Sullivan Faces Uphill Battle Against Jackson

A month before election, Assembly candidate Robin Sullivan has her work cut out for her.

The Republican challenger to Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) trails badly in fund-raising and in voter polls. Her campaign, in fact, is $57,000 in the hole, it reported last week.

Now party insiders say that big money expected from Republican Assembly leaders may not materialize unless polls show Sullivan’s position improving over the next two weeks.

But even without the extra money, Sullivan says she can still win.

“What I hear is that a substantial amount of money is going to come in,” she said. “However, if it doesn’t, we’ll run a campaign on what we have. A campaign for Assembly should cost $200,000 to $300,000 anyway, not $1 million. Anybody can buy a race, and this race may be bought by Jackson’s camp.”

Sullivan--who for months said she expected to spend $1 million--now says Assembly Republicans who recruited her with promises of strong support have to make some tough choices in coming weeks.

“They don’t have near the pocketbook the Democrats have,” she said, “so they’re being fiscally prudent.”

That means Republican money has gone first to reelect Assembly incumbents. What’s left will be parceled out to a handful of races where Republican challengers have a chance to win.

The 35th District is one of those. Sullivan trailed Jackson by more than 10 points in a Republican Assembly Caucus poll three weeks ago, but not much more, party officials said.

“Robin Sullivan is within striking distance,” said Jaime Fisfis, political director for the Republican caucus. “And we will continue to poll that district and fund it to the levels we need to win. It’s winnable once Robin gets her message out.”

So the question becomes how can Sullivan, with so little money, get her message out over a sprawling district that covers Ventura, Ojai, Santa Paula and most of Santa Barbara County?

She said she’ll reach the 20% of voters who are undecided--many of whom think Jackson is too liberal--through three fliers mailed last week that champion her experience as Santa Paula mayor, councilwoman and Chamber of Commerce president. Four more mailings are set for the next two weeks. And she’ll continue door-to-door canvassing that took her and 30 volunteers onto the stump last weekend.

“The message is I’m the better option,” she said.

Yet more than money makes this an uphill fight for Sullivan, 51, an up-by-the-bootstraps attorney out of the Ventura College of Law.

Jackson, a longtime civil and family lawyer in Santa Barbara and Ventura, rode a solid base in those two cities to election in 1998 over actor Robert Mitchum’s son, Chris, who spent about $900,000 and still lost by 8 percentage points.

A party leader chairing two committees in her first term, Jackson has already accumulated $555,000 for her second race, including $214,000 in prepaid TV ads from Assembly Democrats who see her as a rising star. A $10,000 donation from Gov. Gray Davis heads her list of individual contributions.

Jackson, 50, has an impressive array of endorsements--the majority of the Santa Barbara and Ventura city councils and most members of the boards of supervisors in both counties. She’s also backed by school superintendents in Ventura, Goleta, El Rio and Ventura County.

In addition, she’s supported by Ventura’s police chief. And Ventura County’s district attorney and sheriff, both Republicans, have declined to endorse Sullivan because they think Jackson has done a good job.

“She’s represented law enforcement interests very well,” Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury said. “I’m very pleased with her performance. She is doing a good job for us on most issues.”

Jackson is also backed by an array of police officer, teacher, environmental, gun-control and women’s groups.

In addition, Democrats hold a 43%-37% edge in registered voters in the district.

Sullivan, in turn, has a handful of endorsements from local elected officials, including the majority of the Santa Paula council and Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Thomas.

The last Jackson poll--in early August just before the Democratic National Convention--showed her with a 44%-to-23% lead, with 32% undecided and 1% in favor of Natural Law candidate Eric Dahl of Goleta. When those leaning toward candidates were counted, Jackson’s edge was 51%-to-27%, a spokeswoman said.

The Jackson campaign does not plan another poll until late this month.

“I’m pleased with our position,” Jackson said.

But that doesn’t mean she’s cruising.

“I’ve just got to assume they’re going to dump money in toward the end of the race, when the Republican pot from the federal side is distributed to the state caucuses,” she said. “I’m still taking this race very seriously. I’m running as though it’s a very close race.”

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The daughter of a Mexican-born oil geologist and a homemaker, Sullivan grew up locally, graduated from Ventura High School and then began a regimen of work and education that landed her a series of secretarial and managerial jobs at title companies.

She never got a bachelor’s degree, but worked her way through Ventura Law College in 1984.

“I’m totally a self-made woman,” she said. “When I first left home in 1969, I had a ’67 Mustang and 500 bucks. I was the third of three children, and the till was kind of tapped by the time they got to me.”

As a partner with husband John, Sullivan prospered as a lawyer in Ventura and Santa Paula, where she became a business leader, heading the Chamber of Commerce and gaining election to the City Council in 1992 and 1996.

Sullivan never considered a run for state office until a year ago, when Seneca Network, a group that seeks out Republican women as candidates, gave her a call. Then former Assemblyman Brooks Firestone, a wealthy Santa Ynez Valley winery owner and a moderate Republican, called to see if she would run.

“They had heard about me and felt I was qualified and experienced,” she said.

