Flynn Reelected; Runoffs Possible in 2 Other Races

Veteran county Supervisor John K. Flynn easily won reelection, but it was still unclear late Tuesday who would occupy two other seats on the County Board of Supervisors.

Incumbent Supervisor Susan K. Lacey was ahead of principal challenger Jim Monahan, but Carroll Dean Williams was siphoning enough votes to make it unclear whether Lacey could eke out the majority vote that would make it unnecessary for her to go into a November runoff.

In the third contest, to replace retiring Supervisor Maggie Kildee, Camarillo Councilman Michael Morgan, Kildee aide Kathy Long and Fillmore Mayor Roger Campbell were tightly bunched.

A runoff between the top two candidates seemed nearly certain, since none had even a third of the votes in early returns.

Meanwhile, in the county’s only contested judicial race, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald Coleman was leading family law attorney Cathleen Drury for a seat on the Superior Court.

And in a Moorpark special election to replace former City Councilman Scott Montgomery, who resigned after a conflict-of-interest conviction, former Councilwoman Eloise Brown led six other candidates.

Flynn, 63, captured his sixth term in a walk. He said he had canvassed his Oxnard-based 5th District on foot since last August and knocked on about 14,000 doors.

Lacey was leading in her bid for a fifth term, holding a slim majority over veteran Ventura City Councilman Monahan.

Morgan, though outspent by Campbell and lacking his impressive list of endorsements, led early in the race to replace Kildee in the 3rd District, which stretches from Piru to Newbury Park but is based in Camarillo. That city has a majority of the registered voters in the district.

But as the evening progressed, Morgan fell back into a neck-and-neck race with Campbell and Long. A second Kildee aide, Al Escoto, trailed in fourth place.

Morgan said his 16 years on the Camarillo council and 36 years of residence there had served him well. And he said his shoe-leather campaign apparently offset the big spending of Campbell.

“Nobody’s walked the homes I have, nobody,” Morgan said.

The runoff promises to be contentious if it is between Campbell, a 45-year-old owner of an auto-repair shop, and Morgan, a 49-year-old federal pretrial officer, who disagree on several key issues. Those include the government’s role in farmland preservation, whether the Point Mugu Navy base should be used as a civilian airport and how to save Camarillo State Hospital from closing.

Long, 45, agrees with Morgan that a Point Mugu airport would be a mistake but sides with Campbell over the hospital, preferring to see it converted to a medium-security facility for the criminally insane if that would keep it open.

Morgan opposes such a transition. “Myself and a lot of other people in the community are against it,” he said.

Long, an aide to a Los Angeles councilwoman before moving to Camarillo in 1988, said the “regional experience” gained in Kildee’s office will help in a runoff election with either Campbell or Morgan.

“My experience has been with the broad-base issues that affect the entire county,” she said.

Campbell said his nongovernment experience will separate him from his opponent if he makes the runoff.

“It’s going to be an issue of a true business person trying to downsize government and bring control back to the people,” he said. “We need a government that operates the way a business operates.”

Kildee, who initially refused to choose between her two aides, last week threw her support behind Long, the former president of the Camarillo Chamber of Commerce.

None of Flynn’s three opponents has ever held public office, and none ran on a single compelling issue. In general, they said that Flynn, a supervisor for 20 years, had overstayed his welcome.

Flynn said his next four-year term will be his most productive, as he calls on his background as a middle-school teacher to advocate for young people. He said he will sponsor a county-city task force aimed at quelling the tide of youth gang violence by offering alternatives.

“Today’s problems with shootings and gang attacks are something that demand more than our current approach of fighting violence with violence,” Flynn said. “It doesn’t work.”

The Lacey-Monahan matchup drew two candidates whose views are vastly different.

Lacey, 54, a former teacher, has been a friend of environmentalists and slow-growth groups and an advocate for enhanced social services. Monahan, a 61-year-old small-business owner, is an ally of business and has a record favoring development.

Lacey had said she would continue to fight to save farmland from development and to provide services to needy families. Monahan said his focus would be on bringing more jobs to the county, a role he said Lacey never filled.

The race between Coleman, 45, and Drury, 44, was for the seat of Judge Lawrence Storch, who is retiring in January after serving longer than any other local judge.

A 17-year prosecutor, Coleman had the support of 20 sitting and retired judges, many elected officials and every local law enforcement agency.

Drury ran as an outsider angry about a judicial system loaded, she said, with ex-prosecutors and underrepresented by women. She said it treats her family-law clients as second-class citizens.

By the candidates’ own estimates, Coleman outspent Drury, a Thousand Oaks sole practitioner, about $40,000 to $15,000.

The Moorpark council race pitted Brown against former Planning Commissioners Mike Wesner and Bill LaPerch. With seven candidates vying for the position, the contest hinged in part on name recognition, candidates said.

Times staff writers Rod Bosch, Miguel Bustillo, Ruben Macareno, Joanna M. Miller, Mary F. Pols and Tracy Wilson contributed to election night coverage, as did correspondents David R. Baker, Paul Elias, Nick Green, Scott Hadly, Miguel Helft, Jeff McDonald and Eric Wahlgren.