Weak Field Points to Good Year for Firestone

Revved up from this year’s victories in the Legislature, Assemblyman Brooks Firestone cannot sit still to talk about his reelection campaign. His mind races ahead to his ambitious agenda for next year.

There’s so much to do, says the Republican from Los Olivos. Reforming bilingual education. Setting up tax-free IRAs for college tuition. Charging high schools for the cost of remedial classes needed by college students.

And he’s got so little time--only four years left under voter-imposed term limits.

The freshman lawmaker hates to dwell--even for a minute--on his Democratic opponent: Aneesh Lele, a student at UC Santa Barbara.

Nor does he want to chat about another rival seeking his job: Miriam Hospodar of Carpinteria, a Natural Law Party candidate and transcendental meditation teacher.

It’s not that the grandson of the famous tire magnate and founder of the Santa Ynez Valley winery that carries his name is snooty about his political opponents.

It’s just that he is excited about tackling government problems and finding solutions. He loathes to break stride, as he dashes about the 35th Assembly District, meeting with people grousing about the Toland Landfill in Santa Paula or brainstorming about welfare reforms with caseworkers in Ventura. The district stretches from western Ventura County to northern Santa Barbara County, where Firestone’s Los Olivos winery is located.

“I’m going to do this full time for another two years, or four years,” Firestone said. “I want to get things done.”

Compared to his costly, bruising election fight in 1994, Firestone has drawn milder opponents this go-round: two first-time candidates who have shown little ability to raise political cash, and no instinct for the jugular.

“He’s a good-looking guy and a good-sounding guy who is a very good listener,” Hospodar said of the man she wants to bounce from office. “But the ideas of his party are not serving us well.”

Lele refrains from sharp criticism too. “To be perfectly fair, he has been better than most of the Republicans in the Assembly,” Lele said.

Although Firestone shies from discussing his opponents, he signaled his reelection confidence in recent letters asking for modest $25 contributions from many supporters rather than big contributions from just a few.

“My concern is that if I raise money in a conventional way, I might appear like a Goliath in the campaign,” Firestone wrote to supporters last week. “I don’t want to inspire a sympathy vote for my opposition.”

Firestone has about $30,000 in campaign cash going into the fall political season and hopes to add another $100,000 with $25 donations from 4,000 people.

Lele said he has raised $8,000, most of it from family and friends in New Jersey, where he grew up. He hopes this will become seed money for a more bountiful harvest later in the campaign.

Hospodar has received one $100 contribution, so far. “All donations are welcome,” she said.

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Democratic Party leaders drafted Lele to run against Firestone when all other potential candidates dropped out. One party official literally drove Lele to the county election office minutes before the deadline and paid his filing fee.

Since then, Lele has embraced his candidacy with youthful gusto and the college-age candidate sees himself as someone who can speak for his generation.

Mostly, Lele talks about education issues, sharing many of the same goals as the incumbent. Both he and Firestone want to safeguard state funding for public universities to prevent additional fee hikes.

And Lele proposes establishing a tax-free savings plan for higher education. It’s a concept similar to Firestone’s “Scholarshare account” bill, designed to encourage families to save for their children’s education in a tax-free account where the state would match accrued interest dollar for dollar.

Lele and Firestone part company on affirmative action. Lele is a staunch opponent of Proposition 209, a statewide November ballot measure that would ban affirmative action based on race, gender or ethnicity in public employment, contracting and public education.

Firestone declined last week to state a position on

the ballot proposition, saying he wants to remain neutral when he holds public hearings on the measure in coming weeks as chairman of the Assembly Higher Education Committee.

Yet, Firestone has said he believes the Legislature could alter affirmative action rules to ensure fairness for all ethnic groups. “We have become excessively involved in the preferential treatment that goes beyond the intent of the Civil Rights Act.”

Hospodar tackles the issues on a different plane.

Embracing the platform of the Natural Law Party, which she represents, she advocates a preventive, holistic approach to reducing crime and illness--two societal problems that consume tax dollars.

“It is much easier to prevent a crime or a disease than deal with it when it happens,” Hospodar said. She suggests that public leaders look for crime prevention and health-care prevention techniques that have been shown to work.

“There are many programs that exist that prevent illness and crime,” she said. “Transcendental meditation is just one of many that exist and have been lost in government gridlock.”

Both Hospodar and Lele attack the direction of the Assembly under its new Republican leadership, but are careful how they characterize Firestone’s role.

“He’s the most moderate Republican in the Assembly,” Lele said. “You won’t hear me trashing him as part of the right-wing--just for supporting the right-wing leadership. He voted for Curt Pringle for speaker.”

Although Firestone helped elevate Pringle, a Garden Grove Republican, to the job of Assembly Speaker, he has broken Republican ranks on many occasions since then.

He refused to sign a Republican loyalty oath as part of the Assembly speakership fight. He was one of a handful of Republicans who joined Democrats who voted down a bill allowing paddling of graffiti vandals in court by a parent or bailiff.

When the newly Republican-dominated California Coastal Commission sought to fire its longtime executive director, Peter Douglas, this summer, Firestone came to the director’s defense.

“The people of California . . . certainly do not want to see the environmental quality of California’s coastline compromised because of what might be a rapid and ill-considered move regarding the commission’s executive director,” he wrote.

Firestone said he has caught flak for these positions and others, but will continue to vote his conscience. “I just happen to be pro-choice and that doesn’t make some members of the [Republican] caucus happy either.”

For the most part, Firestone plans to focus on education issues, such as his pushing his tuition savings plan.

