Measure F Campaigns Pour It On

With a blitz of last-minute mail, hundreds of road signs, thousands of automated phone messages and untold personal appeals, the final showdown over the fate of Measure F was waged across Orange County on Saturday.

Supporters fanned throughout South County, the epicenter of the ground-breaking measure, which was written by a coalition of South County cities hoping to quash plans for a new airport at the closed El Toro Marine base. Volunteers staffed tables at supermarkets from Aliso Viejo to San Clemente and urged residents to vote in Tuesday’s election.

In North County, where 70% of the county’s 1 million voters live, two mobile billboards hired by South County supporters weaved along local streets flashing “Yes on F” in 7-foot-high red letters.

“There’s a lot of dedication out there in the rain,” said Yes on F organizer Bill Kogerman of Taxpayers for Responsible Planning, which opposes the new airport. “The reaction has been incredibly positive.”

Measure F opponents, likewise, energized over the weekend, boosted by a flood of anti-F mail, funded chiefly by Orange County businessman George Argyros, who has nearly single-handedly fueled efforts to defeat the measure. Argyros lent the campaign an additional $320,000 in recent days. That brings his yearly total to $800,000--about half of that raised by the Yes on F side.

Sign coordinator Peggy Coholan fielded volunteer calls from her Newport Beach kitchen as neighbor Larry Harris coordinated the placement of 350 road signs from Yorba Linda to Cypress.

“It’s all-out war,” said Coholan, whose home lies beneath the departure path for John Wayne Airport, which nearby residents fear would expand if an El Toro airport isn’t built.

Both sides took advantage of technology that allows a prerecorded telephone appeal to be played to 125,000 callers a day. Among those taped urging support for Measure F was Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who has given the campaign $56,500. On the No on F side, Wayne Quint, president of the Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, told voters by message to reject the measure.

Opinion polls by The Times’ Orange County edition have shown that more voters favor than oppose the measure, which would require a two-thirds vote before county supervisors could build airports, jails with more than 1,000 beds within a half-mile of homes and hazardous waste landfills.

Both sides barreled into the final election weekend taking nothing for granted. In an effort to distill the complicated issue into headlines, the mail tended to leave out more than it said.

In last-minute brochures for Measure F, supporters castigated the Board of Supervisors for its airport planning for the 4,700-acre base, calling it “the same county that brought you the largest government bankruptcy in U.S. history.” There are no county supervisors serving now who were in office during the 1994 bankruptcy.

Another Yes on F brochure proclaimed, “Meet Your New Neighbor,” with a photo of a jail inmate and a message that county jails “belong in remote areas”--a reference to the necessity for a vote if a large jail is planned near homes. The piece was eerily similar to a brochure mailed by pro-airport forces in 1994 urging residents to rezone the base for an airport so it couldn’t be used for a federal prison.

Measure opponents countered with No on F mail, distributing at least four different pieces over the weekend to voter households. One mailer titled “Strange Bedfellows” linked airport foe Irvine Councilman Larry Agran to unnamed “San Francisco liberals” through Project 99, a nonprofit anti-airport group co-founded by Agran. Project 99 is a project of the Tides Foundation, a San Francisco-based group offering nonprofit tax status to local advocacy groups.

In Santa Ana and Anaheim, Spanish-speaking voters received an appeal proclaiming that Measure F hurts Latinos in central county. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) was quoted saying the measure would unfairly cluster maximum-security inmates in jails in Santa Ana and Orange. Measure supporters say passage would protect cities from having jails built too close to them.

Another piece sent to residents in north coastal Orange County warned of “Los Alamitos/Seal Beach International Airport.” No such airport is planned or has been discussed.