Mitchum dropped his second run for the Republican nomination, saying that party leaders thought Sullivan, a moderate who favors a woman’s right to an abortion, would lure more Republican women to the polls.

“Robin Sullivan . . . knows how to work with people to actually get things done,” Firestone said.

Even as she was organizing her run for Assembly, however, Sullivan became embroiled in an angry dispute that has torn Santa Paula apart, dividing many in the Latino and Anglo communities and leading to a federal lawsuit that challenges the city’s method of electing council members.

In April, Sullivan lashed out at a council colleague who accused her of overplaying the fact that she is one-fourth Mexican. The colleague, Councilwoman Laura Flores Espinosa, said at a meeting that Sullivan was out of control and that she feared for her safety.

Furious, Sullivan called Espinosa “insane” and threatened to sue her for character defamation. Sullivan also told news reporters that she would sue them if they implied that she had threatened Espinosa.

Sullivan acknowledged the next day that she had acted unprofessionally, but she also said she needed to speak her mind.

“Sometimes it’s more important to stand up for yourself and your family than to worry about how you’re going to be perceived.”

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Jackson, the daughter of a small-business owner and the granddaughter of a Russian immigrant who tutored President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s son, grew up outside Boston.

She received a law degree from Boston University in 1975 and immediately took a job as a county prosecutor in Santa Barbara.

Over the years, she helped found a shelter for battered women and a coalition against gun violence, and she was a staunch supporter of Planned Parenthood. She served on state commissions on child support and family equity.

Finally, in 1998, she defeated Mitchum in a classic liberal-versus-conservative matchup.

This year, Jackson is running on her record.

A veteran lawyer, she is a polished Assembly orator with a flare for debate and detailed analysis. But her critics have said that her passion has led her to unnecessary confrontations with colleagues, especially Republican men.

“The key issue is certainly my effectiveness as a legislator,” Jackson said. “In 1999-2000, the governor signed 18 of my bills into law and 26 reached his desk. To get 26 bills to the governor’s desk is extraordinary.”

Jackson has made her mark especially on environmental and domestic violence issues, helping to push $90 million in coastal cleanup money into a bond issue passed in March. She also worked with Bradbury to pass an anti-stalking bill to protect women after Ventura mother Vicky Shade was murdered by her ex-boyfriend.

As a small-city councilwoman, Sullivan said she knows local needs and issues better than Jackson, who never held a local elective office.

“The weakness I see is [Jackson] maybe not having an understanding of local communities, such as what types of services people want,” Sullivan said. “We’re emphasizing getting our tax dollars back into the local community.”

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So far, the 35th District race has been exceedingly civil--at least at public forums.

Sullivan has spoken primarily about returning property tax dollars, appropriated by the state in 1992.

“That would affect everybody,” she said. “It’s more of a holistic approach to legislation instead of just being involved with special interests.”

Jackson has cited her own efforts in that cause, notably her lobbying of Davis to cap the amount of property tax the state takes from local governments and to return $700 million to local government this year. Davis finally approved a $200-million rebate and rejected the tax cap.

Jackson ranks as her top three accomplishments the Shade anti-stalking bill, a bill that forces the repair or replacement of leaking septic tanks, and a measure that gives teachers a $250 to $1,500 credit on their state income taxes, depending on years of service.

When Davis signed the teacher tax-break bill in July, he wrote on the back of it: “This is the most important bill I’ve signed to date.”

But it is Davis’ vetoes of eight Jackson bills that has caught Sullivan’s attention. And increasingly, the challenger has turned up the heat.

After Davis vetoed for a second time a Jackson bill that would have required distribution of a legal fact sheet to prospective couples, Sullivan said that Jackson was “out of touch with the mainstream values” of her constituents and quoted a part of Davis’ veto message:

“I believe it is presumptuous and in very bad taste to require the county clerk, on the eve of someone’s marriage, to offer a couple a document detailing all of the problems and costs associated with the dissolution of that marriage.”

Sullivan concluded that “perhaps [Jackson] should go back to being a divorce lawyer.”

Before the Ventura Chamber of Commerce, Sullivan also criticized Jackson without naming her, saying that lawmakers who send their children to private schools don’t support public schools.

“I didn’t want to be rude,” Sullivan said later. “But when they’re talking about being strong supporters of public education, I think it’s hard to relate when you’re not putting your own child through the system.”

In response, Jackson said she sends her 16-year-old daughter to a private school because “when she started school our schools were in terrible shape. And each one of us does what we think is necessary for our children.”

Jackson said her support of public education included voting for a huge spending increase this year and her opposition to the Proposition 38 school voucher initiative. Sullivan also rejects Proposition 38.

And both candidates support a woman’s right to an abortion.

But on the issue of gun control, they split.

Jackson backed a bill requiring handgun licensing that included a mandatory course on gun safety. Sullivan said she agrees with Davis that a one-year moratorium should be placed on gun-control legislation. Without the governor’s support, the licensing bill was shelved last session.

If Sullivan sees Jackson as a lawmaker too liberal even for the Democratic governor, Jackson says Sullivan is a candidate with a focus so narrow she doesn’t see the big statewide picture.

