Budget Woes Threaten Once Secure Incumbent

When David Baker abruptly resigned as the county’s chief administrative officer, Supervisor Kathy Long knew the political landscape she’d been happily contemplating could shift overnight.

The first-term, 49-year-old incumbent, a Camarillo small-business owner who had spent most of her 20 years in politics behind the scenes, faced no serious opposition in her reelection bid next year.

The deadline for the March supervisorial election, with a November runoff if needed, was just around the corner for those planning to declare their candidacies. Although at least four contenders were interested in Long’s job, only one--Jim Shinn, a semi-retired financial consultant with no political machine behind him--planned to challenge her.

But Baker’s resignation--after only four days on the job--and his lambasting of incumbents for their handling of financial and organizational problems have suddenly left Long vulnerable.

“This is one where she [Long] thought she wouldn’t have an opponent,” said former Supervisor Maggie Kildee, for whom Long served as top aide until winning election to the seat from which Kildee retired in 1996.

“When the CAO thing fell apart, that’s one of the first things she said: ‘I only had two weeks to go.’ ”

Within a day of Baker’s resignation, a local taxpayers’ advocate was calling for the resignation of Long and two of the other four supervisors, blaming a controversial 1998 vote they made for setting off the county’s financial troubles.

And within an hour of the deadline for challengers to enter next year’s races, Camarillo Councilman Michael D. Morgan, a retired probation officer who had lost a close race to Long in 1996, filed paperwork for a second try.

In a recent interview, crammed amid a full day of meetings with constituents and advocacy groups, Long said she believes voters still have faith in her.

“I certainly enjoy my job, the people and policies I work on,” Long said. “I feel I’ve been working hard to represent the people who elected me. I understand the regional issues and I have the ability to get a diverse group of people together. I’ve always enjoyed solving problems.”

She offered what she sees as her key accomplishments in office:

* Organizing the Agricultural Policy Working Group, composed of farmers, builders, planners and politicians whose purpose is to study ways to balance farmers’ rights with development issues.

* Paying attention to the often overlooked Santa Clara Valley, and its cities of Fillmore and Santa Paula, by assisting in the opening of a local CalWORKS office, encouraging tourism efforts and securing improvements to California 126, the major access highway for Santa Paula and Fillmore.

* Helping secure more than $40 million in state and federal money for the yet unbuilt juvenile justice center.

* Working to create a permanent farming zone that stretches 13 miles from Fillmore to the Los Angeles County line.

Long also this year became chairwoman of the commission that will decide how an anticipated $11.7 million, generated annually by a voter-approved 50-cent per pack cigarette tax, should be spent in Ventura County. The dollars are earmarked for programs that benefit young children.

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As she’s done since Baker’s letter was made public, Long downplayed the county’s financial problems. At the same time, she said she has a clear sense of her priorities if elected to another four-year term.

“Obviously, it’s going to be to stabilize our fiscal situation, which, frankly, is something we always have to do,” she said.

“If you understand county financing, you understand what we’re going through is not unusual,” Long said.

Critics have said the county’s anticipated $5-million deficit is not unusual in hard economic times, but is inexcusable considering how strong the economy has been.

Long counters with the argument that revelations of the county’s financial problems could not have come at a better time.

“If it had happened five years from now, and we had another recession, we wouldn’t have the funds,” she said.

Long did not offer specific suggestions on how the county, on its own, might emerge from the deficit and safeguard against a future economic downturn, except to say supervisors should hire a strong county administrator and take direction from him or her.

She said the best way she can help is through her role as liaison to the California State Assn. of Counties, which will push state lawmakers to enact legislation that could return some of the tax money counties lost to the state after controversial school-funding legislation was enacted in 1992.

For Long, once a liberal and now a moderate Democrat, representing District 3 has meant balancing the needs of constituents in the most sprawling district in the county. The district includes Camarillo, Ojai, Santa Paula, Fillmore, La Conchita, Piru and part of Thousand Oaks.

A Vietnam War protester who campaigned in college for Eugene McCarthy, Long acknowledges her politics today are less about urban and social activism and more about moderation and compromise.

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Her first full-time job in politics was working for Detroit Mayor Coleman Young. In 1981, she joined Los Angeles Councilwoman Pat Russell’s staff. By the late 1980s, she had moved to Ventura County, where she served as president of the Camarillo Chamber of Commerce and joined then-Supervisor Kildee’s staff, becoming her top aide.

