After Tough Fight, Zeanah to Offer Ideas for Campaign Reform : Thousand Oaks: The reelected councilwoman decries the high spending and uncivil tone of recent races. She herself spent $21,000 and sharply attacked her rivals.

After surviving a brutal reelection battle, Councilwoman Elois Zeanah said Friday that she will ask the community to consider campaign reforms aimed at restoring small-town civility to Thousand Oaks races.

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Disgusted by this year’s expensive and nasty campaign tussle, Zeanah said she would like to discuss several reforms, such as imposing spending caps on candidates and creating an ethics commission to monitor mudslinging.

But she emphasized that she is not yet ready to formulate concrete proposals. First she wants to hear from her colleagues on the dais and her constituents on the streets.

“I do see a need for campaign reform,” Zeanah said. “The price of running for office has exploded, and negative campaigning has reared its ugly head in our city. . . . I’m asking, is there anything we can do about it? And if so, do we want to do it?”

Zeanah herself spent more than $21,000 on her successful reelection bid, including $14,500 in loans from her husband, James. And her lone campaign mailer contained sharp attacks on five rivals.

“Hey, she did it, too. She did flyers just as bad as everyone else,” said Michael Friedman, a financial services manager and unsuccessful council candidate.

In her pamphlet, Zeanah accused Councilwoman Judy Lazar of abandoning her environmental platform after her election four years ago. She tagged retired businessman Marshall Dixon as a candidate who “puts developers first.” And she identified Michael Markey as a “policeman in Compton, a city unable to control its crime.”

Defending her own mailer as factual, not dirty, Zeanah said she would rather not rehash the exhausting campaign. Instead, she said, she wants to focus on the future--and on preventing a fresh round of vicious, costly propaganda from spoiling the 1996 election.

But some observers suggested that campaign reform alone will not do the trick.

Instead, they said, council members must set an example for the ’96 candidates by conducting themselves with dignity in City Hall.

“If the new council members can get along better and be more harmonious, that will set the tone for the next election,” said Marilyn Holton, a trustee of the Board of Realtors Political Action Committee, which doled out $2,600 to four candidates in the campaign.

Many Thousand Oaks council candidates already commit to a so-called Code of Fair Campaign Practices, promising to focus on issues and renounce personal attacks.

Nonetheless, the recent campaign featured much-publicized smear sheets, anonymous hit pieces and an overall knock-down, drag-out atmosphere that appalled many longtime residents. The result, Zeanah said, was “more typical of Chicago-style politics” than the traditional Thousand Oaks campaign.

To stamp out “dirty tricks,” Zeanah said she would like to set up a watchdog ethics commission.

“I would like to appoint intelligent, nonpartisan people to ensure that if this type of negative campaigning and character assassination goes on, we can hold the people responsible for it accountable,” Zeanah said.

Her eagerness to consider campaign reform won instant approval from one former candidate and considerable skepticism from three others.

Planning Commissioner Irving Wasserman, who earned just under 3% of the vote this week, said he plans to form a political reform committee to push for spending limits in council races. He was able to raise only about $3,000--not enough for mailers or television ads--and complained of being out-muscled by candidates with richer treasuries.

“To spend the kind of money that was spent on this campaign means buying an election. And for a city the size of Thousand Oaks, that’s ridiculous,” Wasserman said.

But in fact, the candidate who spent the most money, dentist Greg Cole, landed in ninth place, winning less than 6% of the vote despite spending $37,000. Lagging well behind Cole was Friedman, who dedicated at least $27,000 to the race.

“I’m a case in point,” Cole said, “that just because you spend the most amount of money doesn’t mean you’re going to win.”

The highest vote getter in this week’s election, firefighter Andy Fox, did spend a big chunk of cash, pouring more than $22,000 into television commercials, newspaper ads and campaign flyers. But he said he believes his ability to raise that much money proved he was a viable candidate.

Fox angrily refuted Zeanah’s assertions that “special interest” groups, such as auto dealers and real estate brokers, have tried to buy council candidates with hefty contributions.

“A special interest is an individual or group that has special expertise on an issue, and that in itself is not bad,” Fox said. “You should try to get as much information as you can from them. What’s bad is if you allow them to influence your decisions based on (reasons) other than information. That would be plain dishonest.”