9 Join Incumbent Monahan in Race for 4 Council Seats

With a last-minute flurry of candidate filings Wednesday, Councilman Jim Monahan will be joined by nine others--including the city’s first openly gay candidate, a planning commissioner and a motorcycle magazine editor--in a race for four council seats in November.

But even with the final rush, City Clerk Barbara Kam, who has worked for the city for 37 years and watched 17 City Council elections, said she has rarely seen so few candidates running with so many seats up for grabs.

“For the number of seats you have, and the number of really open seats you have without any competition from an incumbent, this is very low,” Kam said as she typed up the final list of candidates two minutes before the 5 p.m. deadline Wednesday.

Still, Councilman Steve Bennett, among others, predicted the race will be fascinating, with at least five strong candidates--probably more--making a serious run for the seats.

Bennett and City Council members Gary Tuttle and Rosa Lee Measures have announced that they will not run again, leaving Monahan the lone incumbent seeking another term. Both Bennett and Measures announced their intention not to run within 10 days of the filing deadline, triggering a last-minute rush to file.

Some of the candidates for the seven-member council--such as Brian Lee Rencher, Donna De Paola, Brian Brennan and Sandy Smith--are well-known in Ventura political circles.

Rencher, a student and businessman, will be mounting his fourth campaign for the council.

De Paola, a lawyer, ran for the council two years ago and lost third place to Councilman Jim Friedman by only a few hundred votes.

Brennan has worked extensively with the Ventura Chamber of Commerce and campaigned to clean up the oceans with the Surfrider Foundation.

Smith is a member of the Planning Commission--a traditional training ground for council candidates--and runs the Rosarito Beach Cafe on Main Street.

Many of the other candidates have played less prominent civic roles.

Carl Morehouse is a senior planner for the county who spoke out before the council last fall against the Centerplex minor league baseball stadium.

Douglas Halter will make his formal announcement of candidacy at noon today on the front steps of City Hall. Openly gay, he has been active as an AIDS educator in Ventura County, but until now has been uninvolved in city politics.

“Ventura is a city with a lot of potential, but it lacks a clear, concise vision and direction,” said Halter, who works as a landscaper. “It is pretty well-known that I do have AIDS. But I am healthier than I was 10 years ago, and I attribute that . . . to drugs, but most importantly to the fact that I have a lot of tenacity--which is something I will bring to this office.”

Mike Osborn is the editor of Quick Throttle, a motorcycle magazine. He points out that his political experience includes the role of statewide activist pushing for personal freedoms such as the right to ride without a helmet.

Also running are Paul Thompson, a peace officer, and Carroll Dean Williams, a manufacturing engineer who regularly attends council meetings.

“There are definitely a lot of new faces on the scene,” Kam observed, scanning the list.

The lack of familiar faces is a cause of concern to some.

“If I had known it was going to be like this, I might have run again,” said Tuttle, who added that the lack of serious environmental candidates worried him. “I wish there were more people running.”

Tuttle added that he believed that Smith and Brennan have a lot to contribute. But he lamented the lack of candidates with political experience.

“You don’t start Dec. 11 because you got elected,” he said. “You have to have a history of activism. I think the city needs people who have had some experience in city government.”

Candidates and activists in the community speculated about why there were fewer candidates this year than the dozen or more who usually take the plunge.

De Paola said the city’s new campaign finance law deterred some would-be candidates from running.

Still others surmised that fewer candidates than normal came out because the city is not facing any particularly contentious issues right now.

“In the past, we have had divisive issues--major developments, the baseball stadium, the desal [desalination] plant. Now it seems like the council is between issues,” said Ken Schmitz, chairman of the Ventura Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee.

The council’s two die-hard environmentalists are stepping down this season, but Bennett, who led the charge to pass the SOAR initiative in 1995, called Brennan and Morehouse strong environmental candidates.

He said he expects local environmental groups to back them and plans to help their campaigns.

“I feel really good about Brennan and Morehouse, and I am assuming the environmental community will too after they interview the candidates,” he said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Council Contenders

This is the final list of candidates for Ventura City Council for the Nov. 4 election:

Candidate

Brian Brennan

Occupation

Food and beverage director

*

Candidate

Donna De Paola

Occupation

Lawyer

*

Candidate

Douglas Halter

Occupation

Landscape project manager / AIDS educator

*

Candidate

Jim Monahan*

Occupation

Contractor

*

Candidate

Carl E. Morehouse

Occupation

Senior planner

*

Candidate

Mike Osborn

Occupation

Editor

*

Candidate

Brian Lee Rencher

Occupation

Business owner / researcher

*

Candidate

Sandy E. Smith

Occupation

Restaurant owner

*

Candidate

Paul Thompson

Occupation

Peace officer

*

Candidate

Carroll Dean Williams

Occupation

Manufacturing engineer

* incumbent

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

FYI

The Ventura Chamber of Commerce will sponsor a forum for the Ventura City Council candidates at 7 tonight at the Doubletree Hotel, 2055 E. Harbor Blvd. During the session, each candidate will make a three-minute speech and answer three questions. By Wednesday evening, organizer Ken Schmitz said, nine of the 10 candidates had said they would attend.