Why Wine and Roots Matter on Campaign Trail

It struck me in the tasting room as I sipped the chardonnay--or was it the sauvignon blanc?--that this was how election campaigns should be covered. Sniffing, swirling, savoring estate reserve while gazing out big windows at rolling vineyards and distant mountains.

A slight drizzle outside. Very comfy inside. A sanctuary from severe political spin.

The candidate for Congress, Assemblyman Brooks Firestone (R-Los Olivos), had pulled off the campaign trail briefly and was tending to the business of viticulture at his Santa Ynez Valley winery, 40 miles north of Santa Barbara.

Campaign gigs have been hard to book anyway. It’s the week before Christmas, and he’s competing for attention with children’s choirs. On college campuses, students are focused on finals. Moreover, it won’t stop raining.

“We’re having a dickens of a time,” the candidate says. “Nobody’s interested.”

He leads me past oak barrels, through huge doors and into another tasting room, this one more private and enveloped in heavy wood. There’s a bronze bust and a portrait of his grandfather, Harvey Firestone, the pioneer tire maker; also pictures of his late father, Leonard Firestone, backer and friend of Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

Brooks Firestone, 61, tells why he left the family tire business 26 years ago: He failed to convince the company that radials were the future. Ultimately, Firestone Tire & Rubber was bought out by Japan-based Bridgestone. “That made an indelible impression on me about the necessity of ingenuity and innovation,” he says.

Firestone moved from Los Angeles to Los Olivos, from tires to grapes. He planted vineyards and built the region’s first winery. Nobody before had shown the money or guts. “It was an image problem,” he says. “The world thought, ‘You don’t make wine in the San Ynez Valley. It’s like Bakersfield.’ ”

Hardly. Today in this coastal valley, Firestone cultivates 500 acres of vineyards and annually produces 200,000 cases of wine. Last year, sales topped $7 million.

But does this have anything to do with becoming a congressman? Well, yes.

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First, he’s touting it in his campaign to succeed the late Rep. Walter Capps (D-Santa Barbara), who died Oct. 28. A TV ad fills the screen with a panorama of the Firestone vineyards as the candidate drives a tractor and says: “The vines we’ve planted have grown into a $100-million local industry.” Mail pieces emphasize “a tradition of pioneering” and family roots.

“It’s necessary to be a little bit country to understand the Central Coast,” Firestone tells me, driving north to San Luis Obispo after leaving the winery.

Of course, his main rival in the Jan. 13 open primary, Assemblyman Tom J. Bordonaro Jr. (R-Paso Robles), also is “country.” Bordonaro helps manage a 200-acre family farm that likewise grows wine grapes.

It’s expected that the election’s top vote-getter will be Democrat Lois Capps, the late congressman’s widow, but that she’ll receive less than 50% of the total tally. This would force her into a March 10 runoff against the top Republican.

Firestone already has dumped $250,000 of his own money into the race and will dig deeper.

Voters have clear-cut ideological choices: Capps leans liberal, and Bordonaro is an unabashed conservative. Firestone calls himself “a passionate centrist.”

He favors abortion rights and some gun control. He has pushed to scale back on bilingual education. He opposed Proposition 187 to eliminate services for illegal immigrants, but supported Proposition 209 to end racial preferences in government affirmative action. He’s considered pro-environment.

“I am a reflection of the Central Coast,” he asserts.

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In one way, Firestone is a reflection of political tradition along the Central Coast. I’m referring to a less obvious reason why all these vines, wine and roots are relevant to becoming a congressman.

There is a history of this bucolic region being represented in Congress by the landed gentry. Moreover, these reps have been political realists who shunned knee-jerk extremism and delivered for their district.

Charles Teague, an Ojai Republican whose father had been the nation’s largest lemon grower, served the area well in Congress for 20 years until he died in 1974. He was replaced by Ventura Republican Robert Lagomarsino, a legislator whose family had vast farming operations. Lagomarsino served honorably for 18 years until carpetbagger Mike Huffington overwhelmed him with $3 million of his own money.

Firestone seems a political throwback, a genteel pragmatist with land roots. We’ll soon learn whether that’s what voters here want these days. If not, it’s back to the tractor and the tasting room.