Despite Slips, 2 Supervisors Demonstrate Staying Power

Not long ago, the path to reelection for two of Ventura County’s more powerful and high-profile politicians, Supervisors John Flynn and Kathy Long, seemed strewn with political land mines.

Their votes to reorganize the mental health department blew up in their faces when the federal government declared it illegal, setting off the biggest financial scandal in county government history. The bureaucratic disaster will ultimately cost the taxpayers at least $15 million.

Long was also on the wrong side of the popular SOAR farmland initiatives voters passed last fall, and the landmark conversion of the Camarillo mental hospital into a state university.

But now, after the withdrawal of their two top challengers, both incumbents seem positioned for easy reelection in the March primary.

So, what happened?

Blame it on good economic times, the strength of these two incumbents, and candidates’ paranoia in the Clinton-scandal era over a fishbowl examination of their private lives.

For Flynn, 66, it’s not hard to figure why opponents would hesitate.

First elected in 1972, the ruddy-faced former history teacher hasn’t had a competitive race in 20 years. The shoe-leather Democrat works his district with the hands-on touch of an old-time neighborhood pol.

Volatile and tart-tongued, he makes enemies and strategic missteps, but is quick to apologize and make amends. And he is a leader on a wide range of issues, from farmland preservation to saving local Navy bases.

His Oxnard-area 5th District may be tailor-made for a Latino challenger, but Flynn is backed by an array of Latino leaders who are biding their time until the feisty Irishman retires.

“Mr. Flynn has served this district well,” said Francisco Dominguez, a Latino activist and Oxnard elementary school trustee. “And as a 20-year incumbent, he’s hard to beat.”

Former Republican Assemblyman and Oxnard Mayor Nao Takasugi considered taking on Flynn, his old Democratic rival, but decided in August that, at age 77, he would rather spend his remaining years with his family.

At first glance, Long, 50, a small-business owner who moved to the county just a decade ago, hardly seems unassailable. In only her first term, she can sometimes appear aloof in public meetings, but she speaks pointedly when provoked--sometimes by Flynn.

She survived a tough primary and grueling general election in 1996, thanks partly to the endorsement of her predecessor and former boss, Maggie Kildee, and the backing of former Sheriff Larry Carpenter. She won by only 8 percentage points, although outspending Camarillo Councilman Mike Morgan $130,000 to $50,000. This time, Sheriff Bob Brooks is on her side, a critical endorsement in a pro-law-enforcement county.

Yet, one after another, Long’s potential challengers in the sprawling 3rd District have fallen away this year. The district includes Ojai, Santa Paula, Fillmore, Piru and portions of Thousand Oaks, but nearly half of its voters live in Camarillo.

Earlier this month, Morgan said another run would take too much time away from his family, and withdrew. Veteran Camarillo Councilwoman Charlotte Craven, who backed Morgan in 1996, said a run against Long would be too grueling for her: “Running for office is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life; having a baby comes in second.”

Two other opponents in the 1996 primary, former Santa Paula Councilman Al Escoto and Fillmore Councilman Roger Campbell, said they have no interest in challenging Long.

Campbell, a veteran campaigner who outspent Long in the primary three years ago but still placed third, said his chances would be better this time, since Escoto would not split the vote of the Santa Clara Valley farm belt.

Campbell said he is not running because Long has done a good job. She has worked with Campbell, he said, on improving once-hazardous California 126, on a valleywide tourism effort, and now on establishing a greenbelt farmland preserve protected by city and county law.

“I’m happy with her,” Campbell said. “She represents this valley well, and the district well. So I see no reason to run.”

Learning From His Mistakes

Opposed or not, if there is one issue that Flynn and Long must live down, it is the bungled merger of county mental health and social services. Ignoring warnings from then-county Chief Administrator Lin Koester, both voted with the 3-to-2 majority for the merger in April 1998.

The move outraged county psychiatrists, who wanted to remain under the jurisdiction of the county hospital, not the welfare department. They complained to federal authorities that mental health officials had broken federal law by apparently overbilling Medicare in thousands of cases.

The Board of Supervisors finally abandoned the merger last December when Flynn and Long reversed their votes. Since then, the supervisors have tentatively settled a federal lawsuit by agreeing to repay $15.3 million. The FBI is still pursuing a parallel criminal investigation.

Both Flynn and Long acknowledge they made a mistake by not delaying a merger vote so they could field health department complaints and order further study of whether the reorganization would work financially.

“My mistake was not asking that more work be done before the vote,” Long said. “I still philosophically feel the agencies could and would work much better together.”

As is his penchant when he makes a mistake, Flynn admitted it, then led efforts to reduce the damage.

As a result, federal authorities have agreed to spread the repayments over five years instead of three. An additional $5.3 million a year in state mental health money that was also threatened now appears headed back to the county, and Flynn played a role in that, too.

Supervisor Judy Mikels, who opposed Flynn and Long by voting against the merger, said that is typical Flynn. And a key reason he is so tough to beat.

