Morgan’s Shot at Long’s Job May Be a Longshot

The 3rd District is the largest and most diverse of the five supervisorial seats, stretching from the Camarillo suburbs north to the rugged Lockwood Valley, east to

Fillmore and Piru and west to the Rincon beach communities. It has 75,000 voters, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats 45% to 38%.

Kathy Long

Age: 49

Residence: Camarillo resident for 11 years

Occupation: Ventura County supervisor, 3rd District, since 1996

Education: Bachelor’s degree in education from Eastern Michigan University, 1972

Background: Worked in the Detroit mayor’s office from 1979 to 1981. Moved to California and got a job with Los Angeles City Councilwoman Pat Russell from 1981 to 1987; short stint with a private land-use planning company; aide to former Ventura Supervisor Maggie Kildee from 1991 until elected to replace Kildee in 1996.

Issues: She wants to stabilize the county’s budget, increase the fund balance and implement policies that take into account future programs and projects. She wants to build a new juvenile hall facility by 2002 so the county does not lose $40.5 million in state funding. She wants to strengthen services for the mentally ill and establish a permanent shelter for homeless families. She wants the Newhall residential development scaled back to a maximum of 8,000 homes (the developer’s plan currently calls for 23,000 homes).

Personal: Married for 11 years to Randy Long, a small-business owner. One child, age 10.

Mike Morgan

Age: 52

Residence: Camarillo resident for 39 years

Occupation: Retired federal probation officer; part-time redevelopment consultant

Education: Graduated from Camarillo High School; bachelor’s degree in psychology, Cal State Long Beach, 1971; master’s degree in public administration, USC, 1974

Background: Worked as county probation officer for four years; federal probation officer for 23 years before retiring two years ago; part-time consulting. Camarillo city councilman for 20 years, former mayor. Involvement with numerous civic and governmental groups, including Camarillo Arts Council, Camarillo/Autlan, Mexico Sister Cities, Camarillo Fiesta and Camarillo Airport Authority.

Issues: He wants the Board of Supervisors to hold annual goal planning sessions to foster better teamwork. He wants to stabilize the budget-making process by centralizing financial decisions with the chief administrator. He wants to increase housing and services for the mentally ill. He wants consultants to analyze every department for operational efficiency.

Personal: Married to Donna Morgan, a communications specialist at Point Mugu, for 27 years. Two adult children.

Jim Shinn

Age: 73

Residence: Camarillo resident for 26 years

Occupation: Semi-retired businessman; currently doing real estate loans part-time

Education: Two years of business administration at USC; associate of arts degree in real estate from Oxnard College

Background: Owner of several businesses before retiring. Vice president of Camarillo Parents of the Mentally Ill, including its lobbying effort to build more supervised housing.

Issues: He wants to abolish the 3rd District supervisor’s seat to save money. He favors term limits for supervisors. He wants to change the county administrator’s job to a more powerful executive post. He wants supervisors to have offices only at the County Government Center in Ventura.

Personal: Married for 29 years to June Shinn. Father to two adult daughters and five adult stepchildren.

It’s only 9 a.m. but Mike Morgan has already been to three meetings before he sits for a cup of tea at Eggs ‘N Stuff, a Camarillo breakfast hangout where he nods and waves to familiar faces every few minutes.

Morgan works the room like a Rotary Club meeting, shaking hands and jotting down names of those who say they will support his campaign to replace Kathy Long on the county Board of Supervisors. Later, at a Camarillo post office, he is again greeted by several city residents who stop to chat and pledge their support.

It looks promising, but Camarillo is indisputably Morgan’s town, the place he has called home for 39 years, 20 of them as a councilman. Although he lost to Long four years ago, he won Camarillo and intends to do so again in the March 7 primary, Morgan says.

The trick, however, will be expanding that support to farmers in Santa Paula and Fillmore, environmentalists in Ojai and suburban residents in Newbury Park and La Conchita, portions of the sprawling 3rd District that Long won handily in 1996 and in which she has worked hard to consolidate support.

Long’s $75,000 campaign budget dwarfs the $10,000 raised so far by Morgan and she has a long list of influential endorsements that includes both law enforcement and labor, a tough combination to beat, strategists say.

