ELECTIONS ’88 : Measure A’s Supporters, Foes Battling Down to the Wire : Growth Forces Field an Army of Persuaders

Keith Anderson, well-groomed and polite, was going door to door along a handsome Irvine street. His approach was simple and straightforward.

“I’d like to give you some information on the slow-growth initiative and hope you have time to look it over,” he said. “We hope you’ll vote against Measure A.”

Anderson, a 22-year-old senior at USC majoring in business and finance, is typical of the volunteers working in the high-powered campaign to defeat the slow-growth measure.

Unlike the Measure A proponents, whose numbers include a wide cross-section of voters, the anti-initiative forces primarily have relied on volunteers from businesses that have a direct interest in seeing Orange County’s development pace continue.

Anderson is working as an intern with the Building Industry Assn., which has been heavily involved in the campaign to defeat Measure A. Like many other volunteers, he was asked by the BIA to devote time to the cause.

Says He Believes in It

“I didn’t mind doing it because I believe this slow-growth measure will only make things worse,” said Anderson, who lives with his parents in La Habra Heights. “The solution is not to cut off all the development. People still have to go to work.”

Business and development interests such as the BIA have been the main contributors to the nearly $2-million war chest that the anti-initiative campaign has amassed to defeat Measure A, contrasted with less than $50,000 collected by slow-growth advocates.

If the slow-growth campaign is a low-budget effort, the crusade to defeat the initiative resembles a well-oiled machine.

One need look no farther than the Irvine office of Lynn Wessell, a Los Angeles consultant who is managing the campaign to defeat Measure A.

Inside the low glass offices at the corner of Von Karman Avenue and Michaelson Drive, stacks of literature urging a no vote on Measure A greet visitors, while volunteers and paid staff people work the phones and coordinate the day’s strategy. In all, Wessell said, he had 130 people working at four phone bank centers in Irvine, San Juan Capistrano, Anaheim and Huntington Beach.

This weekend, in a final push before the vote, 700 people will fan out across the county to deliver 300,000 pieces of literature advising people to vote against the initiative, Wessell said.

“The goal is to cover the entire county either by telephone or walking,” he added. By Tuesday, the day of the vote, most registered voters will have been called two or three times.

Between a third and a half of those 700 people are not volunteers but regular staff people hired at $7 an hour.

Still, Wessell contends that he is running “basically a grass-roots campaign.”

Anderson, the USC senior, set out to canvass the Turtle Rock section of Irvine in the early afternoon, accompanied by fellow volunteer Craig Peterson, 19, of Laguna Beach, and two paid workers. The goal was to hit 50 houses per hour, 400 per day.

“I really do feel strongly about this,” Anderson said. “I had another internship while at USC and I worked 2 miles from campus. It took me 30 to 40 minutes to get there, so I know about traffic. It’s a lot worse in L.A. than it is here. I’m really aware of what sitting in traffic is all about and I don’t want it to get that bad here. If Measure A passes, there is the possibility the traffic will get worse.”

Anderson said he is convinced that the measure would send the already high price of Orange County housing through the roof.

“I’m getting married next Easter and I’d like to live in Orange County, but I don’t know if I could,” he said. “It looks like I’ll have to live in Moreno Valley or Riverside. I’d like to live over near South Coast Plaza to be near the interstates and the shopping, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to. We’ve got to have more building to keep the prices reasonable.”

Peterson, a sophomore at the University of Colorado studying international business, said he, too, volunteered after the marketing firm where he works asked employees to spend time in the anti-initiative campaign.

“I just feel that the initiative is not the way to solve the traffic problems,” he said as he straightened his tie before knocking on a door. “Kids are going to continue to turn 16 and get their licenses. There will be more people on the road and more traffic. You just can’t stop it.

“This is a real emotional issue because no one likes traffic, but you just can’t say no to all growth.”