Community Memorial Ads List False Backers

Touching off a firestorm of protests and threats of lawsuits, Community Memorial Hospital provided a bizarre finish to a bitter campaign Monday by taking out double-page newspaper ads that falsely listed dozens of community leaders as supporters of its war against a rival hospital.

Community Memorial later issued a public apology for misstating the position of community leaders and others in newspaper ads supporting its No on Measure X campaign to halt a proposed $56-million outpatient facility at Ventura County Medical Center.

A hospital consultant said the misuse of the names was an accident. He said the mix-up was apparently caused when a computerized list of No on Measure X supporters was somehow merged with another list the hospital has of community leaders.

But the hospital’s efforts at damage control did little to quell the outrage from community leaders who saw their names and even those of deceased relatives show up among 5,000 individuals listed in the ads the day before the election in both The Times and the Ventura County Star.

“You hear of these types of political abuses occurring in Chicago, but not in Ventura County,” said state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria), one of the many public officials whose names were used without authorization. He has not taken an official position on the measure.

Stephen Spencer, a county government accountant who also has not taken a public position on Measure X, was distressed to see his father’s name pop up in the ad five years after his death. His mother was listed as a supporter too, even though she died in 1978.

“It’s a pretty cheap shot,” Spencer said. “It’s sad,” he said, because the whole tenor of the campaign has been contrary to his father’s principles. “Above all, he taught his kids honesty, to play the game, but to play by the rules.”

Carmen Ramirez, director of the Channel Counties Legal Services Assn., said she was infuriated to have her name associated with a campaign so at odds with her legal work on behalf of the poor.

“I’ve been libeled,” Ramirez said. “I’m going to sue these people.”

Timothy J. Gallagher, editor of the Ventura County Star, said he and publisher John P. Wilcox also have consulted attorneys about a possible lawsuit for linking their names to a campaign, which violates company policy.

“We feel that we have a libel case to make against the hospital,” said Gallagher, who dismissed the hospital’s explanation of computer error. “I think it was deliberate and it fits in with a lot of things that they have done.”

James Parrinello, an attorney for Community Memorial, said the hospital did not intend to mislead voters and therefore is not legally vulnerable.

“It was not intentional,” he said. “If this were a deliberate attempt [to mislead voters] it was foolish because they were going to get caught. It’s sort of like putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.”

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Veteran political consultant John Davies agreed that it was perhaps one of the worst blunders in Ventura County politics.

“To use the names of key leaders of the community without their permission, that’s a pretty big screw-up,” said Davies, a Santa Barbara resident who has managed numerous Ventura County campaigns. “It seems to me it is either a gigantic fraudulent effort or a bunch of out-of-town political consultants stumbling over one another.”

Sal Russo, the Sacramento-based political consultant who designed the double-page ad, said he and others in the No on Measure X campaign are trying to figure out how the mistake occurred.

As far as he can tell, Russo said, a computerized file of community leaders was incorrectly merged with a list of thousands of supporters who signed and returned postcards, giving Community Memorial permission to use their names on campaign literature.

Russo said that the ad listed the names in small print only to demonstrate the breadth of support for the campaign to derail the county’s plan to build a $56-million outpatient center at the medical center.

A no vote on the countywide referendum today would kill the financing plan for the project. A yes vote would allow the county to proceed.

Russo said he faxed the list to campaign workers in Ventura for proofreading, but they had difficulty reading the tiny type.

“It was a pretty straightforward mistake,” said Russo, who is running a smaller ad in today’s Ventura County Edition of The Times apologizing for the error.

As for opponents’ protests over the mistake, Russo said, “They’re obviously milking it for what it’s worth.”

Standing in front of Community Memorial Hospital late Monday afternoon, more than a dozen officials and community leaders whose names were used in the ads condemned the hospital’s action.

“I consider this sleazy the way they have scheduled this on a day before the election, so that there is no way to correct it in time for people to know what has been done,” said the Rev. Dick Weston-Jones of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ventura. “This is outrageous.”

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Organizers of the campaign supporting the county hospital said that any apology from Community Memorial would be unacceptable.

“It goes to the credibility of everything Community Memorial has done in this campaign,” said former county Supervisor Madge Schaefer. “It’s clear their campaign has been deceitful and dishonest.”

Schaefer pointed out that Community Memorial’s campaign against the county project, conducted through a hospital-financed group called Taxpayers for Quality Health Care, has been largely handled by attorneys and consultants from neighboring Los Angeles County.

“In Los Angeles, this is standard practice,” she said. “But in Ventura County when you lend your name to something, it means something. When you monkey with people’s names, you’re monkeying with their integrity.”

Sprinkled throughout the lists are opinion makers, business leaders, health care professionals and public officeholders. Many told The Times they did not give permission to use their names.

They include U.S. Reps. Anthony Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) and Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley), Assemblymen Brooks Firestone (R-Los Olivos) and Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard) and Pete Tafoya, president of the Ventura County Community College District Board of Trustees.

They also include Superior Court Judge Colleen Toy White, Ventura Councilman Steve Bennett, Oxnard Councilman Andres Herrera, Santa Paula Councilwoman Laura Flores Espinosa, county Librarian Dixie Adeniran, and Randall Feltman, director of mental health services for the county.

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The list was indiscriminate, even plucking the names of some of the opposition’s principal organizers, like Oxnard attorney and civic leader Alan Teague, who recently sent out a letter to raise money for the Yes on Measure X campaign.

Community Memorial had spent more than $1.3 million in its No on Measure X campaign as of March 10. County elections officials have described it as probably the most expensive local campaign in Ventura County history.

Representatives of the nonprofit hospital say they are concerned that the county would use the new, five-story building to lure away its privately insured patients. The rival hospitals are located within two blocks of each other in Ventura.

County officials have argued that the purpose of the outpatient center would not be to compete for private patients, but to replace several dilapidated clinics and other buildings at the public hospital.