Port Hueneme Citizens Group Backs 5 Council Candidates

A Port Hueneme community group that campaigned to save the local Police Department has re-formed as a political action committee and endorsed five of 14 candidates running for three open seats on the City Council.

The Save Our Port Hueneme Police Department Committee, renamed Friends of Our Port Hueneme Police Department, pledged last week to provide financial and staff support for the campaigns of Valorie Morrison, Frank A. McElfish Jr., Tony Volante, David W. Goodman and Robert Turner. “We want to elect a City Council that will wholeheartedly support and maintain our Police Department,” said Penny Bohannon, the committee’s co-chair.

The committee has pledged $10,000--money leftover from the campaign to save the Police Department--to help finance the candidates’ campaigns. The committee has also offered the help of 50 volunteers.

The idea to form a political action committee emerged after members of the community group consulted the Fair Political Practices Commission in Sacramento and learned that among their options, they could finance political campaigns for candidates who support their cause.

“Forming a PAC and supporting candidates who are advocators of our local Police Department is the best thing we could do,” Bohannon said.

About a month ago, the committee sent applications to all 14 candidates asking them about their views on the local Police Department, Bohannon said. Only the five candidates who were eventually endorsed answered the application, and each of them “showed strong support for our local Police Department,” Bohannon said.

Initially, the citizens committee campaigned last spring to support a parcel tax to raise $500,000 needed to maintain the Police Department. But the proposed tax measure was defeated in the June election, and the City Council eventually approved a utility tax to raise the additional money.