ELECTIONS : Gender Issue Takes a Back Seat in City Council Race : Ventura: Only one of the three women candidates will discuss the city’s lack of female representation. If they lose, the governing body will be all male.

After failing to get the Ventura Chamber of Commerce’s endorsement, candidate Nancy Cloutier last month raised an issue rarely discussed in nearly eight weeks of hard campaigning in the Ventura City Council race.

The chamber should have endorsed more than one woman candidate, she complained. And more women should be elected to the predominantly white male council that has historically presided over city affairs, she added.

That was the first and the last time that the issue of gender politics was brought up by a candidate during the council race. In fact, Cloutier recently made it clear that she is not pushing hard on the issue.

“I don’t want to be perceived as a woman-libber type,” said Cloutier, publisher of the Ventura County & Coast Reporter. “I’m not a real hard-nosed women’s libber.”

The other two women among the 14 candidates in the council race, Rosa Lee Measures and Virginia Weber, have mostly shied away from the issue of gender politics.

Although all three women candidates in the race assert that gender is not an issue, other women political leaders throughout the county express general puzzlement as to why Ventura historically has had so few women and minorities on its City Council.

Only one woman, Cathy Bean, sits on the seven-member council now, and she is not running for reelection. If none of the three women candidates make it into office Nov. 2, the council would be composed entirely of white males.

“I would have loved to have at least one other woman on the council who didn’t follow the party line,” Bean said. “I’m not one of the boys--I’m a woman, darn it.”

Most of the rest of the county--by contrast--has no lack of female elected officials.

Four of the five members of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors are women. Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley have a female majority on their councils. Thousand Oaks, Camarillo and Santa Paula all have women mayors. Fillmore, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks all have women deputy mayors.

The Oxnard City Council currently is composed of five men, but two incumbent councilwomen were ousted in last November’s election. The Oxnard council, however, has more minorities than Ventura. Two Latinos and one black sit on the five-member council.

The Moorpark City Council also is currently made up entirely of men, one of them a Latino.

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The oldest city in the county, Ventura, founded in 1782, has had 10 women on its council and few minorities. Only one woman has served as mayor in the city’s history.

“It is very surprising,” said Thousand Oaks Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski. “I don’t know if it would be correct to say whether it’s backward or a statistical aberration.”

Zukowski rejected arguments by other women leaders that Ventura is a politically conservative city, and might be less inclined to vote women into office.

“I wouldn’t call it any more conservative than Thousand Oaks or Simi Valley,” she said, noting that three of five members on those city councils are women.

Zukowski speculated that because Ventura is an old city, the “old boys network” is more deeply entrenched than in younger cities such as Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley.

“Change comes slow,” Zukowski said. “Our city is relatively young.”

Dot Engel, president of the Ventura County League of Women Voters, agrees.

“There are a lot of old families in the western end of the county, and many of those families have had very strong leadership from men,” Engel said. “It’s also easier to raise money in the old-boy network, which is very important in a campaign.”

Simi Valley Councilwoman Sandi Webb said few women may have been elected to the Ventura Council because some women candidates may have been too liberal politically for conservative residents.

“Women tend to be more liberal,” said Webb, the only elected Libertarian in the county. “When I ran, I was showing that I was definitely not liberal. I had television commercials with me wearing a .45. I ran on a platform of strong police, strong law and order.”

Of the three women candidates, Measures is the only Republican. Cloutier and Weber are Democrats. Councilwoman Bean also is a Democrat.

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Measures was the woman candidate endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce, which also endorsed incumbent Councilman Jim Monahan, certified public accountant Ken Schmitz and real estate broker Clark Owens. She has also been endorsed by the police and fire unions and the mobile home residents.

Cloutier has received endorsements from the mobile home residents, the construction unions and outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which helped elect three environmental candidates to the council in 1989.

Weber has not received any endorsements. “I actually prefer no endorsements at all,” Weber said. “I feel that endorsement from a special-interest group carries political debt.”

Other candidates in the race include incumbent councilmen Todd Collart and Gary Tuttle, Steve Bennett, a Nordhoff High School teacher; Neil Demers-Grey, a secretary; Charles Kistner, a small-business owner; Dick Massa, owner of a medical supply company; Brian Lee Rencher, a Ventura College student; and Carroll Dean Williams, a manufacturing engineer.

Ventura residents may have been historically reluctant to elect women on the council because male-dominated industries such as oil and agriculture have been historically important to the city’s economy and culture, said Simi Valley Councilwoman Barbara Williamson.

“I hate to say this, but oil and ag? Those are real redneck people,” Williamson said. “They think their women belong in the kitchen, that they belong behind the washing machine.”

Former Ventura Mayor Harriet Kosmo Henson disputed that argument, pointing out that she served two terms as mayor.

