Same Foes in Supervisorial Race, but Less Heat This Time Around

With election day just weeks away, one of the highest-profile races in Orange County this fall -- the rematch between Patricia Bates and Cathryn DeYoung for the county’s 5th supervisorial district -- is generating little of the rancor that characterized it in the first round this year.

Voters may recall the acrimonious spring campaign, in which the two sides combined spent more than $3 million in hopes of winning the board seat -- setting a county record and possibly a national one -- only to wind up in a fall runoff. Bates, a former assemblywoman, garnered 44.3% of the vote. DeYoung, a former Laguna Niguel mayor, received 37.6%.

This time, neither side is spending at such a furious clip and fewer fliers have been landing in voter mailboxes.

There is less emphasis on hot-button issues, such as illegal immigration, which dominated the first round.

At the end of September, DeYoung’s campaign had less than $40,000 in cash on hand, even after she lent $315,000 of her own money to the fund.

Bates, by contrast, had nearly $250,000 in cash, including a $100,000 personal loan. The biggest revelation so far has been DeYoung’s release of a voicemail message from Supervisor-elect John Moorlach threatening to endorse Bates if DeYoung campaigned against a ballot measure to extend supervisorial term limits (the measure was withdrawn; Moorlach endorsed Bates anyway).

The real action in Orange County may well be the ballot measures. Voters are being asked to re-approve the half-cent-on-the-dollar sales tax that pays for transportation projects and road improvements, a proposal that faces an uphill battle in notoriously anti-tax Orange County.

Meanwhile, Anaheim, Dana Point and Newport Beach will consider limiting the use of eminent domain, and Santa Ana and Villa Park will consider altering term limit restrictions for city council members.

Also in Newport Beach, voters will decide on possibly the most controversial of the fall initiatives, a slow-growth measure that would strictly curtail development in the city.

The outcome of the south Orange County supervisor’s race, both hopefuls being Republican, will not change the political makeup of the board.

The winner will replace Tom Wilson, a mild-mannered Republican who is leaving because of term limits, maintaining the board’s 4-1 GOP advantage. But it could change the tenor of board meetings, where board rebels have rarely been able to gather enough votes to challenge the status quo.

Bates has cast herself as the experienced front-runner, a stateswoman with the knowledge and instincts that make her the better choice for the board that manages the county’s business. She has the endorsement of virtually the entire Republican establishment.

DeYoung has been the fiery challenger, confronting Bates on virtually every issue, and has poured millions of her own money into a largely self-funded campaign.

Since illegal immigration policy was a national attention-getter earlier this year, it also came to dominate the spring supervisor’s race, though local officials have little say in enforcement. Now, with that on the back burner, the issues in the runoff are more closely tied to the district itself -- mostly white, affluent coastal turf stretching from Newport Beach to the San Diego County border.

DeYoung has been focusing on environmental protection, particularly water quality in the district, and highlighting endorsements from the Sierra Club and local environmentalists such as heiress Joan Irvine Smith.

While Bates’ supporters accuse DeYoung of desperately tacking left to pick up Democratic votes, her campaign manager, Stuart Mollrich, rejected the notion that campaigning on the environment was a move to the left.

DeYoung has also voiced vehement opposition to a proposed 12-mile tunnel through the Santa Ana Mountains to help inland residents commute more easily to job-rich Orange County. Bates, by contrast, has lent initial support to the concept, saying it should be studied further.

The biggest front that has emerged in DeYoung’s attack has been Bates’ acceptance of campaign money from tobacco and oil interests while in Sacramento, which she has imported to her campaign here, and her support from vested county interests such as the union representing sheriff’s deputies, which have sent out campaign mail on her behalf.

On that point, Bates’ campaign points out that DeYoung has accepted donations from the county’s firefighter and deputy unions. For her own part, Bates is staking out the fiscal prudence turf, saying she wants to focus on repairing the county’s troubled finances in its pension and retiree medical plans.

The biggest initiative battle brewing is Measure M, which would produce $12 billion over the next three decades for investments in transportation infrastructure. A broad swath of the county’s elected and business leaders are hoping voters will re-approve the half-cent sales tax that funds the projects. But even though it has the support of the Republican establishment, it faces an uphill battle among county voters. It took three tries before voters adopted the tax in 1990, with 55% approval. This time around, it will need at least a two-thirds majority.

Another big fight is developing in Newport, where resident advocates are pushing for a measure -- opposed by much of the city’s establishment -- rejecting a city plan to allow development that they fear would create too much traffic. The measure’s opponents say it is full of holes, creating an exemption for half the property in the city, including land owned by the Irvine Co.

In Santa Ana, voters are being asked to impose an eight-year cooling-off period for termed-out City Council members before they are eligible to run again. Opponents say the measure should have included term limits on the mayor, who currently faces none. By contrast, voters in Villa Park are being asked to reduce that cooling-off period, from a lifetime ban to a two-year time-out.

In Anaheim, Dana Point and Newport Beach, voters are being asked to pass measures restricting local government’s power of eminent domain to take property from a private party and transfer it to another private party for commercial development. The measures, prompted by a controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision last year allowing such transfers, are among a raft of such local measures nationwide that have proved popular with voters. Opposition to the three Orange County measures is absent except for a token effort in Anaheim.

christian.berthelsen@latimes.com