ELECTIONS / 37TH ASSEMBLY DISTRICT : Pro-Choice Rivals Still Battle Over Abortion

At a medical clinic a few blocks from Oxnard City Hall, the battle over abortion rights regularly spilled onto the streets a few years ago.

Abortion foes picketed outside a Planned Parenthood clinic for two years before it closed in 1990, trying to talk women out of going in.

Democratic Assembly candidate Roz McGrath said in a recent interview that if her Republican opponent truly supports abortion rights, he could have proved it then.

As mayor of Oxnard, Nao Takasugi could have directed police to clear demonstrators from the clinic’s entrance, McGrath said. He could have been on the front lines, she added.

“He had ample opportunity to show his support,” said McGrath, a longtime Planned Parenthood supporter and volunteer. “I have a track record, he does not. I’m tired of trusting 70-year-old men with this issue. They have botched it as far as I’m concerned.”

McGrath and Takasugi are competing in the 37th Assembly District, and both have won endorsements from a statewide abortion-rights group.

But in her aggressive campaign against Takusugi, McGrath is making an issue out of the degree of his commitment to abortion rights.

Despite the questions, Takasugi said he remains committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose. He said his support has been low-key only because there are more compelling issues to confront.

“I am concerned about the future of our children, the gang activity, education. These are the really important issues,” Takasugi said. “I am basically a pro-choice person. I don’t believe in government intrusion into an individual’s private life.”

In the 37th District race, McGrath and Takasugi are vying to represent residents of Moorpark, Camarillo, Oxnard, Port Hueneme and most of Thousand Oaks.

The district, where Republicans hold a 45%-41% advantage in voter registration, was redrawn in 1990 to include all of Oxnard and omit the area where Ventura County joins Los Angeles County.

Takasugi, 70, believes that the new political lines will propel him to become the first Asian-American elected to the Legislature since 1978, even though most Oxnard voters are registered Democrats.

“The people who have supported me time and time again have said they will continue to support me, even if I am in a partisan race this time,” said Takasugi, who has been elected to public office seven times in Oxnard.

McGrath said she believes that the inclusion of Oxnard in the district will do the longtime mayor more harm than good, especially once voters learn of controversial development deals approved by city leaders.

She was referring to agreements that return to developers a portion of the sales tax generated by their projects as an incentive to build in the city. Some of the deals haven’t been as lucrative as city officials had hoped. In one case, a developer went bankrupt shortly after his project was done.

“These vast development parks just don’t pencil out in the end, and we are seeing that happening,” McGrath said. “It all occurred during his time as mayor. The market has gone bad and the bonds have gone bad and he has no one to blame but himself.”

The candidates do agree on a few things.

They both said the most important issue facing the district is a slumping economy and an unemployment rate at a seven-year high. Both suggested an overhaul of the state workers’ compensation program and stressed the need for education reform.

And both said they know who is going to win the Nov. 3 election.

“She has no public experience of serving the people, of drafting legislation, of making tough decisions,” Takasugi said of his opponent. “The people of this district want proven leadership.”

McGrath said the people of the district want change.

“This is a race for the future,” she said, “and I’m going to win it with Republican votes.”

But the 45-year-old political novice, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, said she knows there is much hard work ahead.

Takasugi is a tireless campaigner who has outspent his opponents in most of his races. In the Republican primary, Takasugi spent $187,984, or $16.22 for each vote collected, on the way to victory.

Since the primary, he has raised about $16,000, with most going to help retire $30,000 in debt incurred during the primary.

McGrath, who spent $7,430 in the primary, concedes that there is no way she can keep pace with Takasugi’s fund-raising abilities. Since the primary she has raised about $35,000, with the bulk of it going toward hard-hitting television ads attacking her opponent for taking up to $60,000 in special-interest money.

This week, McGrath challenged Takasugi to limit his campaign contributions to $200,000, with a maximum of $1,000 per individual and $5,000 per political action committee. Two initiatives, approved by voters in 1988, would have established those contribution limits but were overturned by the state Supreme Court.

