Measure O Failing as Voter Turnout Hits 78%

Resisting the most expensive initiative campaign in Ventura County history, voters on Tuesday appeared to be overwhelmingly rejecting Measure O, a bitterly debated attempt by private hospitals to seize the county’s $260-million tobacco settlement.

In one of two county supervisors races, voters were leaning toward selecting slow-growth advocate Steve Bennett, co-author of the county’s stringent restrictions on developing farmland.

In the other supervisorial contest, incumbent supervisor Kathy Long was locked in a tight race with challenger Mike Morgan.

An unusually high number of residents cast their votes, drawn to the polls by the nip-and-tuck presidential campaign, the heated debate over Measure O, the two supervisors’ races and a variety of city, state and congressional contests. Election officials said 78% of the registered voters participated, compared with 66% in 1996.

“We haven’t been over 70% since 1992,” said Bruce Bradley, the county’s elections chief.

Early returns indicated that Measure O, a proposal initiated by Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, was failing by a substantial margin.

“Obviously the numbers don’t look good,” acknowledged Mark Barnhill, a spokesman for the hospitals promoting the measure. “But the folks associated with this campaign are extraordinarily proud of the measure’s success in focusing the people of Ventura County on health care. Ten months ago, the Board of Supervisors was saying that health care was a blip on their radar screen.”

Last month, the supervisors vowed to spend the settlement exclusively on health care--a decision they wouldn’t have made, Barnhill contended, without the pressure of Measure O.

For their part, opponents of Measure O were grateful.

“This is extremely good news,” said David Maron, a spokesman for No on Measure O. “It shows that absentee voters and others were able to look at the initiative and make an informed decision without falling for the marketing spin from CMH.”

In the supervisorial races, voters seemed to be choosing Steve Bennett over longtime Ventura City Councilman Jim Monahan. The two are opposites in many ways, with Bennett an Ivy League-educated economics teacher and Monahan a businessman who found success without leaving his hometown of Ventura.

Bennett said his apparent good showing stemmed not from the force of his personality, but from “the issues I represent, that my candidacy represents--common-sense policies about the budget, campaign finance reform and continuing efforts to slow urban sprawl.”

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Meanwhile, Supervisor Long was in a tough battle with challenger Morgan, a vigorous critic of her role in the county’s botched mental health merger.

“She’s the incumbent, but she also has baggage she’s had to overcome,” said Morgan, alluding to the merger. “When you lose millions of dollars like that, that’s a lot to overcome.”

In a rematch of the state’s closest election in 1998, former kindergarten teacher Roz McGrath, a Democrat, was trailing Assemblyman Tony Strickland (R-Moorpark) the state Assembly’s youngest member. Two years ago, Strickland edged out McGrath by 1,600 votes.

As usual, most incumbents seemed to be faring well. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) maintained a lead in his bid to represent the 24th Congressional District, which covers a portion of the Conejo Valley as well as Malibu and parts of the San Fernando Valley.

Voters also were leaning toward returning Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) to Sacramento. Jackson’s district includes Ventura, Ojai, Santa Paula and most of Santa Barbara County.

Trying for reelection to the congressional post he has held since 1986, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) was leading his Democratic opponent, Ventura attorney Michael Case. Case, the founder of Ventura’s largest law firm, was seen as one of the strongest Democrats to challenge Gallegly, with support from seven of his district’s 10 mayors, teachers groups, and several traditionally Republican farm owners.

Scanning the early results, Case said he received less funding from the Democratic party than he had hoped.

“There were already four big races in California and they became more expensive than anyone expected,” he said. Gallegly, on the other hand, said he emerged from the campaign with $600,000 in the bank -- money his polls indicated he didn’t need to spend.

“I think this shows that Elton fits this district,” he said.

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Several contests triggered unprecedented spending, with commercials saturating radio and TV, and a cascade of glossy fliers pouring into voters’ mailboxes.

