Outcome Still Up in the Air for McGrath, Strickland

With just 346 votes separating them, kindergarten teacher Roz McGrath and conservative legislative aide Tony Strickland must wait until at least Monday to learn the outcome of the tightest race in an election that set the record for Ventura County’s lowest turnout.

The prize is the 37th Assembly District seat, representing Thousand Oaks, Camarillo and Oxnard--but officials must pore over 20,000 uncounted ballots before determining a winner in the fiercely contested race.

In other countywide races, voters retained both congressmen, kept their embattled college trustees, chose a new assessor and spurned a film star’s son.

But when it came to choosing between McGrath, 51, a Democrat from one of Ventura County’s pioneer families, and Strickland, a 28-year-old former assistant to Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge), they were decidedly undecided.

While Strickland predicted that his narrow edge would hold, McGrath also anticipated a win.

“It ain’t over until the kindergarten teacher sings--and she’s humming a tune right now,” McGrath said Wednesday morning. If she prevails, her victory would reflect the strong performance of Democrats throughout the United States and California.

It has been nearly two decades since Democrats did as well in conservative Ventura County, said Bruce Bradley, county elections chief.

By a 53%-to-43% margin, county voters favored Gray Davis, a Democrat, for governor. Cruz Bustamante, a fellow Democrat, was the county’s pick for lieutenant governor. U. S. Sen. Barbara Boxer failed to carry the county, but came in less than two percentage points under her unsuccessful Republican challenger, Matt Fong.

At the same time, however, voters stayed home in numbers unprecedented since 1920, when officials started keeping such records. With absentee ballots included, 54% of the registered voters actually cast ballots. The previous low of 57% was set in 1942, when many prospective voters were in the military overseas.

Tuesday’s dismal showing left Bradley, who had forecast a turnout of 62%, at a loss.

“Look, in Minnesota, they elected a pro wrestler,” he said, citing the gubernatorial victory of independent candidate Jesse “The Body” Ventura. “Isn’t that symbolic of the voters’ distaste for mainstream candidates? Whether they’re disgusted by the Clinton fiasco or politics in general is anybody’s guess.”

Herbert Gooch, chairman of the political science department at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, said the Clinton scandal probably turned voters off. “The rule of thumb is: ‘Angry voters vote--disgusted voters don’t.’ ”

He also said neither party gave Ventura County candidates the kind of money they needed to generate voter interest.

“Generally, the Democrats consider Ventura County safe Republican territory and they don’t pump a lot of money in here,” he said. “Republicans tend to take it for granted--and they don’t pump a lot of money in here either.”

Sensing an opportunity at the last minute, however, the state Democratic Party funneled $250,000 to McGrath in the campaign’s final, frenetic 10 days. Representing about two-thirds of her total campaign spending, the last-minute windfall went for 13 fliers mailed to homes in the district.

Meanwhile, the Strickland campaign also slammed into high gear. The candidate saw his yearlong, door-to-door campaign erode over the weekend, with a poll giving McGrath a one-point lead. After a survey Tuesday showed Democrats and Republicans turning out in equal numbers, Strickland’s camp mobilized a 100-phone bank urging Republicans to vote, according to Joe Giardiello, Strickland’s campaign consultant.

Whether the 11th-hour campaign frenzy helped either candidate won’t be known until Monday. Countywide, about 38,000 absentee ballots must be tallied. In addition, about 500 ballots must be hand-counted because they were damaged by computers. And 3,500 provisional ballots--those cast at the wrong polling place or otherwise marred by irregularities--must be examined, according to election officials.

Of those, about half were cast in the 37th Assembly District, which Nao Takasugi has represented since 1992. Term limits are forcing his retirement.

Late absentee ballots usually follow the pattern of those cast earlier, Bradley said. That would be good news for Strickland, who led by 10 points after 13,000 earlier absentee ballots were counted.

On the other hand, absentee ballots can favor a campaign such as McGrath’s that hits its stride in the final days.

“This could benefit somebody who was making a big push at the last minute,” Bradley said.

McGrath said she would be unwilling to concede until all the votes are counted. If the final results are close, she said Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) has pledged to pay for a recount.

In any event, her party is contending that it made important inroads in the heart of a Republican stronghold.

“What Roz McGrath proved was that the voters in the 37th District are willing to vote for a moderate Democrat,” said Darry Sragow, campaign director for the Assembly Democratic Caucus.

“Even if she doesn’t win this time, everybody in our operation hopes she runs again.”

Democrats were also heartened by the victory of Hannah-Beth Jackson, the Santa Barbara Democrat who beat actor Chris Mitchum, son of the late screen legend Robert Mitchum. The district covers portions of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, including Ventura, Ojai and the Santa Clara Valley.

“People expect great things from her in the Assembly,” Sragow said. “Her victory was very important to us.”

For her part, Jackson resisted basking in the spotlight.

“This rising star doesn’t know what to say until she has a good night’s sleep,” she said, even as she was on her way to Sacramento for a two-day Assembly orientation session.

Jackson said the first bill she will introduce will likely deal with one of the three major planks of her campaign platform--education, the environment or a ban on semiautomatic weapons and cheap handguns. She is to be sworn in Dec. 7.

In another closely watched race, voters retained the three Ventura County Community College District trustees up for election, despite a vigorous campaign by the teachers’ union against two of them.

The local branch of the American Federation of College Teachers hoped to oust Norman Nagel and Pete Tafoya after a bitter labor dispute that lasted more than a year amid threats of a faculty strike.

In the wake of the election, Larry Miller, the union’s president, urged the board to “make a major attempt to heal the district. They can start by treating us with some respect.”

Nagel urged the union to drop its antagonism.

“They have got to realize this board is here to stay,” he said.

Also, Dan Goodwin, owner of an Oxnard appraisal firm, looked forward to returning as boss of the county assessor’s office he left 16 years ago. Goodwin defeated James Dodd, a tax law specialist, by four percentage points.

The county’s two congressional races offered no surprises. Elton Gallegly, the Simi Valley Republican who has represented the 23rd Congressional District for 12 years, swept easily to his seventh term by defeating attorney Dan Gonzalez by a 60%-to-40% margin.

Kept in Washington by his Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearings, Gallegly ran a low-key campaign back home. He relied on his longtime association with a number of conservative causes, including stricter enforcement of laws against illegal immigration. He also pointed out the work he had done on behalf of the county’s Navy bases, which are periodically threatened with closure.

In the 24th Congressional District, which stretches from the San Fernando Valley to Thousand Oaks, incumbent Democrat Brad Sherman nailed down 61% of the vote, a 20-point advantage over Republican businessman Randy Hoffman. The Republican Party had considered Sherman one of the most vulnerable Democrats in Congress.

Hoffman, a high-tech executive, had poured $900,000 of his own money into the campaign--a tactic that may have backfired, according to one political scientist.

“Voters seem to take a dim view of self-financed candidates in California and it transcends party,” said Larry Gerston of San Jose State University.

*

GOP LOSSES: Republicans are pondering elections that weakened their congressional leadership. A1

LOCAL RACES: Local city council and school board election coverage is available in Our Times.

FINAL RESULTS: S6