Unenthused O.C. Vote Was Lowest in Decades

Orange County’s voter turnout Tuesday appears to be the lowest in a presidential general election since at least 1954, a drop blamed on a slate of noncompetitive local contests and lack of a galvanizing countywide issue.

Among the nearly 63% of voters who did venture to the polls were the firmly entrenched Republican faithful. While Republican George W. Bush was stomped by Democrat Al Gore statewide, in Orange County, the Texas governor sailed to a 128,000-vote margin of victory.

Orange County also held true to its conservative, anti-tax roots, rejecting Proposition 39, a measure approved statewide to lower the threshold for school bond measures. But the county joined the rest of the state in rejecting a measure for school vouchers, even though much of the funding for an earlier voucher campaign came from Orange County donors.

While a few names changed, the Republican Party also held onto all its Orange County congressional, state Senate and Assembly seats--delegations that historically have been dominated by the GOP.

“It gives me renewed hope for the future of the Republican Party in Orange County,” said Thomas A. Fuentes, local party chairman. “. . . The Democrats made no new inroads.”

But low turnout remained the day’s biggest surprise. Orange County voters traditionally have flocked to the polls in presidential elections--never dipping below a 75% turnout until 1996, when the number dropped to 69%.

The 2000 election neared a new low. Tuesday’s turnout, with all precincts reporting, was 62.8%, according to the county registrar of voters. However, that figure doesn’t include an estimated 100,000 absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted, Registrar Rosalyn Lever said.

If all those ballots are valid, and the estimate is accurate, the voter turnout figure could approach the 69% record low.

Lever described Tuesday’s election as “a routine day,” except for a few polling places that didn’t open on time.

But officials with both parties expressed concern about delays in mailing about 40,000 sample ballots to Spanish- and Vietnamese-speaking voters in the county, saying some voters might not have voted or had been confused about how to vote because of the delays.

“We had a ton of calls from first-time voters in the Vietnamese community,” said local Democratic Party Chairwoman Jeanne Costales.

Despite the mix-up, county Democrats were pleased that they’d firmly held three legislative seats in central county. But some were unhappy that more wasn’t done to boost turnout for 68th Assembly District candidate Tina Laine and Vice President Al Gore.

State Democrats promised to send $25,000 to help Laine, then decided against it in early October, Costales said.

Laine, who by Wednesday had only 35% of the vote against incumbent Ken Maddox (R-Garden Grove), ran a good campaign in a race Democrats had hoped was winnable, Costales said.

Costales also bought Gore-Lieberman signs, bumper stickers and buttons with her own money to provide materials to volunteers. “We had nothing, not even political memorabilia. California wasn’t on the radar screen,” she said.

Despite the GOP spending, the difference in votes cast for Bush in Republican-rich Orange County compared to Gore was on the low side. While slightly higher than the margin in 1996 for Bob Dole over President Clinton, the difference was noticeably lower than the county’s once formidable vote deliveries for Republicans.

In 1984, for example, nearly 430,000 more Orange County voters cast ballots for President Reagan than Democratic challenger Walter Mondale. Four years later, Vice President George Bush got 317,000 more votes than challenger Michael Dukakis.

The lower vote margins for Republicans reflect a growing diversity in a county, where the highest jump in new voters in the past two years has been among those declining to join a specific political party.

“It used to be that our job was to keep the Republican win under 200,000 [votes] in Orange County,” Costales said.

Republican Senate candidate Tom Campbell, the San Jose congressman, also fell far short of expectations in Orange County--defeating incumbent Democrat Dianne Feinstein by only 60,000 votes.

Campbell’s lukewarm showing was contrasted by Republicans vying for Congress and the Legislature.

Republican Darrell Issa cruised to victory for the only open seat in the county’s congressional delegation, in a district that covers south Orange County, north San Diego and a slice of Riverside County.

Local incumbents--Republicans and Democrats--in Congress and the Legislature swept their races Tuesday, leaving the GOP’s hold on those delegations intact. Along with preserving their party’s four seats on the county’s congressional delegation, Republican kept their state Senate and Assembly seats.

In local measures, the county overwhelming rejected a proposal by county supervisors on how to spend the county’s $750-million windfall from the national tobacco settlement. Voters defeated the board’s measure to split the annual payout between health care, public safety and reducing the county’s bankruptcy debt.

Instead, voters approved Measure H, which devotes 80% of the money to health care and the remainder to public safety. Measure H passed with 65% of the vote. The board’s proposal, Measure G, received only 46% approval.

County voters were more divided on putting the brakes on local developers. A bitterly fought Newport Beach measure to force citywide votes on major projects passed with 64% of the vote.

But a measure in San Clemente to stop the city from issuing most building permits until a key roadway is built was narrowly defeated, winning 47% of the vote. A slow-growth measure in Brea also was narrowly defeated, garnering 49% of the vote, according to elections figures released Wednesday.