Waiting for Perot? : Elections: Analysts say that supporters of the independent presidential candidate might tilt the outcome of some close races in the county.

Twelve months ago, Republican Rep. Elton Gallegly’s congressional seat was as safe as his Simi Valley neighborhood, Roz McGrath was an obscure farm manager and Ross Perot had soared only on the wings of eagles.

But in this “Year of the Woman,” amid loud calls to throw the rascals out, Anita Perez Ferguson is running close to Gallegly, McGrath has teamed effectively with other women candidates and Perot has stirred Ventura County to its conservative roots.

In Ventura County, as nationwide, long-held truisms are no longer true.

Safe seats aren’t. Polls show that blue-collar Reagan Democrats, frustrated by the economy, are coming back to their party throughout the state and that Republican moderates, including some pro-choice women, are rethinking their loyalties.

To that mix add Perot, who has awakened thousands of potential Ventura County voters who might not have bothered to go to the polls otherwise.

And, as the Bush-Quayle campaign languished over the summer, Ventura County Democrats registered twice as many new voters as did the Republicans, closing the GOP advantage here to just 10,000 voters--about 44% to 41%.

That in a county where every congressman has been a Republican since World War II.

As a result, strategists of every stripe say they have no sure fix on how voting will go Tuesday, when about 77% of the county’s 359,000 registered voters are expected to cast a ballot.

“This is the most unclear campaign I’ve ever seen,” said Ventura ranch owner Carolyn Leavens, a prominent Republican. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so uncomfortable with so many candidates in so many different ways.”

“This year is so skewed,” added Steve Frank, a GOP consultant in Simi Valley, “that you can’t tell the players even with a program. All the rules are gone.”

Even Gallegly said, “In this election anybody who has the arrogance to think they have all the answers may end up Wednesday morning looking for another career. There are so many variables now.”

The biggest unknown--the real wild card--is how Perot backers will vote as they work their way down the ballot. According to a California Poll last week, Perot had 23% of the vote statewide.

Democrats generally say they expect Perot supporters to follow their anti-incumbent tendencies in other races too, while Republicans say they think the Texan’s Ventura County backers are mostly unhappy Republicans who may return to the fold when voting for Congress and the state Legislature.

“Those people are the wild cards,” said John Davies, a Santa Barbara-based political consultant. “They can swing a lot of elections, but we don’t know if they’re looking for change just at the top of the ticket. And you ask yourself, ‘Does Anita represent change or does Elton?’ On the surface, change is the challenger, but to change what’s been going on in a Democratic Congress, they would have to vote for the Republican.”

Several Perot backers, registered as Republicans and Democrats, said in interviews they were largely unfamiliar with candidates other than those running for President.

“I am anti-incumbent, but I’m not against all of them,” said Perot volunteer Jerry Myers, a Republican. “I have not followed the local races.”

Tammy Lynch, also a Republican worker at Perot’s Port Hueneme headquarters, said she would probably split her ticket by voting for Democratic Rep. Barbara Boxer for the U.S. Senate and Republican Gallegly for the House.

“I really haven’t been sitting down to decide who I am going to vote for on the other candidates,” she said. “I’ve put all my energy into working here.”

Karrol Maughmer, west county coordinator for Perot, said those comments are typical of Perot volunteers.

“There is no consistency at all,” Maughmer said. “They’re just basically politically naive. It’s like the Boston Tea Party. There is no dogma. It’s just a drive people have to see government cleaned up.”

Aside from the Perot campaign, state and national trends have surfaced in Ventura County’s two congressional races and in the contest for an open Assembly seat.

Analysts generally consider the close Gallegly-Perez Ferguson race in the 23rd District a test of voters’ desire to oust incumbents and of their support for women candidates.

In the 24th Congressional District, which includes most of Thousand Oaks, Republican Assemblyman Tom McClintock is also taking aim at incumbency in his challenge to veteran Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles).

