Voucher Vitriol : County Is Ground Zero in Fight Between Prop. 174 Supporters, Foes

When the computer at a Tustin construction company boots up these days, the letters “ABC”--standing for “A Better Choice”--appear on the screen.

Outside the company president’s office are stacks and stacks of paper promoting Proposition 174. On the back wall of the conference room-cum-campaign-headquarters, a blue-and-white banner screams: “Break Up The Education Monopoly . . . Yes on 174 . . . for children, parents, teachers and lower taxes.”

Turn to the nearest Parent-Teachers Assn. newsletter, and there’s another surprise. Among the usual bake-sale announcements, pleas for volunteer classroom aides and blurbs about upcoming Halloween carnivals are fierce admonitions against the controversial initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot. “Proposition 174 is a losing proposition,” warns a letter addressed to Dana Hills High School parents and students. “Taxpayers will lose! Children will lose!”

Welcome to ground zero in the school-voucher battle.

It’s campaign time again, and hundreds of Orange County residents--including scores who have never been involved in politics before--are on the phone and in the street pushing for people’s votes.

Anti-voucher activists are counting on suburbanites like those throughout Orange County to vote no on 174 as a measure of confidence in their local public schools.

And with Proposition 174 trailing in statewide polls by more than two to one, voucher supporters see conservative Orange County as their strongest hope for success.

Orange County is “definitely our strongest operation in the state,” said David Spady, statewide field director for the Yes on 174 campaign. “The volunteers down there are extremely active and have really gotten behind this campaign.”

More than 700 people have signed onto the local pro-voucher effort. Some are veteran conservative activists for whom the initiative is the key election issue this year; others are political virgins who believe vouchers will improve education. Several local business leaders have also provided much of the financial fuel for the statewide campaign.

Fighting the initiative is the full force of the public school establishment. There is no Orange County headquarters--rather, the campaign uses the institutional structure that is already in place, organizing by school and working out of union offices.

A dozen Orange County staff members of the California Teachers Assn. work full time on the campaign. Many of the 17,000 CTA members in the county volunteer after work, joining the leaders of the PTA movement with its 132,000 members in 370 Orange County schools. At least nine local school boards have passed resolutions opposing Proposition 174.

Volunteers from the League of Women Voters, the American Assn. of University Women and the League of United Latin American Citizens help fill out the ranks.

“The truth of the matter is, 174 has taken over our house,” said Jeanne Costales, a Lake Forest resident who chairs the South County anti-174 effort.

Costales, 57, oversees the phone-banking operation and helped put together rallies in Mission Viejo and San Juan Capistrano . Her husband Mannie, 64, is coordinating 300 precinct walks from Irvine to San Diego. On their answering machine, the message ends with Jeanne saying: “Vote No on 174.”

On the other side of the battle, the initiative has taken over Mark Bucher’s office. Literally.

Bucher, 34, is president of Service First, a construction company with 200 employees. When he called the Yes on 174 movement to volunteer last May, there was neither a local campaign coordinator nor headquarters.

Now, he’s both.

“It’s been my entire life,” Bucher said. “I don’t do anything except this right now. Talk about obsessed, huh?”

Proposition 174 would give parents about $2,600 in government money to spend at any voucher-redeeming private, parochial or public school. Any school with more than 25 students that does not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity and does not teach hatred could be eligible for the vouchers.

Statewide, voucher foes are outspending those backing the initiative at least 10 to 1. A recent Los Angeles Times poll week showed that 59% of registered voters are against the initiative, and 26% support it. Gov. Pete Wilson and President Bill Clinton have both spoken out against the initiative.

In Orange County, the debate has pitted usual Republican allies against each other: right-wing stalwarts who embrace the voucher concept fight suburban residents who are proud of the performance of their local public schools.

The local Democratic Party, though, is solidly against the initiative and has funneled volunteers to the anti-174 campaigns in various cities.

Nearly every day this month, the two sides have faced off at forums in schools, churches or chambers of commerce. In dozens of coffee klatches around the county, activists urge the undecided to vote their way.

Big names on the debate circuit include Capistrano Unified Supt. James A. Fleming and Saddleback Valley Unified board member Frank Ury, bitter foes who regularly tangle on the topic.

“It’s bad for kids, it’s bad for business and ultimately it will raise taxes,” Fleming declared at a breakfast debate in Laguna Hills last week, waving the initiative in the air and quoting various sections to punctuate his points.

“What this initiative is about is competition,” countered Ury, as members of the South Orange County Chamber of Commerce consumed bacon, eggs, croissants and coffee. “It’s going to allow a competitive force into a monopolistic system.”

In the end, chamber members voted to oppose Proposition 174, as did the Newport-Harbor Area Chamber of Commerce earlier this month. And Fleming, Ury and the rest of the speakers moved on to their next engagement.

Matt Cunningham, a right-wing Republican who works by day in a state senator’s office, said he has spoken in favor of the initiative at about 30 meetings this month. “One day, I did it morning, noon and night,” he chuckled.

“This is one of those core issues. This is one of those issues that define where you stand,” Cunningham said. “Public school affects everybody intimately. You have your cadre of Republican activists who are for (Prop. 174), and then there are other people who are just regular folk. They see this as an issue that touches their lives.”

The regular folk who support the initiative gather Tuesdays in Bucher’s office, slapping labels on literature, then toting lawn signs home to stick in their yards.

So far, the pro-174 team has distributed 500,000 pieces of paper--that’s 10 trips back and forth to the copy shop in Bucher’s Bronco. And volunteers have already walked more than half of Orange County’s precincts. They’re aiming to cover two-thirds of the precincts, which is more than any campaign group has done in county history.

Also walking precincts are the anti-voucher volunteers. For weeks now, they have been calling voters from 16 separate phone banks around the county. As Election Day approaches, they will visit each sympathetic voter and remind them to mark “no” on Proposition 174.

Hundreds of teachers wear “No on 174” buttons to school and have matching bumper stickers on their cars. The issue has helped politicize the PTA, as parents bring anti-voucher flyers to all school events and pass them out among their neighbors.

People “have this feeling that PTA is (about) baking cookies and selling wrapping paper, but that’s not what PTA is all about. PTA is all about improving life for our children,” said Terry Simon of Costa Mesa, president of Orange County’s PTA. “It is not often that we are involved in a campaign like this, (but) in my view we’ve always been somewhat (political).”

Jeanne and Mannie Costales have never before been very political. But after putting four children through public schools and volunteering for Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts and Little League, Jeanne sees her devotion to fighting Proposition 174 as “just a continuation of what we’ve always done.”

Mannie’s activism is rooted in his memory of a long-ago debate over a local school bond issue. Back then, he listened to one retiree refuse to support a new tax because his children had finished school, while another stood to support the measure, saying he owed the community something for educating his offspring.

“I always said to myself, when I get older, I hope I assume the same responsibility,” said Costales, who is retired. “That’s what I’m doing now.”