He is itching to resume his push for a dramatic overhaul of the state’s bilingual education laws, so that school districts can choose whether they want children who are not fluent in English to be taught in their native language. Now, most non-English proficient children have no choice.

To toughen standards at high schools, he also wants to reintroduce his proposal to charge high schools for any remedial classes required by college students who graduated from high school with a “B” grade point average or better.

Firestone teems with ideas about how to improve government and introduced more than two dozen bills in his first term. A number of them made it into law. One new law denies teaching credentials to any applicant found insane by a judge; another makes it easier to convict a person of criminal stalking.

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Of all his successes, he touts his proposal to conduct an independent audit of the Assembly itself, scouring the $75-million institution to look for waste and abuse. He is eager to continue that campaign next year.

During his first term, Firestone racked up high marks from his fellow lawmakers and other Sacramento insiders. He scored well in integrity, effectiveness and problem-solving, according to the California Journal’s annual survey of lawmakers.

Some who thought he might be a rich dilettante-lawmaker have been surprised at how he has buried himself in legislative homework.

“He’s very thoughtful, he reads everything and he’s well prepared,” said one Sacramento lobbyist who asked to remain anonymous. He is also known for going out in the field to collect his own facts.

“He’s the first legislator I’ve seen in 20 years come through our welfare offices,” said James E. Isom, director of Ventura County’s Public Social Service Agency. “It’s refreshing.”

Firestone spent most of last Wednesday with caseworkers in the county welfare office in Oxnard to prepare himself in case Gov. Pete Wilson calls a special session this fall to deal with federal welfare reforms.

The federal changes threaten to knock thousands of poor people off federal welfare rolls and they could end up as a new burden on county general relief programs.

“Right now, there is no solution in sight,” Firestone said. “I wanted to find out what the caseworkers had to say about it.”

Firestone has also found camaraderie in what was once mere rivalry. He and state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) now work closely together, 14 years after they slugged it out in Firestone’s initial Assembly race. O’Connell won.

“We have hit it off really well, much better than I thought,” O’Connell said. “I talk to him more than I used to talk to [former state Sen.] Gary Hart.”

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The two have teamed up on a number of issues, including a modest proposal that the Cal State University system take over a portion of Camarillo State Hospital’s 750-acre property.

Their letter to the governor jump-started the debate over what to do with the hospital slated for closure and pushed forward a plan to open a four-year public university in Ventura County perhaps a decade sooner than otherwise possible.

He has also taken up O’Connell’s practice of making himself available to his constituents. He has held numerous town hall meetings and tools around the district in a refurbished school bus that he calls his District Utility Mobile Business Office, or DUMBO.

Firestone said his handlers told him not to call it DUMBO. “It sounds like I’m, well, it sounds dumb. I think it sounds friendly and accessible. The flying elephant, [with] the big ears to listen with.”

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35th Assembly District

Incumbent Brooks Firestone, who represents western Ventura County, is seeking his second two-year term

Nov. 5. He is being challenged by Democrat Aneesh Lele and the Natural Law Party’s Miriam Hospodar.

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Brooks Firestone

Age: 60

Occupation: Assemblyman, winemaker

Residence: Los Olivos

Education: Bachelor’s degree in economics, Columbia University

Party: Republican

Background: Grandson of the founder of Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., he left the family business in 1972 to start Firestone Winery in northern Santa Barbara County. He lost his first bid for the Assembly in 1982, but was successful on his second attempt in 1994. He is chairman of the Assembly Higher Education Committee.

Issues: Firestone wants to give parents more influence in their children’s education, stimulate the economy by eliminating excessive and duplicative government regulations, toughen criminal sentencing and parole guidelines and impose stricter penalties for violent juvenile offenders. He pledges to continue to audit the Assembly and streamline its internal operations.

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Aneesh Lele

Age: 22

Occupation: College student

Residence: Isla Vista

Education: Bachelor’s degree in political science, UC Santa Barbara; working on last course to complete a second major in business economics

Party: Democrat

Background: Since he moved from New Jersey in 1991 to pursue his college degree, Lele has been active in Democratic politics, student government and environmental groups. He was twice a delegate to the California Democratic Convention and worked on the campaign for Democratic congressional candidate Walter Capps of Santa Barbara.

Issues: Lele wants to bolster University of California funding and permit tax-free IRAs for college tuition or vocational training. He wants to persuade corporate America to provide more scholarships to minorities and women. He advocates tougher standards to graduate high school, bringing more computers into classrooms and reducing class size. He vows to safeguard the environment.

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Miriam Hospodar

Age: 45

Occupation: Museum curator, instructor

Residence: Carpinteria

Education: Bachelor’s degree in art history and South Asian studies, Oakland University, Michigan; bachelor’s degree in fine arts from California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, Calif.

Party: Natural Law

Background: Disillusioned by mainstream party politics, Hospodar joined the Natural Law Party two years ago when it first sprung from the transcendental meditation movement. She has been a TM center director and meditation teacher. She is now director of educational programs at the private Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum in Santa Barbara.

Issues: She advocates holistic, preventive health-care programs to reduce disease and health-care costs and suggests using meditation practices to reduce overall societal tension and crime. With a reduction in crime, disease and related public costs, she said government can cut taxes dramatically and thus stimulate the economy. She advocates moving to a 10% flat tax within a few years.

35th Assembly District

DISTRICT AT A GLANCE

Party Breakdown

Democrat 44%

Republican 37%

Other 19%

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Ethnic Breakdown

White 71%

Latno 24%

African American 3%

Asian 3%