“I don’t think people here have a problem with women in leadership positions,” Kosmo Henson said. “I think the average voter is searching to put at least one woman on the council.”

Kosmo Henson said she did not feel discriminated against in her political career.

“I don’t see it as an issue,” Kosmo Henson said. “To have someone vote for just a specific gender is not a good reason to choose a person.”

Councilmen Tom Buford and Monahan said they wish they served with more female colleagues, but said they could not come up with any reasons why so few have been elected.

Monahan, who has served with five of the 10 women elected in the city’s history, said he thinks women have provided strong leadership in the city.

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He pointed to Kosmo Henson’s two terms as mayor and said he had been opposed to an ordinance the council passed limiting the mayor to one term because “Otherwise she might have been mayor for life, and some people didn’t want that.”

Buford blamed Ventura’s conservative political leanings, but said he knew of many women in the community who are qualified to run for office.

“I don’t know why it is the way it is,” Buford said. “But I don’t think we should have any impediments to council.”

Cloutier, Measures and Weber say they have purposely avoided making a point of their gender during the campaign.

Weber said she has encountered some residents during the campaign who told her she would not get their vote because she is female. Although that angers her, Weber said she doesn’t see it as a big issue.

“I don’t know that it would be relevant,” she said. “I would prefer to represent everyone.”

Cloutier, who has hinted at the issue more than her other running mates, said she would like to see more women on the council because they could serve as role models for other women.

“We have to get more women running,” Cloutier said.

Measures said that most of the issues the council tackles are gender-neutral--such as business retention, water and growth issues. Subjects such as abortion and child care that directly affect women are debated more frequently at the state and national level, she said.

“Gender should not be an issue,” Measures said. “I feel that I would represent men and women.”

One local political group has tried to make gender politics an issue, endorsing only one of the three women candidates.

Earlier in the campaign, the Ventura County west chapter of the National Women’s Political Caucus endorsed only Cloutier, who helped establish the chapter about a year ago. The group has about 80 members from the Oxnard, Ventura and Ojai areas, and is primarily dedicated to helping elect female candidates, said Tracy Carpenter, vice chairwoman.

Carpenter said one of the group’s main goals is to support women who are pro-choice on the abortion issue. The group plans to push for a “bubble ordinance” that would prohibit protesters from getting any closer than eight feet to people who are entering or leaving a medical facility, she said.

Neither Measures or Weber was endorsed by the group. Carpenter said Weber did not want the endorsement.

“They’re worried it will cost them votes,” Carpenter said. “I think they’re wrong. I think it could win them votes.”

Weber said she didn’t want the endorsement because she was afraid anti-abortion activists would picket her father-in-law’s business. She is the daughter-in-law of Jack Weber, who owns a car dealership in Ventura.

Measures said she did not seek the endorsement, and declined to state her position on the abortion issue because, she said, it is not a city issue.

In fact, female elected officials from around the county and the three women candidates say a female political hopeful could lose votes if she tried to make gender politics a big issue.

“I just want to point it out,” Cloutier said. “But I don’t want it to backfire on me. It’s a shame that that’s the case.”

Cloutier said if she emphasized lack of representation too much, it may divert attention from other issues she wants to raise.

“I don’t want it to overshadow my accomplishments,” Cloutier said.

Weber and Measures agreed that if they made an issue of their gender during the campaign, it could cost them votes in a conservative community.

Ventura County Supervisor Maggie Kildee, who was elected to the board in 1980, said, “I think there are people who will vote against you if they think you’re a feminist.”

Councilwoman Bean, who got 9,997 votes in 1989, agreed that a feminist platform would be unwise.

“I’m not that much into women’s lib,” she said. “I just won’t accept someone just because they’re female.”

Bean said sex discrimination on the council is something that female elected officials have to fight against.

“I always felt that the other men on the council thought I never knew anything about money because I was a woman,” Bean said. “I’ve never been put on any committees that have anything to do with finance and economics. It really bothered me and still does. They think we can’t count that high.”

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But the three women candidates are in the top half of money-raisers in the campaign so far, and Measures and Cloutier have been emphasizing their business experience in their campaigns.

Measures, a former banker, said the poor economy has been the dominant campaign issue in the race so far, and would probably overshadow any gender themes that crop up.

“I’m not a feminist, I’m a businesswoman first,” Measures said.

Carpenter concurred that gender politics in Ventura has traditionally suffered low or no profiles in city elections.

“Because the city elections are nonpartisan, the candidates have no political base,” Carpenter said. “They’re trying to be buddies with everybody and they’re worried if they make a big issue of it they’ll lose votes.”

But Carpenter said her group wants to change that.

“We have a lot of work to do around here,” Carpenter said. “They need to be educated. Women will vote for other women.”