Final Day of Campaigning Stirs up Negative Feelings

Throughout Orange County, campaigns stretched their resources and volunteers staffed telephones and pounded the pavement as candidates made last-minute efforts Monday to seek votes in today’s primary election.

From parking lots to doorsteps, fliers and leaflets--some of them turning negative--rained on the county’s 1,178,699 registered voters.

Gov. Pete Wilson stumped in the county Monday for Proposition 226, the initiative that would limit the use of union dues in political campaigns. But he drew a crowd of 200 union protesters at the Huntington Beach headquarters of Orange County Supervisor Jim Silva, who is running for reelection.

Wilson also endorsed Silva and Supervisor Tom Wilson, angering some local Republican supporters of other candidates. The supporters charged that the governor should stay out of nonpartisan races.

The election will be a watershed for the county as voters fill the seats of seven incumbents who are retiring or seeking higher office. Voters will select three of five supervisors, perhaps changing the future of a commercial airport at El Toro in the process. They also will decide who takes over the county’s two top law enforcement posts: sheriff and district attorney.

National attention is focused on the congressional primary in the central county, where former Rep. Robert K. Dornan is in a hard-fought GOP battle with lawyer Lisa Hughes and Superior Court Judge James P. Gray. The winner faces Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) in the fall.

Some of the late-hitting attacks came from Hughes.

The GOP candidates had been criticizing one another at public appearances, but Hughes last week hit Gray with a mailer that angered the judge. She also targeted Dornan three times.

Both opponents cried foul, though Hughes defended the mailers.

In one, Hughes supporter Sheriff Brad Gates labels Gray “a liberal judge who rewards drug dealers” and claims Gray is “soft on crime.” It also asserts that Gray signed a resolution calling for the legalization of drugs.

“I resent what she said about me because it is not true,” Gray said. “I am not a liberal. I was appointed by Gov. George Deukjmejian.”

The resolution, a copy of which Gray supplied, called for treating drug use as “medical and social problems” and creating a national commission to revise the country’s drug laws.

Dornan said Hughes had lulled the other candidates to sleep by promising a positive campaign. A Hughes mailer against Dornan repeated years-old quotes by the fiery ex-congressman.

“Lisa’s style is hug ‘em and hit ‘em,” Dornan said.

Elsewhere in Orange County, Wilson’s appearance was delayed an hour by protesters, who swarmed the event at the Huntington Beach Mall and shouted down the measure’s chief spokesman.

“Isn’t it a wonderful country?” Wilson said with a grimace as protesters chanted, “Pete, go home,” outside a storefront office. “The 1st Amendment guarantees that anyone who wants to can make a first-class horse’s ass out of themselves.”

Bill Fogarty, head of the Orange County Central Labor Council, said the measure is opposed by unions because it would gut their ability to amass political contributions for lobbying and candidate support.

“Pete Wilson is not welcome in Orange County when he’s attacking working families and unions,” Fogarty said.

At the close of the event, Wilson said he wasn’t endorsing in local races. But by day’s end, his office issued endorsements for Silva and Wilson. Huntington Beach activist Tom Logan, who supports Councilman Dave Sullivan against Silva, said the governor’s appearance was a “last-ditch effort to save an unpopular candidate.” He criticized the governor for involving himself in nonpartisan races.

In the neighboring race for 5th District supervisor, mail became the primary weapon as pro-airport candidate Newport Beach City Councilman John W. Hedges scored Supervisor Wilson for, of all things, being not sufficiently against the airport.

Hedges faces an uphill battle in a district where a majority of residents passionately oppose the airport.

“Tom Wilson can’t be trusted on El Toro,” reads the mailer, which has a picture of Wilson’s face superimposed on a syrupy waffle. “He’ll even take campaign donations from Newport Beach’s El Toro Airport lobbyists.”

Last year, Wilson accepted donations from avid airport supporters, including ex-Supervisor Don Saltarelli and lobbyist Lyle Overby, who are paid pro-airport consultants for Newport Beach.

Wilson maintained that the contributions were unrelated to the airport at El Toro and that he has not received another contribution from either source this year.

“This is negative campaigning, and it’s very distasteful,” Wilson said.

In the county superintendent race, challenger Darrell Opp accused Supt. John F. Dean of accepting an illegal contribution from a teachers union. Opp works for Dean as the chief education officer for vocational programs.

Dean, who last week had accepted a $5,000 donation from the 280,000-member California Teachers’ Assn., said he returned $4,000 of it Monday after being told the donation exceeds the $1,000 contribution limit imposed in Orange County.

“I thought the campaign contribution limits had been overturned” in a federal court decision,” Dean said. But the case didn’t touch on local campaign limits. “It’s an honest mistake,” he said.

But Opp, who cited a similar excess contribution Dean accepted in 1990, argued, “How many ‘honest mistakes’ does he get before someone holds him accountable?”

Staff writers Lorenza Munoz and Tina Nguyen contributed to this report.

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DECISION ’98

New Primary Allows Cross-Party Voting

This is the first primary under the blanket primary rules. That means that all voters--even Independents--may vote for any candidate. All candidates are listed together under the office they are seeking.

The polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Voters with absentee ballots may turn them in at polling sites or at the Registrar of Voters, 1300 S. Grand Ave., Building C, Santa Ana. Voters may report problems to the registrar at (714) 567-7600.

The Orange County registrar has polling place information on its Web site: https://www.oc.ca.gov/ election/. Voters can use their street address to find their polling place.

The registrar also has results at: https://www.oc.ca.gov/election/ results.htm.

Results will be available beginning about 8:30 p.m.--mostly early absentees ballots. Additional results will be posted every 30 minutes starting about 10 p.m., officials said.