, or 42.6% of all voters.

In all, 5,417 new Democrats were registered since the primary compared to only 1,381 Republicans, a ratio of better than 4 to 1, according to Bradley’s figures.

These statistics do not include Carpinteria in Santa Barbara County, where Democrats also have made registration inroads, according to the Santa Barbara County registrar’s figures.

On May 25, there were 2,879 registered Democrats in that city compared to 2,477 Republicans. But as of today, registered Democrats number 3,046 versus 2,503 Republicans, an aide to the registrar said.

A new registration organization backed by Assemblyman Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria) has helped to register Democrats in Ventura County and in the new congressional district. O’Connell’s group, the Tri-County Registration Drive, has the support of organized labor and has focused on registering Democrats in Ventura County, said John Mann, manager of O’Connell’s reelection campaign.

“It will have an impact on all the races in the area,” Mann said.

O’Connell, a popular five-term incumbent and the Assembly’s speaker pro tem, is running for reelection in the 35th Assembly District, which includes Ventura, Ojai, Santa Paula and portions of Santa Barbara County.

Democratic leader Henderson attributed the success of his party’s registration drive to a range of factors, including the July convention and “a lot of women becoming politically active” because of the volatile abortion issue.