“Whatever else he is, he’s the consummate politician,” she said. “People just don’t think he can be defeated, regardless of the mental health thing. He’s taken a proactive stance, figuring he will distance himself. And by the time it’s over, people will have forgotten.”

Health department officials who opposed the merger have tried to recruit candidates to run against Long. Morgan said county employees asked him to join the race. But Mikels thinks the mental health fiasco will just fade away.

“I don’t think this mental health thing has resonated with the public,” she said. “And the truth is that Kathy, for her first term, for any term, has done a good job. She’s out there, she’s visible. She takes on important issues.”

Mikels said that Long’s other perceived negatives, the issues on which Morgan said he would have attacked her, may not stick with voters either.

While it’s true Long opposed the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources initiatives, she said she did it out of principle, because she dislikes lawmaking by ballot box, not because she wants to develop farmland.

Along with Mikels and Flynn, Long was a co-chair of the countywide Agricultural Policy Working Group that had the same goals as SOAR.

And now that SOAR has passed, Long is leading a push for new greenbelt farmland protections that would complement the initiatives. She wants to create a permanently protected farming zone stretching 13 miles from Fillmore to the Los Angeles County line.

As for Long’s 1996 stance favoring continued use of the Camarillo State Hospital as a mental health facility, she also proved politically adept when she switched positions once then-Gov. Pete Wilson decided the institution would make a good campus for a four-year public university.

Since then, Long has joined the special board that is overseeing construction of better access roads and campus housing.

Long said she is now a big university booster. “When the governor’s task force said we’re going to use this site as a university, my job was to implement it.”

Good Time for Incumbents

A post-Clinton-scandal antipathy for public office is also working for Flynn and Long, according to some political professionals.

President Clinton’s 1992 election produced a flood of well-educated candidates for local public office, they said. But the detailed coverage of the president’s impeachment has had an opposite, chilling effect on potential candidates.

“I’m seeing this everywhere on the local level,” said Santa Barbara political consultant John Davies, who has run a number of Ventura County races.

“After Clinton was elected, we had Ivy League graduates running for school boards,” he said. “But the irony of this Monica thing is that candidates are now thinking, ‘It’s not worth opening up my life to this and having people questioning my ethics.”

It doesn’t hurt incumbents, either, that the economy is good, Davies said. In good times, voters don’t like to make a change.

In bowing out of the Long race, Morgan said one factor was that he didn’t want to expose his wife and children to another bruising race. He angrily cited one perceived 1996 misrepresentation from the Long camp as an example.

Long, too, said she has felt the sting of what she sees as unfair criticism.

“It’s challenging to people who love you,” she said. “And with the outing of Clintonesque things, and other people caught with their hands in the cookie jar, people do reevaluate their fortitude to handle life in the fishbowl.”

Despite the lack of strong opposition, neither Flynn nor Long is declaring victory just yet.

Flynn said he has already knocked on 5,000 doors, and will make it 10,000 before he’s done. In the past, he has dropped in on frequent voters two or three times before an election.

“I would not be so presumptuous as to say it is over yet,’ he said. “But I’ve gotten probably the best response ever knocking on doors. Maybe half say on the spot that they’re voting for me. That’s high. There’s a lot of name recognition.”

Flynn is citing as a principal accomplishment his work to secure $3 million for a community gym in El Rio.

He has lost once, to Thomas Laubacher in 1976, and narrowly defeated Port Hueneme Mayor Dorill Wright in 1980. Despite the lack of a serious challenge since, he said he always runs scared.

And he may have one challenger in March. Arlene Fraser is gathering signatures in the 5th District to avoid a filing fee. But she has lost to Flynn badly, twice, and placed last in a race for Port of Hueneme harbor commission in 1996.

Flynn had raised just $4,000 by a Sept. 30 reporting deadline, but he said he never spends more than $35,000 on a campaign.

Long, who has about $20,000 in her campaign treasury, said nothing really changed for her when Morgan dropped out.

“The campaign strategies I have in place will stay in place until filing closes Dec. 10,” she said. “And I’ll continue to do my outreach, talking with supporters and holding meetings.”

That means Long and Flynn could spend four more years as county supervisors, a combination likely to produce some vigorous debate between the two.

“Let me put it this way,” Flynn said. “I have probably apologized to every public official in Ventura County, and Kathy is one. I have a different style. I’m a pretty aggressive person who likes to see things done by bursting through bureaucratic red tape. She’s more process oriented. She irritates me a little bit from time to time, but who hasn’t?

“I wish I could play it a little cooler,” Flynn said, “but everybody seems to understand that Flynn sometimes is going to tip on the other side.”

Long said she holds no grudges, and considers Flynn not only a headline grabber but a hard worker who jumps in on tough issues and solves problems.

“He rolls up his sleeves and gets it done,” she said. “We have had our moments, it’s true. He’s Irish. But I have a bit of it myself.”