Long has the support of some influential forces in county politics, forces that have found her a friendly vote on matters important to them. Already, Sheriff Bob Brooks has endorsed her reelection, as has the local Service Employees International Union, the powerful county employees’ union.

Long drew 15% of her campaign contributions from unions in 1996. The county union supported the county’s failed mental health merger, for which Long cast a key vote supporting the merger last year.

Long has taken some controversial positions during her first term.

For instance, she sided with farmers--a powerful segment of her constituent base--and opposed SOAR, the land-conservation measure passed overwhelmingly by voters last year. Instead, she backed an alternative pushed by agricultural interests, one that invited voters to make nonbinding recommendations on how to manage development.

But she’s made only one vote that critics see as threatening her reelection: her 1998 vote, along with Supervisors Susan Lacey and John Flynn, to merge the county’s mental health and social services departments.

The merger, pushed through against the advice of the chief administrative officer, was rejected by the federal government. Meanwhile, it triggered a federal investigation that revealed years of erroneous Medicare billing--billings that had no direct connection to the merger. The negotiated settlement will cost the county $15.3 million.

With Baker’s resignation and revelations about the county’s financial mismanagement, the merger vote became a symbol for the political divisions in county leadership.

“I think she’s very vulnerable as a result of the situation the county now finds itself in,” said Jere Robings, the local taxpayer advocate who has called for Long to resign.

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Robings contends Lacey and Long were serving as pawns of the county employees union, and that the merger was not about sound public policy but a political game to seize power from the county’s top health administrator, Pierre Durand. While Long acknowledges the vote was her biggest political mistake in office, she maintains it was not politically motivated, and says she continues to believe in the concept of the merger.

Not everyone thinks Long’s vote was as crucial a move as Robings believes.

“In the circles I travel within, the mental health issue has not been that big a deal,” said Bob Pinkerton, an avocado and lemon grower in Santa Paula, who is supporting Long’s reelection bid.

“People should be able to understand . . . sometimes we may not make quite the right decision.

“She’s been most supportive of agriculture,” Pinkerton added. “She’s very attuned to the needs of the people within her district.”

John Davies, a Republican campaign consultant in Santa Barbara who follows Ventura County politics, said Long’s vulnerability depends largely on how skillful Morgan is at putting her on the defensive--not only on the mental health vote, but the entire board’s culpability for overall county finances.

“The whole campaign is going to turn on financial issues,” he said. “If Morgan can make it simple, he can control the agenda of the election, because she’s going to have to be defending herself the whole time.”

Davies added, however, that “this is a sophisticated campaign issue, which is in her favor.”

Morgan’s approach thus far has been to describe Long as an unimpressive incumbent who is neither a team player nor a leader willing to break from the pack on important decisions. Morgan said that while debating Long in 1996 he urged supervisors to call for a thorough audit of all county department finances. “She could have carried that recommendation forward” but did not, he said.

“She’s got to set aside any kind of ego and work as a team member,” Morgan said. “In looking at major accomplishments, I don’t see that there. I don’t see a lot of accomplishments that are extraordinary. I see the opposite, the failure to form cooperation with other board members. That’s what’s helped put us in the situation we are in now.”

Meanwhile, Shinn said he is content to let Morgan and Long go after each other politically. He plans to spend the next three months combing through county financial documents and highlighting ways the county could save money.

Using the 1996 election as a road map, Long is well-positioned against Morgan, who opposed her in a runoff after a crowded primary election. She already has raised more than $35,000. And while Morgan dominated the 1996 Camarillo vote, Long drew far more support than Morgan throughout the rest of her district. The final returns were 27,009 votes cast for Long, 23,527 for Morgan.

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In the 1996 primary election, one candidate, Fillmore Councilman Roger Campbell, drew the highest support from the Santa Clara Valley.

But this time around Campbell has decided not to run, and has thrown his support behind Long, citing the attention she has paid to that part of her district.

Davies said incumbency may not carry as much weight for Long, a first-term supervisor, as it would for a longtime politician with a strong persona, such as Long’s colleague, Flynn.

Long, Davies argues, hasn’t stood out much, either in terms of personality or policy: “One of her challenges is that I don’t think people really know her.”

“What she’s got is a lot of endorsements, and Morgan doesn’t have a lot of time to get going,” he said.

Unless Morgan can force a runoff election, Davies said, “It’s over by March. Can he raise money? Can he hold onto the agenda in debate and get his message out there? Does he have anyone behind him?”