Long, Morgan Go After Campbell Backers

Building from their solid Camarillo base, the two supervisorial candidates who knocked off free-spending Fillmore Mayor Roger Campbell began Wednesday to woo his law-and-order supporters.

The morning after they qualified for a fall runoff, Camarillo Councilman Michael Morgan and supervisorial aide Kathy Long telephoned Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury and Sheriff Larry Carpenter to ask for their support.

“I’ve made the calls,” said Long, who placed first among four candidates. “I think their endorsements are very important because public safety is still the priority in this county. We are a law-and-order county.”

Both Long and Morgan said they will assure the county’s two top law enforcement officers of full funding for their departments if elected in November to replace retiring Supervisor Maggie Kildee.

Just how much money should be passed through to the district attorney and sheriff from a special voter-supported tax initiative prompted heated debate after Proposition 172 was approved in 1993.

And even though Bradbury and Carpenter are now backed by a majority of the Board of Supervisors, they said they want to make sure that support continues.

“I have to feel that one of their absolute priorities is public safety,” Carpenter said, adding that he will not endorse anyone until he has talked at length with both candidates. Bradbury said he may not endorse anyone at all.

“I don’t know if I will even get in that race,” the district attorney said. “I’m not even going to think about it for several months.”

In two supervisorial races decided Tuesday, incumbents John K. Flynn and Susan K. Lacey were returned to office--Flynn in a landslide and Lacey narrowly avoiding a runoff.

Although an apparent endorsement of the status quo, the supervisors’ victories came as voters overwhelmingly rejected a pet county building project--a $56-million wing for the county hospital.

In the only other countywide race, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald Coleman handily defeated family law attorney Cathleen Drury for a seat on the Superior Court.

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The overall voter turnout was only about 43%, among the lowest for a presidential primary in county history, county elections chief Bruce Bradley said.

Low voter turnout hurt Campbell in his Santa Clara Valley stronghold. The Fillmore mayor spent about $75,000 on his campaign, more than Long and Morgan said they spent combined. And Campbell claimed the endorsements of Bradbury, Carpenter and two sitting supervisors, Frank Schillo and Judy Mikels. But he still ran third.

Morgan said that is partly because Camarillo has far more clout than any other city in the 3rd District, and that Campbell never registered on the radar there. Camarillo residents made up nearly half of the voters who turned out Tuesday, about 14,000 of 31,000.

“Being from this area and being very involved in this community, that was very important to this election,” said Morgan, a Camarillo councilman for 16 years.

Long, a Kildee aide and former president of the Camarillo Chamber of Commerce, placed first overall with about 33% of the vote, while Morgan received about 30%, Campbell about 24% and Al Escoto of Santa Paula 12%.

“I was very pleased with the foundation I had in place in Camarillo and throughout the district,” Long said. Indeed, she pulled far more votes than any other candidate in Newbury Park, Thousand Oaks and Ojai.

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Campbell might still have made the runoff had Escoto not split support in their common turf, the Santa Clara Valley, siphoning off nearly 1,700 votes from Santa Paula and Fillmore.

Long and Morgan also said they were on the right side of two volatile issues dear to the hearts of Camarillo residents: They strongly favored preservation of Ventura County farmland and adamantly opposed the proposed use of the Point Mugu Navy air base by civilian jets.

More conservative, Campbell said that government should not interfere with landowners’ use of their property and that a Point Mugu airport would be a boon to the local economy.

Although their views contrast most sharply with Campbell’s, Long and Morgan said they also disagree on issues and are different in several ways.

Long, 45, an aide to a Los Angeles city councilwoman before moving to Ventura County in 1988, said four years as Kildee’s aide have given her a greater insight into 3rd District needs.

“I have more of a regional understanding of the issues throughout the district, of the uniqueness of the five cities in it,” Long said. “[Morgan’s] focus and service have been only in Camarillo.”

Morgan, 49, a federal probation officer, said Long is apparently unaware of his broad experience as an elected official. The councilman said he now also serves as chairman of the county airport authority and has sat on regional and state boards.

“I’ve put my name on the line and faced my constituency,” he said. “She hasn’t had to do that.”