Irvine Council Considers Funds for Voter Drive

In a move that could boost turnout among anti-El Toro airport voters in March, Irvine is poised to become the first city in Orange County to use public funds for a get-out-the-vote drive.

The proposed Vote 2000 program, up for approval at tonight’s City Council meeting, comes with a $176,500 price tag through June. Irvine wants other cities to sign on and expand the reach of the voter-registration and participation drive throughout the county.

The March election is crucial for opponents of a proposed commercial airport at the closed El Toro Marine base. The Safe and Healthy Communities Initiative on the ballot would require approval by two-thirds of county voters before building or expanding airports, large jails near homes and hazardous-waste landfills.

The new airport is opposed by a coalition of Irvine and seven other South County cities that wrote the ballot measure. But state law forbids public entities from influencing voters in an election. Federal law also regulates how public money can be spent on elections.

“This is not being brought forward just because of the Safe and Healthy Communities Initiative or a future vote on the airport,” Irvine Mayor Christina L. Shea insisted Monday. “We’ve been talking about this for one or two years about how to increase voter participation.”

Others said the timing is no coincidence. Among items listed for the voter program are mailing registration forms for the March election, sending three “voter enhancement” mailers to occasional voters and spending $22,000 for “field operations” on election day.

“It’s a campaign, and cities should not be allowed to conduct campaigns,” local government activist William R. Mitchell said. “They feel that if they get 10 more people out to vote, eight of them are going to vote for the [anti-airport] initiative, and it helps their chances.”

Elections attorney Dana Reed said the prospect of Irvine’s voter program has ignited interest from cities across the state.

“To my knowledge this has never been done before in California,” said Reed, who lives in Orange County and practices in Los Angeles County. “It’s fair to say that there are municipal corporations throughout the state that are watching this with great interest. If Irvine gets away with it, they’ll want to jump on board.”

Irvine already is the most aggressive city spending its money to fight the county’s plans for an airport at El Toro. It budgeted more than $5 million for anti-airport efforts this fiscal year, including hiring a pair of high-powered political consultants who ran two previous countywide campaigns in favor of building the El Toro airport. Consultants Stu Mollrich and Arnold Forde would be the lead consultants for Vote 2000.

The city’s goal is to boost turnout by 10%. Irvine has 65,230 registered voters.

Less than a third of city voters showed up last Tuesday to cast ballots on a parcel tax that would have raised $95 a year from each landowner to pay for school programs. The measure failed to get the needed two-thirds voter approval by about 700 votes.

Still, a higher turnout above Tuesday’s 29% showing wouldn’t necessarily have made the difference, schools campaign leader Marice White said.

“We didn’t need to turn out more voters, we needed to turn out more parents,” she said.

Voter registration and turnout drives generally have been pushed by political organizations that raise private funds to pay for them.

Irvine should think twice about getting into the campaign game, said Michael Capaldi, president of the GOP Lincoln Club of Orange County and an attorney from Irvine.

“Spending public funds to manipulate a result at the polls doesn’t seem to me to be what our city governments ought to be doing,” he said.

Wylie Aitken, head of the Democratic Foundation of Orange County, said Irvine residents should be allowed to spend their money as they choose.

“The problem is whether there’s a hidden agenda here, or, a not-so-hidden agenda,” Aitken said. “If they think [voter turnout] is one of their priorities, as opposed to schools, that’s their call.”

An attorney general’s opinion from August 1990 said public funds can be spent to educate the public about a ballot measure though money cannot be spent to influence votes.

State attorneys said the case involved a Northern California school board that, a day before a bond election in 1960, paid for a full-page newspaper advertisement using the words “education crisis” and “classroom emergency.” It referred to the election and the bond issue without advocating how to vote.

The attorney general ruled that the ad violated state law because of its “style, tenor and timing” so close to the election.