And the 37th Assembly District race between Democrat McGrath and Oxnard Mayor Nao Takasugi, a Republican, is a gauge of how effective a novice politician running on a women’s-rights platform can be against a popular male moderate.

Of the three, the race where national trends might be clearest is Perez Ferguson’s aggressive challenge of Gallegly, a three-term incumbent who has emphasized his 20 years of experience as a small businessman instead of his tenure in Washington.

In the so-called “Year of the Woman,” Perez Ferguson, 43, is one of 19 women running for the House in California. She has teamed with U.S. Senate candidates Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and with McGrath, pooling resources and coordinating schedules.

She has the support of the National Women’s Political Caucus, the National Organization for Women and Emily’s List, a national group that supports women candidates for Congress.

There is an “overall cooperative spirit among female candidates,” Perez Ferguson said, “and I feel it even is going across party lines.”

Women’s rights--especially the abortion issue--have split families and drawn some Republican women to Perez Ferguson’s campaign.

Republican Heather Leavens August of Ventura said she has already voted absentee for a Democratic ticket because of the Republican Party’s platform.

“They pretty much left a lot of us out in cold on the abortion issue and women’s issues in general,” she said. “It’s hard being a Republican these days. When you have to decide to vote against your party, it’s like voting against my family.”

In fact, August and her mother, Carolyn Leavens, a Bush appointee to the Overseas Private Investment Corp., have taken opposite sides in the presidential race.

But Leavens, a pro-choice advocate, said she also has struggled with her decisions this election--and still has not decided whether to vote for Perez Ferguson or Gallegly or for Boxer or Republican Bruce Herschensohn in a U.S. Senate race.

“That’s how tough it’s been this time,” Leavens said Thursday.

Leavens’ husband, Paul, elected to the county Republican Central Committee in June, is working for the reelection of Gallegly.

Gallegly, 48, said his and Perez Ferguson’s positions on abortion only point out the philosophical differences between the two. A conservative, Gallegly paints Perez Ferguson as a liberal, though she has emphasized her moderate views throughout the campaign.

“The abortion issue is one of the most difficult issues in the world,” Gallegly said. “But I think I have a real advantage, because my opponent is so extreme on the issue. This is a classic situation of liberal versus conservative on many issues, not just abortion.”

Perez Ferguson supports abortion rights without parental notification restrictions, while Gallegly believes the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision goes too far in protecting abortion rights, and he generally opposes using federal money for abortions.

Perez Ferguson has been helped by once-a-decade redrawing of district lines, which left most of heavily Republican Thousand Oaks out of the 23rd District, but included heavily Democratic Oxnard. A voter registration drive erased the remaining Republican advantage over the summer and left the Democrats with a 1 1/2-point margin.

Throughout California, the GOP has been losing support. A recent Times Poll showed that only 56% of registered Republicans were supporting President Bush. The rest were divided almost evenly between Clinton and Perot.

But Gallegly says he does not expect that to trickle down on election day. He said he has always had strong support from blue-collar workers, the Reagan Democrats who might be voting for Clinton this time.

“What gives me a very decided advantage is that people voting in this district know me a lot better than they do my opponent,” he said. “I’ve been here 25 years, and she’s been her six months.”

Perez Ferguson was a Santa Barbara resident until she moved to Oxnard this year.

The challenger, who would be California’s only Latina in Congress, said she expects a small boost from the 1,600 additional Latino Democrats registered last summer in the most extensive get-out-the-vote drive among Latinos in county history.

But Latinos still only make up about 11% of the county’s registered voters, and she said the most important factor in her race “is general voter discontent with the status quo and the economy.”

Perez Ferguson said the race is close, while Gallegly said polls give him a buffer of several percentage points.

In the county’s second congressional race, Republican Tom McClintock has tried to make Democratic Anthony C. Beilenson’s incumbency an albatross in a year where change is the dominant theme.

