Local Voters Still Leaning to the Right

Like the nation as a whole, Ventura County bared its conservative soul in Tuesday’s election, favoring President Bush and showing its colors as anti-tax and a bastion of support for law enforcement.

It also sent a Republican to Congress for the 30th straight time since World War II.

“The soul of Ventura County reemerged,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), who was easily elected to a 10th congressional term.

“This is a conservative county, not necessarily by party registration, but historically,” he said. “Voters here are very parochial in protecting their community. And crime and taxes affect Democrats as much as Republicans.”

County voters resoundingly rejected two high-profile local ballot measures -- one for transit improvements and the other to buy permanent open space -- that together would have added three-fourths of a cent to the county sales tax.

Both measure needed two-thirds’ voter approval to pass.

Neither received even a simple majority.

“It was a shock,” said Jim Engel, spokesman for the Measure A open space campaign. “All of our polling showed that our worst-case scenario was [support] in the low 60s. This was more a matter of tough and uncertain economic times. I know there still is overwhelming support for open space in Ventura County.”

Measure A got only 49% of the vote, and transit tax Measure B received just 40%.

“People were just not in the mood to be taxed,” said Keith Millhouse, an environmental attorney who directed the campaign for Measure B.

“They feel the tax money they already pay isn’t wisely spent. We bore the stigma of Washington and Sacramento,” he continued.

Local voters were similarly frugal on statewide propositions, opposing tax increases in greater proportions than Californians as a whole.

They opposed a phone tax for emergency medical services by a 3-to-1 margin, rejected a tax on millionaires to fund mental health services and only marginally backed the sale of bonds for children’s hospitals and stem cell research.

They also lined up behind law enforcement to defeat limitations on the state’s three-strikes law, which can put triple felons in prison for life, and to force felony crime suspects to give DNA samples to police for entry in a database.

“Many of us came to Ventura County because we wanted a safe place to live and work,” said Dist. Atty. Greg Totten. “And Tuesday we were among the highest counties for ‘no’ votes in the state on limiting three-strikes.”

Despite a historic opposition to new taxes, Ventura County voters showed their family orientation by approving school bond measures in the Hueneme district with 76% support and in Fillmore with 70% approval.

Bonds to build two schools also passed in the Oxnard High School District with about 64% approval.

Education bonds require a 55% majority for approval.

County schools Supt. Charles Weis said he was not surprised that other tax measures failed as all three school bond measures passed easily.

“People are trying to pinch every penny, and we in Ventura County are very fiscally conservative,” he said. “But we know that investing in our schools is the best investment we can make.”

Tuesday’s election was marked by the highest voter turnout in Ventura County since the 1980 presidential election, with nearly 78% of registered voters, or 310,000, casting ballots.

About 94,000 ballots, including 84,000 absentees, still had not been counted by Wednesday.

About 25,000 of the absentee ballots were turned in Tuesday at the polls.

An additional 10,000 voters cast provisional ballots when their names did not show up on precinct rosters.

“Voters certainly were motivated this time,” said county elections chief Gene Browning.

The results tended to follow party lines in the county. For president, Bush edged Democrat John Kerry 50.6% to 48% in preliminary results.

That reflects the Republicans’ advantage of about 3 percentage points in voter registration countywide.

Almost without exception, voters picked incumbents to serve another term. That was expected because the 2000 redistricting created safe seats for most officeholders in Congress and the Legislature.

Victories also reflected the differing politics of Ventura County’s mostly Republican east end and its primarily Democratic west end.

In the affluent suburbs of the east county, Gallegly, a former Simi Valley mayor, breezed past Democratic challenger Brett Wagner with 62% of the vote. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara), whose district includes part of the west county, received about 64% in defeating Republican Don Regan.

Veteran state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) received about 61% of the vote in defeating neophyte Democratic challenger Paul Graber, a history teacher.

In one of the state’s most expensive Assembly races, Santa Barbara attorney Pedro Nava, a Democrat, was defeating Republican educator Bob Pohl by about 6 percentage points, pending the count of thousands of absentee ballots in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

Meanwhile, Republican Audra Strickland of Moorpark, the wife of termed-out Assemblyman Tony Strickland, captured her husband’s seat by defeating teacher Ferial Masry by 13 percentage points.

Masry, who qualified as the Democratic candidate through a write-in campaign, gained international attention because she would have been the first native Saudi Arabian to win public office in the U.S.

In a local race tinged by ethnic politics, Supervisor John Flynn won a record-tying eighth four-year term with a nearly 9-percentage-point win over Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez.

Some Latino activists targeted Flynn, 71, for defeat after he failed to honor his pledge to retire in 2004.

The fiery incumbent not only won another term, but he also helped his son, Tim, win a seat on the Oxnard City Council.

“I hit almost every door in Oxnard,” the supervisor said. “And when people told me they were voting for me they’d always add, ‘and your son, too.’

“I wouldn’t say it’s a dynasty,” said Flynn, first elected to the powerful county board in 1972. “But I also don’t think people here look at the color of a person’s skin when determining whether to vote for them.”