And although Long has stumbled badly during her first term--voting for a disastrous mental health merger and weighing in on the wrong side of the popular SOAR growth-control measures--those issues are not resonating with voters content with a humming economy, said Herbert Gooch, chairman of the political science department at Cal Lutheran University.

“Usually if an incumbent is going to go out, there is feeling of malaise and anger out there. I don’t see a groundswell of voting against her,” Gooch said. “I think she will win it clean in the primary.”

Morgan, 52, who entered the race in December, acknowledges he has struggled to catch up but says he is undeterred. Campaign volunteers are fanning out to Santa Paula, Ojai and Fillmore, and he is beginning to put up signs and hand out brochures, Morgan said.

“We’re not looking at endorsements and big money. We’re looking at people,” he said. “We’re gonna fight this in the trenches.”

A third candidate, retired businessman Jim Shinn, has raised $2,200 and has limited his campaigning to handing out business cards at grocery stores. Shinn, 73, says he will spend upward of $100,000 of his own money after the primary if he is in a November runoff.

The March election reunites Long and Morgan, who first faced off in the 1996 primary and then in a runoff which Long won by only 8 percentage points. Long, 49, who moved to the county 12 years ago, survived partly because of the endorsement of her predecessor and former boss, Maggie Kildee, and the backing of former Sheriff Larry Carpenter.

This time Sheriff Bob Brooks and Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury are on her side, as well as the county’s firefighters, probation officers and sheriff’s deputies, critical endorsements in a pro-law enforcement county. Long also has the backing of the county’s largest labor union, five former Camarillo mayors, state Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) and state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-Santa Barbara).

The 3rd District is the largest and most diverse of the five supervisorial seats, stretching from the Camarillo suburbs north to the rugged Lockwood Valley, east to Fillmore and Piru and west to the Rincon beach communities. It has 75,000 voters, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats 45% to 38%, and has elected Kildee and Long, both Democrats, in the nonpartisan supervisor’s race since 1980.

Long’s supporters say Morgan cannot match the depth Long displays on the multitude of issues facing county government, from the minute details of land-use planning to the complexities of public finance. A wonk who sprinkles her conversation with bureaucratic jargon, Long has good command of the governmental process, supporters say.

She has also paid attention to her district, they say. One of her first actions after taking office was to form a citizens committee to pressure state highway officials to complete widening of California 126 in the Santa Clara Valley, a roadway dubbed “Blood Alley” for its high number of traffic fatalities.

Long also helped steer $1 million in federal welfare dollars to open a family resource center in Santa Paula and secured $600,000 to build a retaining wall to keep hillside debris off the streets of beachfront La Conchita.

In Camarillo, she has worked on committees dealing with the city’s health-care district, its libraries and on transit issues, supporters say. Small-business owners appreciate that Long pays attention to issues that affect them, said Dave Fowble, owner of a Trophies Etc. in Camarillo.

Morgan Cites Failed Merger

“Kathy listens to us and is far and away more experienced in performing the functions of government,” Fowble said. “Mike Morgan has city experience, but I don’t think that transfers well to what the county must deal with.”

But her detractors say her role in the failed mental health merger, which indirectly led to a series of costly audits and lawsuits, show that she cannot be trusted to make the right decision. Even though Long later voted to rescind the merger, she has not fully owned up to the financial damage it caused the county, Morgan said.

The total cost of the botched project is at least $30 million, Morgan says in a campaign brochure. He says that figure includes the $15.3-million settlement of a federal Medicare billing lawsuit triggered by the merger, an estimated $5 million required to monitor future health-care billings and millions more in consulting fees and lost health-care reimbursements.

Long and two other supervisors voted for the merger, despite warnings of potential problems from the county’s chief administrative officer and a consulting firm hired by the county, Morgan said.

“In this case, they had memos from their own staff not to do it,” Morgan said. “And they did it anyway. I don’t know a city councilman who would go against professional advice like that.”

Her detractors also say while Long is comfortable navigating the details of bureaucracy, she seems less fond of her public role, appearing aloof and arrogant in public meetings. And, repeating a charge from the last election, Morgan says Long is conducting a negative campaign.

Morgan contends Long gave false information about his record in a telephone poll conducted two weeks ago to gauge voter support. Morgan said he learned about the poll from outraged supporters who had been contacted, but does not have details on what specifically was said about him.

