Ex-Supervisor Mellowing on Maui

She no longer has to wonder what the morning papers will say about her.

Nor is she kept up late at night poring through staff reports on controversial projects.

Once a fiery and influential force in Ventura County politics, Madge Schaefer has sailed on to the calmer waters of a private life in the tropics.

For the past three years, she and her husband, Bruce, have lived in a three-island county with fewer inhabitants than their old hometown of Thousand Oaks. Their home, on the southern shore of Maui, has a 180-degree view of the glistening Pacific. Their afternoons are spent not at Chamber of Commerce mixers but mingling with whales and dolphins as they putter around nearby coves in their fishing boat.

“I think the people of Thousand Oaks would eat their hearts out if they knew what my life was like,” Schaefer said, bellowing her trademark laugh.

Schaefer now spends her days taking water aerobics classes, relaxing on the porch eating fresh papaya plucked from trees in her yard and chipping away at one home improvement project after another.

The couple had always dreamed of living in Maui after decades of being tourists there, she said.

“Many of our friends from Thousand Oaks had retired and moved all over the country,” said Schaefer, who refused to reveal her age. “It was just a matter of finding a great house we really loved.”

Schaefer, a Republican, served on the Thousand Oaks City Council for eight years in the late 1970s before being elected to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors in 1986. Blunt and intelligent, but with a sometimes explosive temper, Schaefer was among the best and brightest of recent county supervisors, some say. But Schaefer’s hubris, they say, also allowed her to forget her constituents and take an election for granted.

Her blustery political career ended on a surprise note in 1990, when she was ousted from office by 25-year-old slow-growth advocate Maria Vanderkolk. Though a political newcomer, Vanderkolk edged out Schaefer by fewer than 100 votes.

Ten years later, Schaefer said all that seems like ancient history. Any bitterness she may have harbored toward her young challenger dissolved the day Vanderkolk voted in favor of the massive Ahmanson Ranch development in 1992, Schaefer said. Foes of the $1-billion housing and retail project east of Thousand Oaks, which Schaefer backed, were at least partly responsible for helping to oust her from office.

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“It was an issue that looked simple on its face, but it wasn’t,” Schaefer said. “It was a vindication when she voted for it.”

Vanderkolk, who put together a compromise plan that saved 10,000 acres of open space in return for her vote, sees things a little differently nearly a decade later.

“I don’t think if Madge Schaefer had stayed in office that there would be a 10,000-acre parkland deal,” Vanderkolk said. “There would probably be a PGA golf course on Jordan [Ranch], and million-dollar homes on Jordan and Ahmanson.”

Still, after the vote, Vanderkolk quickly became a target for the same slow-growth factions that helped sweep her into office.

“It was very, very sad,” she said. “To this day it still bothers me.”

Partly as a result of the fallout, Vanderkolk declined to seek a second term on the governing board and moved back to her home state of Colorado with her husband, Michael, and two small children. For the past six years she has been working as the deputy city manager of Arvada, a small city outside of Denver.

Despite the high-profile rivalry between the two women, Vanderkolk said she has never met Schaefer.

“I was in the same room with her a couple of times,” she said. “But when I ran against her, we never met. She was so confident about her being reelected that she did not campaign. And that was probably her downfall--she was too confident.”

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Schaefer attempted a political comeback in 1992, but was defeated in the primary for the 37th Assembly District seat.

Her former colleagues continue to have mixed opinions about her. While most admired her passion for the job, she earned a reputation for being difficult to work with at times.

“I really liked Madge Schaefer at first,” said Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn, who served with her from 1986 to 1990, “but I think the position went to her head.”

But Richard Wittenberg, who was the county’s chief administrative officer for 17 years and worked under Schaefer, said he found her to be a “very straightforward and effective policy maker.”

“What you saw is what you got with her,” he said. “She would probably not go down in Henry Kissinger’s Hall of Fame for diplomats, but at the same time she was someone I had tremendous respect for.”

Wittenberg said he has visited Schaefer since she moved to Maui because his son also lives there.

“She makes great lasagna,” he said, adding that his former boss seems happy with this new chapter of her life.

Schaefer’s husband Bruce, an airline captain for 37 years, had been commuting to his airline’s hub in Pittsburgh for three years before retiring in September.

“I was a little worried, because when you have an airline pilot for a husband, they’re gone for most of the month. I thought we might kill each other,” she joked. “But it turns out we get along just fine.”

Though she enjoys her life as a private citizen, Schaefer dabbles in local politics. She serves on the board of the Maui Meadows Homeowners Assn. and this fall helped a neighbor’s son with his bid for a seat in the Hawaii Legislature.

“I got drafted to help with the brochures and I wrote a couple of radio commercials,” she said. “Campaigning is very different here. It is absolutely bizarre to me.”

She said it’s common for candidates to stand at major intersections during rush hour, waving signs while accompanied by a cadre of supporters in campaign T-shirts.

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“People honk their horns or flash their lights if they support them,” she explained. “I just won’t do that.”

The Schaefers travel often and come to the mainland twice a year to visit their two children--Heather, 29, who lives in Fremont and Holly, 34, in Rancho Palos Verdes. They get most of their news through “coconut wireless”--Maui’s gossip network--although every now and again, they will shell out $4 for a flown-in edition of The Los Angeles Times.

“We’re living happily ever after,” Schaefer said. “We think people who live in L.A. drive like maniacs, and we don’t understand why anybody who is retiring wouldn’t end up here.”