Elated Gallegly Plans to Erase East-West Split in County : Politics: The campaign manager for his defeated Democratic rival says the congressman does not bring people together.

Elated by a resounding victory after a campaign his critics denounced as racially divisive, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) said Wednesday that he now views it as his mission to erase “a Mason-Dixon line” dividing Ventura County.

“The issue that has disturbed me is the division in this county between east and west, a Mason-Dixon line at the bottom of the Conejo Grade,” said Gallegly, who fared best among east county voters in his reelection victory Tuesday over Democrat Anita Perez Ferguson.

Gallegly said it irks him that he is seen in some quarters in the Ventura-Oxnard area, where he fared worst at the polls Tuesday, as “the east county guy.”

One way to unite the county is to move his congressional office from Thousand Oaks to the center of the new district near the Ventura Freeway corridor, putting it “in a strategic place accessible to a maximum number of people,” he said.

In that way, he said, maybe there will be an erosion of the “Hatfields versus McCoys” syndrome that he perceives in Ventura County.

Gallegly said his efforts to unite the county will include “an outreach to corners of the county” that will involve periodic office hours in communities such as Ojai, Santa Paula, Fillmore and Moorpark.

He denied that his vision of uniting the county is motivated by a desire to strengthen his political base for future elections, saying his large margin of victory Tuesday shows that he already has a strong countywide base.

“The main thing we want to provide is the best access to constituents,” he said. “Everyone should be treated on an even basis.”

Gallegly also condemned what he said has been an attitude wherein people from opposite sides of the county “look down their noses at each other.”

Another problem, he said, is a kind of smugness in which “the west county identifies the east county as being part of Los Angeles and the west county perceives itself to be the true Ventura County.” The east county, where Gallegly lives, can be very parochial too, he said.

“Actions speak louder than words,” said Sam Rodriguez, Perez Ferguson’s campaign manager, in a skeptical response to Gallegly’s unity plan. “Right now, he has a failing report card. He does not have a record of bringing people together.”

The redrawn 23rd Congressional District covers Carpinteria and almost all of Ventura County except most of Thousand Oaks.

Ironically, it was a tale of two cities on opposite sides of Gallegly’s “Mason-Dixon line” that allowed him to win a fourth term by trouncing Perez Ferguson.

Gallegly, 48, crushed Perez Ferguson by about a 2-to-1 margin in his hometown of Simi Valley, 25,195 to 12,896, according to county registrar of voters figures.

But Perez Ferguson, 43, could only beat Gallegly on her home turf of Oxnard by a margin of 16,448 to 14,311.

This--along with a big loss in Camarillo, 14,206 to 8,010--was fatal to Perez Ferguson’s election efforts. In the end, she lost to Gallegly, 54.3% to 41.2%, according to the final vote tally.

“The county is getting what it wants,” Perez Ferguson said Wednesday.

Traditionally Republican voters in Ventura County broke with their party and gave Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton their vote for the White House but, she said, voters were “staying more conservative closer to home.”

Voters viewed the conservative Gallegly, she said, as their “safety net.”

Perez Ferguson said there has been talk that she might be offered a position by President-elect Clinton in his new administration.

“I’d consider it,” she said. But she declined to engage in speculation.

In her election post-mortem, Perez Ferguson, an education consultant, said the twin fears of a failing economy “and a changing population” fueled the voters decision to reelect Gallegly.

The latter was a reference to what her campaign manager, Rodriguez, called Gallegly’s “politics of division. Gallegly very successfully created wedge issues,” he said, of which his stand on immigration was a major factor.

“In the end, people voted on ideology,” Rodriguez said.

Gallegly’s immigration package, which stirred ideological emotions, was designed to slow illegal immigration into the United States. The package of several bills and a proposed constitutional amendment was introduced in the last Congress, where it died due to lack of support before ever coming to a vote.

Many Latinos branded the package as blatantly racist. Political strategists saw it as a vehicle for Gallegly to galvanize his traditionally conservative supporters.

Gallegly defended the legislation from the start--”I make no apologies for putting Americans first,” he said--and declared on Wednesday that it would be a centerpiece of his legislative efforts in the new congressional session next year.

“I fully intend to introduce a very comprehensive immigration package that will address the concerns I’ve had all along,” he said. “There could be some new elements. Immigration reform is a very important part of my agenda.

“But it’s not my first priority. My first priority is jobs and the economy.”

Looking at the size of his victory, Gallegly said that for him to do so well meant that he had to have relatively strong support “in all corners of this district,” including among residents of heavily Democratic Oxnard, where he had not campaigned before this year.

He said he was “going to make an effort” to sell himself and his programs to “people we didn’t do well with.

“When you stop listening, you stop learning,” he said.

Reflecting on the intensely fought campaign, Gallegly said he stuck to his game plan--”to talk to the people of Ventura County about jobs, the economy, crime in our streets, issues people could relate to in their own home.”

He was sharply critical of mail pieces sent out late in the campaign by Perez Ferguson, which attacked Gallegly for allegedly abusing his congressional perks.

“The type of campaign Sam (Rodriguez) ran was so extreme and so unbelievable. . . . It was fictitious and untrue. . . . It turned people off,” Gallegly said.

What gave him his imposing margin, he said--”the No. 1 factor”--was “the issue of trust and honesty. If (voters) see a person doing whatever it takes to get elected, it raises real concern about honesty.”

What also helped Gallegly to victory, said Ben Key, the lawmaker’s Dallas-based strategist, was the campaign’s emphasis that he was the hometown guy.

“It was a consistent message of a lifetime in Ventura County. . . . We were able to tell our story,” Key said. “And we truly were unchallenged.”

Gallegly, the former mayor of Simi Valley, has lived in the county about 25 years. Perez Ferguson, who moved to Oxnard from Santa Barbara earlier this year, said Wednesday that she plans to remain an Oxnard resident.

If there was a problem with Gallegly’s image, “it was that he would be perceived as a right-wing radical” by some voters, said Kevin O’Donnell, director of survey research for the National Republican Congressional Committee in Washington, D.C.

“We were walking a fine line, saying, ‘Yes, he is the conservative candidate, but not a radical.’ ”

Perez Ferguson campaigned hard throughout the county, spending exhausting hours walking precincts from Simi Valley to Santa Paula. She met privately with business leaders. She hammered on themes such as job-creation and quality health care--issues that helped make Democrat Bill Clinton the President-elect.

But her Achilles’ heel was putting too much emphasis on attack mailers and not playing to her strengths, which include an almost charismatic personal style, said one political strategist.

“Great candidate, lousy grass roots,” said John Davies, a Santa Barbara consultant.

Of her mailers attacking Gallegly, he said: “They were done by someone who doesn’t know the county. They were too shrill.

“But, hey, the best going in that campaign was Anita. And there wasn’t enough Anita.”