Long’s campaign manager, Debra Creadick, declined to release the script of the poll, but said the survey offered negative and positive views about both candidates.

“It said Morgan has very little experience outside of Camarillo and that he was on the City Council when it lost millions of dollars in high-risk investments,” Creadick said. “‘But we said negative things about our gal, too. There were no lies.

“Mike will come in through this whole campaign and he will whine. That is what he does,” Creadick said. “But I don’t run a dirty campaign. I run a factually-based campaign.”

Long and her campaign manager hotly dispute the $30-million cost of the merger, saying that figure is far too high and based on early estimates that have since gone down. But Long said she does not yet have a more precise accounting of the costs.

City Had Its Fiscal Troubles

Morgan’s supporters say he will make a good supervisor because he and other council members responded responsibly when faced with financial troubles. Camarillo lost $25 million in bad investments in 1987, bringing the city to the brink of bankruptcy. Instead of making excuses, Morgan and the other council members rolled up their sleeves and set about fixing the damage, firing the treasurer who made the investments and hiring a new city manager, supporters say. Today, the city of 62,500 is a prosperous suburb with a hub of high-tech businesses and upscale shopping.

A retired federal probation officer, Morgan is energetic and has been involved, with his wife Donna, in a number of civic efforts such as chairing the annual Camarillo Fiesta. He was the prime mover behind construction of an outdoor arts plaza that is used for concerts attended by 4,000 annually.

And he is also known for quickly responding to the needs of constituents. During the El Nino floods of 1998, seniors in the Camarillo Springs Village mobile home park became concerned when the water around their properties began rising, said resident Flo Taylor.

Taylor called Morgan.

“He was out there in boots and rubber rain gear within an hour and got us 500 sandbags,” she said. “And he said if it got any higher, he’d bring in a bulldozer.”

Morgan, a Republican, said he was not going to challenge Long--until county administrator David L. Baker wrote a six-page letter detailing financial instability and organizational weaknesses in county government, then abruptly resigned after only a week on the job.

Problems within the county are a sign that the Board of Supervisors is not working well together, Morgan said, and Long is part of the problem.

“There isn’t teamwork going on and I want to change that,” he said.

But Morgan’s detractors say he does not have the substance to take on complex county issues. He talks incessantly without saying much and appears to take positions based on which way the political winds are blowing, they say.

“He could be a little smoother,” Fowble said. “He likes to be popular instead of sticking to what he really thinks.”

Long also questions his ties to an Orange County developer who is constructing residential and industrial projects in Sparks, Nev.

“He likes to say he supported SOAR, but then is consulting on this huge development project,” she said. “He says its OK, because it’s not in Ventura County. Well, you can’t have it both ways.”

But Morgan points out that Long has received thousands of dollars in contributions from Ventura County developers while he refuses to accept such contributions.

“It’s not because I think development is wrong, it’s because I think it’s a conflict of interest because supervisors may be asked to vote on that developer’s proposal,” he said.

Shinn Would Abolish District

Morgan says Long already had many of the major endorsements locked up before he decided to enter the race. But he has received the backing of the Citizens to Preserve the Ojai and Save Open Space in Newbury Park.

Shinn, a Libertarian, has staked ground as the race’s most plain-spoken and unconventional candidate. If elected, Shinn says, he will attempt to abolish the 3rd District as a cost-saving measure. Allowing the district to be absorbed by other supervisors will save taxpayers at least $450,000, he says.

“I’ll be the sacrificial lamb,” said Shinn, who runs a part-time real estate business from his Camarillo home. “Government reform starts at the top and we should get rid of people at the top.”

If he can’t get the board to abolish his district, then he would push for terms limits for supervisors, Shinn said. Three four-year terms should be the limit, he says, and he often tells voters he is running “on a term, not a career.”

As the father of a schizophrenic stepson, Shinn said he would work to increase funding for the mentally ill. Shinn also advocates getting more productivity out of the county’s 7,500 employees.

He questions whether protections for farmland and open space will be effective in holding back growth. SOAR sounds like a good idea, Shinn said, but it does not anticipate the reality of a growing population.

“We will be the Southern California Silicon Valley in 10 years and they can try, but there is nothing they can do to stop the growth,” he said.