Harris’ Racing Roots Run Deep

In late October, John Harris, frustrated that the California Horse Racing Board had shrunk to three members, one short of a quorum, sent out a blistering, widely distributed e-mail.

“It is ridiculous that [Gov. Gray Davis] can’t get appointments made to achieve a quorum,” Harris wrote. “My patience with Gray is wearing thin.”

About two weeks later, the governor appointed Harris to the racing board, restoring the panel to quorum strength.

Harris was reminded of that e-mail recently, as he drove a visitor around the family’s 18,000 acres, a San Joaquin Valley expanse that starts with cattle and also includes a thoroughbred breeding and training operation and fields of cotton, vegetables and almonds. At the nearby Harris Ranch Inn & Restaurant, just off I-5, you can eat a full dinner of home-grown foods.

“Maybe I was a little premature in sending out those opinions,” Harris says now. “Maybe I should have stepped back and thought it over a little bit, but at the time, that was what was on my mind and I just decided that it needed to be said.”

For months, Harris’ name had been bandied in racing circles as a possible appointee to the board, even though he had supported the campaign of Dan Lungren, Davis’ Republican opponent in the gubernatorial race, and had never met Davis.

Several months ago, Harris and Davis met through the intervention of Gary Condit, a friend of Harris’ and a Democratic U.S. Congressman from Ceres. The result was the appointment of Harris, 57, who comes from a family that has been breeding and racing horses in California for more than 40 years. Of the five current members on the board--another horse owner, Alan Landsburg, is the most recent appointee--Harris has the deepest background in the sport.

“I sense that the governor would like the board to be made up of people who are active in the business,” Harris said. “I didn’t campaign for the appointment, but when it came along, I was willing to accept it. Other people might have trepidation, because I’ve been an advocate of this cause or that cause over the years, but I’m really a centrist, someone who can be temperate when the issues arise. I don’t want people to think that I’ll be prejudging anything, now that I’m in this position.”

Immediately after his appointment, Harris moved to avoid potential conflicts of interest. He resigned as a director of the Thoroughbred Owners of California and will recuse himself in the racing board’s involvement in the Carla Gaines matter, an appeal by one of Harris’ trainers after one of her horses tested positive for a prohibited drug. Harris said that he will continue as a director of the California Thoroughbred Breeders Assn., because, for now, he sees no conflict.

“Conflicts of interest are always touchy,” Harris said. “But in racing, you can’t have the experience without being involved in the game. Someone with no involvement is not going to know enough about the issues to really consider them. I’m an open book as far as what I do; I don’t think anybody will have any problem with that.”

What John Harris and his wife Carole do is run a massive agricultural spread, only 500 acres of which are used for breeding, raising and training horses.

The horse division is expensive--there is a seven-furlong training track and more than 40 people are employed to care for a thoroughbred population that rarely reaches 100--but the bills can be paid because a 100,000-head feedlot makes the Harris Ranch Beef Co. one of the largest beef operations in California. On the recent tour, Harris stopped his SUV where cattle seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon. You had the feeling you stepped into a scene from one of director John Ford’s Westerns.

In the early 1900s, John Harris’ grandfather, J.A. Harris, and his wife Kate traveled from Texas to California’s Imperial Valley, where they started a bank and one of the state’s first cotton gins. In 1931, Jack Harris, their only son and John Harris’ father, and his wife Teresa started their ranch in the western San Joaquin Valley.

Jack Harris took an untilled tract and developed it into several thousand acres of prime farmland. He originally grew cotton, cantaloupes and grain. John Harris, a two-year Army hitch behind him and armed with a degree in agricultural production from UC Davis, joined the operation in the late 1960s, when the farm’s expansion included thoroughbreds.

Jack Harris, who died in 1981, had run some claiming horses in the 1950s. One of the Harrises’ first successful runners was Big Jess, known as “king of the fairs” as he won races traveling the Northern California circuit.

Now Harris Farms stands 10 stallions that are either boarded at the farm or owned outright and in partnerships. They include the boarder Cee’s Tizzy, who sired Tiznow, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs last month; Steinlen, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Mile in 1989; Flying Continental, whose offspring have earned about $2 million this year; and Moscow Ballet, the sire of Soviet Problem, the best horse John Harris has raced.

Soviet Problem, who raced in a partnership with Don Valpredo, a former racing board member and a friend of Harris for more than 25 years, was supplemented into the 1994 Breeders’ Cup Sprint at a cost of $120,000. The speedy filly earned $200,000 after losing by a head to Cherokee Run at Churchill Downs.

Soviet Problem will actually be the dam of two foals early next year, the result of an ovum transplant to a surrogate mare. Soviet Problem was first bred to First Down Dash, a quarter horse stallion who was world champion of that breed in 1987. After that mating and the subsequent transplant, Soviet Problem was bred to Free House, a thoroughbred that won the Santa Anita Derby and the Santa Anita Handicap and earned $3.1 million. She is now carrying his foal.

“Scoop Vessels [who stands First Down Dash at stud] came to me with the idea to do this, and I decided to try it,” Harris said. “The First Down Dash foal will be eligible to race as a quarter horse. We’ll co-own that horse and I would imagine we’ll probably sell it. It might work. Soviet Problem was an awfully fast filly and she’s built like a quarter horse.”

Even the thriving Harris Farm operation isn’t capable of making a dent in short racing fields, though, which is the current crisis at California tracks.

“We don’t have the inventory of horses to run all the races that we’re trying to,” Harris said. “Without decent field sizes, the betting isn’t attractive and we’re losing part of our fan base. I’d like for the board to consider the possibility of running some four-day weeks [instead of the customary five]. Then on the other three days, keep the tracks open and bring in all the simulcast races that we normally give the fans on live-racing days. It would be a way to generate incremental purse money while giving the tracks a chance to build up their horse populations.”

As it is, California’s thoroughbred tracks don’t open for simulcast betting on the days when they’re not running live racing.

“Racing has been going on for, what, a thousand years, and there’s always been a passion for it from a significant group of people,” Harris said. “It’s the old thing about the glass being half-empty or half-full. I’d like to think that the tracks can bring back the fans if they really work at it.”

Some critics say that industrialist Frank Stronach, among whose seven racetracks are Santa Anita, Golden Gate Fields and Bay Meadows, is working too hard, spreading his empire thin at the expense of the individual properties.

“I like Stronach,” Harris said. “I wouldn’t go as far as calling him egocentric, but he’s self-confident, has a lot of opinions and isn’t afraid to speak his mind. The things I especially like about him is that he’s not in this for some real-estate play, and has little interest in the other forms of gambling. He’s not right about everything, of course. If I understand him correctly, his idea would be to let Santa Anita and Hollywood Park run at the same time and let the best track win. That can’t happen. That would be a suicide pact.”