More than $1.6 million went for advertising in the race between McGrath and Strickland. Two years ago, they spent half that in a race to represent an Assembly district stretching from Oxnard to Thousand Oaks.

Part of a pioneer Ventura County farming family, McGrath depicted her opponent as “a right-wing extremist . . . an ideologue who’s out of touch with the constituents of his district.”

Strickland, an unabashed admirer of Ronald Reagan who got married at the Nixon Library, was proud of his conservative credentials. He supports school vouchers, opposes handgun licensing and, in most cases, opposes abortion.

“I am conservative,” he said, “but that’s mainstream for Ventura County.”

Proponents of Measure O spent more than $2.1 million in their effort to channel the county’s share of a massive tobacco-lawsuit settlement into private hands.

The measure’s opponents raised more than $114,000. While county government is prohibited from funding political campaigns, the opposition was bolstered by formal condemnations of Measure O from seven city councils, three chambers of commerce and the League of Women Voters.

At stake was a jackpot of $260 million--reimbursement money, county officials contended, for costs borne over the years to treat patients suffering from lung cancer, emphysema and other smoking-related diseases.

Banking on voter distrust of government, officials of Ventura’s Community Memorial Hospital argued that the money should be controlled by several local private hospitals. County supervisors wouldn’t necessarily spend it on health care, they contended, pointing out that the settlement’s first installment of $3 million was used to pay off a federal fine.

Fighting back, supervisors maintained that the campaign was an attempt by Community Memorial Hospital to squelch competition from the county’s only public hospital, the Ventura County Medical Center.

Measure O stipulates that the medical center be excluded from the tobacco settlement; the center is funded by tax dollars to treat the indigent while private hospitals are not adequately paid for such care, Measure O supporters contended.

The battle over Measure O spilled into the supervisorial race between Bennett and Monahan.

Bennett, an Ojai high school economics teacher who served on Ventura’s City Council, chided Monahan for refusing to state his support of Measure O until late in the campaign--and then only after convening a 30-member panel on the issue.

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The move allowed Bennett, a Measure O opponent, to paint Monahan as indecisive. Playing up his own refusal to accept contributions greater than $500, he also criticized Monahan for taking donations from Community Memorial Hospital board members and administrators.

A Ventura city councilman for 23 years, Monahan labeled Bennett a “socialist” for writing the county’s SOAR initiative, which bars development from farmland without a public vote. Bennett countered that Monahan represents an old-boy network of developers and builders who benefit from urban sprawl.

The county’s other supervisorial race was just as contentious.

Mike Morgan, a Camarillo city councilman for 20 years, never failed to remind voters that his opponent, Supervisor Kathy Long, had supported the merger of the county’s health and social service agencies--a failed marriage that resulted in a federal audit and $15 million in fines for overbilling Medicare.

“The people who made decisions during that time have to be held responsible,” he said. “My opponent was one of them.”

For her part, Long pointed out that Morgan was a Camarillo council member during the late 1980s, when a loss of $25 million to bad investments brought the city close to bankruptcy.

In other local races:

* Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge), an influential conservative, was running against Democrat Daniel Gonzalez for a state Senate seat representing Simi Valley and parts of the San Fernando Valley.

* Physician Keith Richman, a Northridge Republican, was battling Jon Lauritzen, a Simi Valley Democrat, for the Assembly seat being vacated by McClintock.

* Two seats on the Ventura County Community College District were being contested. In the district spanning Oxnard and Port Hueneme, Art Hernandez, Sylvia Munoz-Schnopp and Kalani Jose vied in a three-way race. Hernandez, president of the Oxnard Union High School Board of Trustees, was endorsed by the union representing the district’s teachers.

The other race pitted incumbent Bob Gonzales, Santa Paula’s police chief, against Ruth Hemming and Jeffrey Ketelsen. Hemming, chief budget officer at Moorpark College, won the teachers union’s support.

FYI

For more information on this and other political races in Ventura County, please see The Times’ Ventura County Web site at https://www.latimes.com/editions/ventura/elections.