“I talk about my accomplishments and my opponent talks about returning money to local jurisdictions and that’s about it,” Jackson said. “There are a variety of issues out there, not just one.”

Sullivan said the return of money to local control is a broad issue that encompasses many others, because once cities and school districts get their money back they can solve problems ranging from crime to health care to overcrowded schools that teach a “one-size-fits-all” curriculum.

“It’s the top of the pyramid that covers every other issue that concerns citizens,” Sullivan said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

35th Assembly District

The 35th Assembly District covers most of Santa Barbara County and the Ventura, Ojai and Santa Paula areas in Ventura County.

Two candidates are trying to unseat incumbent Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara).

Eric L. Dahl

Party: Natural Law

Age: 51

Residence: Goleta

Occupation: Vice president, organizational development and training company

Education: Bachelor’s degree in psychology, Yale University, 1970; master’s in interdisciplinary studies, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa, 1976

Background: Instructor of transcendental meditation and area coordinator, World Plan Executive Council, Pacific Palisades, 1970-72; teaching associate, Maharishi University of Management, 1973-75; governor (of teaching activities), World Plan Executive Council, 1976-80; president, his own Corporate Training Group, Los Angeles, 1980-92; vice president, Stuart Atkins Inc. (management training), Beverly Hills, 1992-present.

Issues: Favors curriculum reform, grades K-12, including fostering students’ creativity and “awakening a lifelong love of learning” instead of an ability to take tests. Favors more preventive health care, stressing educational programs promoting healthful lifestyles--”70% to 80% of all disease can be traced to lifestyle choices.” Favors more clean, renewable energy sources. Would require safety testing of genetically modified organisms. Favors campaign finance reform. Opposes the Proposition 38 student voucher initiative. Favors licensing of handguns. Favors allowing patients to sue HMOs. Supports a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

Personal: Married to Barbara Holdrege, professor of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara, for six years. He has a 15-year-old daughter.

Hannah-Beth Jackson

Party: Democrat

Age: 50

Residence: Santa Barbara

Occupation: Assemblywoman

Education: Bachelor’s degree in government and sociology, Scripps College, Claremont, 1971; law degree, Boston University, 1975

Background: Deputy district attorney, Santa Barbara County, 1975-77; civil law attorney, Santa Barbara and Ventura, 1977-98; assemblywoman, 1998-present; chairwoman, Environmental Safety and Toxics Committee, 1998-present; chairwoman, Select Committee on Coastal Protection, 1998-present; founding member, Santa Barbara Shelter Services for Women, 1975-77; member and former chairwoman, California Commission on the Status of Women, 1977-81; member, governor’s commission on child support, 1981-83; member, state Senate Task Force on Family Equity, 1983-84; founding member, Santa Barbara Coalition Against Gun Violence.

Issues: Favors education reform, specifically ensuring that students are taught basic skills and that improvement is measurable. Would encourage bright students to become teachers by improving teacher training and pay. Opposes the Proposition 38 student voucher initiative. Would make health care available and affordable to everyone by favoring top-to-bottom reforms of the health-care system. Supported giving patients the right to sue HMOs. Favors stronger regional growth planning and has written victim protection and anti-stalking law. Supports a woman’s right to an abortion. Favors licensing of handgun owners. Opposes the Measure O tobacco settlement initiative.

Personal: Married to George Eskin for 19 years. She has two stepchildren and they have a 16-year-old daughter.

Robin S. Sullivan

Party: Republican

Age: 51

Residence: Santa Paula

Occupation: Attorney

Education: Ventura Community College, 1968-69; Woodbury University, Los Angeles, 1978; law degree, Ventura College of Law, 1984

Background: Claims clerk, AAA Auto Club, 1969-72; secretary, Ventura County United Way, 1972-74; escrow officer, three title companies, Ventura, 1974-80; part-time escrow officer, Wells Fargo Bank, 1983-84; manager of escrow division, Ticor Ins., Oxnard, 1984-86; attorney, law partnership with husband, Ventura then Santa Paula, 1986-present; councilwoman, Santa Paula, 1992-present; mayor, Santa Paula, 1997; director, Local Agency Formation Committee, 1999-present; two-term president, Santa Paula Chamber of Commerce, 1990-92; Woman of Distinction, Soroptimist International of Santa Paula, 1996; former board member, Santa Paula Boys & Girls Club; former president, Ventura County Escrow Assn.

Issues: Favors returning property tax dollars from state to local governments and school districts, allowing communities to control funding decisions. Opposes state-required programs that provide no money for local implementation. Favors education reform, especially local control that allows each district to devise a curriculum that meets its needs. Opposes the Proposition 38 student voucher initiative. Supports a woman’s right to an abortion. Opposes new gun-control laws until current laws are tested and enforced. Says she does not know enough to take a position on whether patients should be able to sue HMOs. Opposes the Measure O tobacco settlement initiative.

Personal: Married to John Sullivan, a partner in the couple’s law firm, for 24 years.

35th Assembly District

Note: The district extends west to include most of Santa Barbara County.