McClintock, 36, a conservative five-term assemblyman, describes Beilenson as a tax-and-spend Democrat and a liberal Washington insider.

“If we can’t turn this Congress around in a district like ours, in times like these, against an incumbent like this, then when will we ever take back our Congress?” McClintock said in a Thousand Oaks debate last week.

Beilenson, 59, a congressman since 1976, depicted McClintock as “an ideologue at the fringe.” He said McClintock is too confrontational to be an effective congressman and can’t even get along with his fellow Republicans.

“McClintock’s ultra-extreme positions on the issues have garnered him the strong backing of . . . fringe groups” that “promote intolerance and support government interference in the private lives of individuals,” said a Beilenson mailer distributed last week.

The philosophical differences are less clear in the Assembly race between McGrath, a Democrat, and Takasugi, a Republican. Both support abortion rights and are moderate on many issues.

Takasugi, 70, better known and financed, has the added advantage of competing in a district that is heavily Republican, 46% to 40%. And Takasugi was endorsed by the California Teachers Assn., although McGrath, 45, is an elementary school teacher as well as a manager of her family’s Camarillo farm.

But there are indications that women, mobilized by the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas hearings last year, might support her in significant numbers.

“I have contributed to Roz McGrath’s race because of her very active role in women issues,” said Marlene Alexander of Thousand Oaks, a member of Republicans for Boxer. “And most of the Republican women I know feel exactly like I do.”

McGrath has said she was moved to run for public office after watching male senators question Hill at Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

“The women’s movement has caught up with us finally. We had been left out,” McGrath said at a Camarillo rally where she, Perez Ferguson and Boxer all joined hands in a show of solidarity.

Nels Henderson, county Democratic Central Committee chairman, said he believes McGrath and other women candidates have touched a nerve with voters.

“I think the theory this year is not so much anti-incumbent but pro-change,” he said. “And women in government would radically change things.”

Both Republican and Democratic analysts, however, said they question the importance of gender unless the candidate is qualified.

“Every poll in America shows that women support good women candidates in large numbers and bad women candidates in much smaller numbers,” said consultant Davies, who is running Takasugi’s campaign.

Davies said a Takasugi poll shows the mayor with a 12-point lead overall, including a 17-point bulge with men but only a one-point advantage with women.

Democratic and Republican party coordinators say the atmosphere of the past week--as polls have shown close presidential and senatorial races--has been electric.

The Democrats say Bush’s fast finish has brought a flood of volunteers frightened that Clinton could lose. And Republicans say the recent showing of Bush and Herschensohn has revived spirits.

Both parties say 200 to 300 volunteers will canvass door-to-door or work phone banks for their candidates through Election Day.

Campaign Calendar

Events of the Coming Week

Today: United We Stand--America will sponsor a car rally for independent presidential candidate Ross Perot at various locations. Supporters will join car caravans at Perot headquarters in Ojai, Camarillo, Santa Paula and Port Hueneme, and drive to Harbor Beach Park in Port Hueneme for a 1 p.m. picnic. For directions, call the Port Hueneme headquarters at 985-2656.

Today: At 11 a.m., U.S. Senate candidate Dianne Feinstein and congressional candidate Anita Perez Ferguson will attend a Democratic Get-Out-The-Vote rally in Oxnard with other local Democratic candidates. The event will be held at the United Democratic Headquarters, 1901 Holser Walk, Oxnard, and follows visits by Feinstein to other Ventura County cities.

Today: At 1 p.m., U.S. Senate candidate Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) will attend a Democratic Get-Out-The-Vote rally in Thousand Oaks. Also participating will be state Senate candidate Hank Starr and Assembly candidate Roz McGrath. The rally will be held in the parking lot of the Bank of America building, 223 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd.

Today: Thousand Oaks City Council candidate Jaime Zukowski will host a Bowl-A-Rama from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Conejo Village Bowl, 125 W. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks. For more information, call 493-0064.