Foes of Greenbelt Measure Spent $137,481 in Losing Fight

Opponents of a greenbelt preservation measure on last fall’s ballot spent roughly $18 per vote and still failed to defeat the restrictive initiative aimed at prohibiting urban development of farmland.

Ranchers and pro-business advocates funneled more than $180,900 into their campaign against measures I and J, according to finance reports filed Wednesday.

Leading City Council candidates also pumped more than $126,000 into their own war chests, making the 1995 election the most expensive in city history.

Farmers across Ventura County vigorously opposed the November ballot initiative, which was promoted as a way to end encroaching development and protect Ventura from becoming a concrete maze of buildings.

But ranchers said the initiative was an attack on their property rights.

They poured $137,481 into the anti-Measure I campaign, money used to pay for glossy mailers attacking the measure and its backers.

Despite the expensive campaign, Ventura voters approved the initiative, prohibiting development on thousands of acres of farmland in and around the city until 2030--unless a project gets the permission of city voters.

The measure became law Jan. 1.

“We knew that it was an uphill battle,” said Bob Tobias, a Ventura farmer and chairman of the ranchers committee.

“Losing is obviously not fun,” he said. “But in this kind of a campaign, it was going to be a loser in a lot of ways. When you pit one part of the community against another part of the community, everyone loses.”

The farmers were successful in defeating a companion initiative: Measure J. Their fight was aided by a separate committee backed by Ventura business leaders.

Venturans for a Quality Community raised $43,425, according to the group’s treasurer, Ken Schmitz. The money was spent on hard-hitting campaign literature that blanketed Ventura mailboxes before the election.

The committee backing the greenbelt measures was outspent nearly 6 to 1, having raised just $30,982, according to reports filed Wednesday.

Ventura City Councilman Steve Bennett, who led the campaign supporting measures I and J, said the race demonstrated that money doesn’t always buy votes.

“We are fortunate that the core community values were able to come through in spite of that much money,” he said.

Candidates who ran for City Council in the fall were also required to file campaign disclosure statements Wednesday, and the reports of the leading vote-getters far exceeded past council races.

Councilman Ray Di Guilio raised $47,163, outpacing the rest of the field of 12 candidates.

Mayor Jack Tingstrom raised $45,493 during his reelection bid. In comparison, it was about $10,000 more than Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures spent on her race in 1993 and nearly twice as much as former Mayor Tom Buford spent on his 1991 campaign.

Also in the November campaign, Councilman Jim Friedman raised $34,087--nearly $22,600 more than the next highest vote-getter, Donna De Paola-Peterson, who raised $11,497.

“It just goes to show,” Friedman said, “to win an election, you have to have name recognition, and name recognition costs some money.”

This may be the last year that council candidates can accumulate such hefty war chests, however, due to a campaign limits law approved by voters in the fall.

“That the three winning candidates have that large a lead really speaks for the need for campaign contribution limits,” said Bennett, who launched the campaign reform measure in a bid to level the playing field among candidates. “Hopefully, [the law] will do that.”