Carona Leads in Election Funds Race

Newly elected county leaders have wasted no time raising funds for their next campaigns, according to financial reports filed this week.

Sheriff Mike Carona led the way, raising $102,341 in the six months since his January inauguration. Behind Carona were Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas, who collected $52,050 in cash contributions up to the end of June; Supervisor Jim Silva, who collected $50,053; and Supervisor Cynthia P. Coad, who raised $39,508.

All were elected in 1998 and face reelection in 2002. Supervisors Tom Wilson, Charles V. Smith and Todd Spitzer will face the voters two years sooner, in 2000, if they decide to run again.

Coad’s fund-raising so far has done little to dent the huge debt her campaign built up last year fighting to win the Fourth District seat. Coad, a retired teacher and former trustee at Orange County Community College, still owes slightly more than half a million dollars, all of it to herself.

Coad said she has no regrets about spending so much money, which she expects will take a whole term in office to recover. Without lending her campaign the personal funds, which were spent on mailings and television commercials, she would never have been able to beat former Anaheim City Councilman Lou Lopez, she said.

“It was crucial; otherwise, a person would have to wait on occasional newspaper interviews or occasional requests to be on television,” Coad said. “We needed to make sure [my message] reached all the voters.”

Rackauckas still owes more than $21,000 from last year’s campaign but has close to $18,000 in his election committee’s coffers. Carona owes himself a little over $4,000 but has amassed more than $100,000 for his campaign for reelection three years from now.

Carona said he wants to collect contributions gradually over the next few years rather than wait until the reelection draws close.

“To get reelected, you have to raise money. . . . It’s one of the nastiest parts of the job,” he said in an interview earlier this summer. “If I do it over the next four years, it’s not a big burden.”

Nearly half the funds that the Friends of Mike Carona committee collected came from donors who gave $1,000, the maximum allowed under campaign contribution limits.

The most generous contributors to Carona included two companies: John B. Ewles Inc., an Orange County-based firm that sells construction materials, whose officers gave a total of $3,000; and Quality Toyota, a Corona-based car dealership, whose officers gave a total of $3,500.