“There are too many special interests running government,” McGrath said. “I think people are really in tune to the idea of a candidate not tied up with special interests.”

Takasugi is proud of his diverse sources of support, which include medical interests, developers, teachers and police officers. He said he opposes any attempt to limit campaign contributions and said the only reason that McGrath raised the issue is because she can’t raise much money.

“It’s just another way to cut into one’s freedoms,” Takasugi said. “I lost all of my civil liberties 50 years ago and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up any more of my civil liberties as an American citizen.”

Fifty years ago, Takasugi was a business major at UCLA when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Within months, he and his parents--who had lived in Oxnard for 40 years--found themselves in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans.

With the help of a Quaker group, Takasugi was released within a year, and went on to complete his undergraduate studies at Temple University in Philadelphia and earn an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Unable to find an accounting job, he returned to Oxnard to work at the Asahi Market, founded by his father in 1909.

He became interested in politics in 1973 after tangling with the city’s bureaucracy over a sign at the market. He was appointed to the Planning Commission and, in 1976, won election to the City Council. He has been mayor since 1982.

Past political opponents consider him to be a quiet coalition builder capable of playing political hardball.

“If they go as hard after the Democrat as they went after me, I’m sure he will win,” said Alan Guggenheim, a Newbury Park resident who mounted an aggressive, well-financed campaign against Takasugi in the primary. “I think he is the surest bet in the county.”

But McGrath, one of the few Democrats in a prominent, longtime Republican family, said her opponents had better not count her out.

McGrath was born in Oxnard and lived there until she was 9 years old. Then her parents moved to Camarillo, where her family has farmed since 1874. She received her undergraduate degree from Dominican College in San Rafael, and her master’s in early-childhood education from San Francisco State University.

She is a teacher, but she is also a manager of the McGrath Family Farm and sits on several committees aimed at preserving the county’s billion-dollar agricultural industry.

McGrath accuses her opponent of caring little about the loss of agricultural land and related jobs, pointing to Takasugi-supported projects in Oxnard that have plowed under prime farmland.

“All you have to do is drive through the Oxnard Plain to see evidence of that,” she said. “I think we are at a crossroads, and we either wake up to the fact that we are going to lose it or we are going to continue it.”

Takasugi is quick to point out that Oxnard is the only city in Ventura County that, as it annexed 2,000 acres for development in the past 12 years, set aside more than 2,000 acres as farmland and open space.

“Agriculture is still the basic theme of my economic policy,” he said. “It needs to be fostered, protected and preserved so that it continues to be a viable part of our economy.”

Still, in a county in which many residents fear that farmland is being lost to development, McGrath’s supporters believe that she has a real shot at winning the Assembly seat in the Republican district.

“I think people are fed up with Republican politics as usual and that Roz McGrath is a breath of fresh air,” said Pam Weidemann, executive director of the fund-raising group Democrats United. “I think this is the year for change.”

To some degree, McGrath is counting on “year of the woman” politics to put her ahead at the polls.

She has teamed up with congressional candidate Anita Perez Ferguson and U. S. Senate candidate Barbara Boxer to drive home the message that the gender revolution has arrived in Ventura County. The three candidates share office space donated by Ventura County businesswoman Daphne Becker, a Republican who lost a congressional primary in June.

McGrath said Republican women are crossing party lines to support their female counterparts in the Democratic Party, fueled largely by the abortion issue.

“ ‘I’m a Republican and I’m going to vote for you,’ ” McGrath said, repeating what she hears “a lot” as she walks through neighborhoods in the district.

But Takasugi, whose candidacy is supported by Gov. Pete Wilson, pointed out that he was the only Republican in the state to receive the endorsement of the California Teachers Assn. He said people care more about the issues he supports than the political party he represents.

“I will take my record of experience, as a councilman and mayor, up to Sacramento,” he said. “I think I’m ready for it.”