ELECTIONS / COUNTYWIDE : High-Tech Helps Hopefuls Make Most of Message

They are creeping into local politics the way they have plowed into society.

E-mail, telephone messaging systems, fax lines and pages on the Internet have all found a niche in political races throughout Ventura County.

At least five of 12 Ventura City Council candidates have employed 1990s technology in their campaigns, setting up fax lines, on-line addresses or elaborate phone centers for voters to hear positions on particular issues.

“Ventura County has a higher percentage of people on-line than even the Silicon Valley,” said council candidate John S. Jones, a software quality-assurance specialist who includes his e-mail address on his campaign literature.

“That’s encouraging,” said Jones, who plans to establish a page on the World Wide Web, the most popular region of the Internet.

Two Ventura County candidates vying for Paula Boland’s 38th Assembly District seat--which also has drawn candidates from Los Angeles County--plan to use computers in their campaigns.

“Postage and paper have gotten terribly expensive,” said Simi Valley Republican Bob Larkin. “So the more you can do by fax and bulk mail, the cheaper it is.”

It is a local trend that mirrors the efforts of 1996 presidential hopefuls, making strategic use of the Information Age wizardry available to millions of voters in the privacy of their homes.

An Internet page operated by Sen. Phil Gramm (R.-Tex.) already has been accessed more than 150,000 times, with the senator electronically asking each visitor to help his presidential bid.

Stephen L. Hartmann, a Ventura council candidate and marketing manager for an Oxnard food supplier, has set up a message center where voters can punch up his views on 10 campaign issues by using a touch-tone phone.

“Up until now, meeting people at their doorstep has been the best option for candidates to introduce themselves and tell people how they feel,” said Hartmann, who has received nearly 800 calls since the system was installed.

“There’s no way I can spend a half-hour with every voter, so this way they can hear my views in their own home on their own time,” he said.

After listening to Hartmann’s message, callers can leave a personal message for the candidate.

“A lot of people leave phone numbers asking me to get back to them, so it really completes the cycle,” he said.

Mark Monro, who owns the local franchise of voice-mail company Voice-Tel, lists state Sen. Cathy Wright (R-Simi Valley) among his clients.

“She uses our network to broadcast information from Sacramento on particular topics,” he said. “She makes one call and it broadcasts to about 500 key business people here in Ventura County.”

Monro expects his service to become a routine campaign tool in coming elections.

“Obviously, precinct walking is very important--shaking hands and kissing babies,” he said. “But this allows multiple callers to dial into a single number and hear views on a variety of different topics.”

Not every candidate is sold on new-age technology, however.

Roger Campbell, the Fillmore councilman running for Maggie Kildee’s vacated 3rd District seat on the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, said he prefers a personal touch.

“Maybe I live a bit behind the 1995 way of doing things,” Campbell said. “But personal contact at a front door is more effective and time better spent than having people plug into their computers to see what I have to say.”

But Steve Frank, another Simi Valley Republican running for Boland’s vacated Assembly seat, said computers offer him access to information that otherwise would take hours to dig up.

“If I want to call someone on a Sunday night in Northern California, I can get hold of them,” said Frank, who reported at least $5,000 in computer services on his campaign disclosure statements. “It’s just that easy.”

A government affairs consultant who entered politics working on Richard Nixon’s 1960 presidential campaign, Frank started with shoe boxes full of index cards with names, addresses and phone numbers scrawled on them.

“That’s how we did campaigning,” he said. “Here we are 35 years later, and I have the capacity of getting 9.2 million phone numbers through my fingertips.”

In addition to drafting bilingual campaign literature, Ventura City Council candidate Keith Burns plans to launch a page on the Internet next month.

Retired GTE official Jack Tingstrom, the only incumbent in the field of 12 candidates for the Ventura council, had no use for high technology when he sought his first term four years ago.

But this time around, Tingstrom is using e-mail, an Internet site and fax machines to connect with voters.

“We’re trying to see how far-reaching this could be,” he said. “You might be talking to a whole new group of people who never knew anything about you.”

Tingstrom said that next month, the city manager will present the council with an overview of various computer systems, possibly leading to council agendas and staff reports being available on the Internet within months.

“I think the city, the libraries, a lot of people need to be educated about this,” Tingstrom said. “It’s the wave of the future.”