Campaigners Pull Out Stops for Stretch Run

Orange County street corners and vacant lots are crammed with posters, mailboxes are stuffed with campaign literature, 30-second messages fill television and radio waves and thousands of voters are being wooed by telephone.

There’s no mistaking the weekend before an election.

With one more day left till the balloting begins, campaign workers are trying to reach those voters who are only now considering how they will vote Tuesday.

“This is it, this is the weekend most people focus on the election,” said Scott Hart, campaign strategist for Angela (Bay) Buchanan, who is seeking the Republican nomination for state treasurer. The campaign “is in the hands of the gods right now.”

But on Saturday, Buchanan and candidates in a slew of local races in Orange County weren’t leaving the last days of the campaign to chance.

From her Newport Beach headquarters, Buchanan rallied volunteers around the state to walk precincts, delivering about 100,000 red-and-white campaign leaflets to homes. She spent about three hours herself walking from door to door in Orange County, where she enjoys her staunchest support. She spent the morning in Victorville and Hollywood.

In Irvine, meanwhile, where City Councilwoman Sally Anne Sheridan is locked in a bitter mayoral race with incumbent Larry Agran, the two candidates were also spending the day making as many personal contacts with voters as possible.

Agran and hundreds of volunteers began the two-day chore Saturday morning of handing out 35,000 small pots of herbs. The plant giveaway symbolized Agran’s support of environmental issues, he said.

Sheridan, with the help of about 300 volunteers, spent the day hanging campaign literature on doorknobs throughout the city. The literature included a map of the nearest polling place and information about when the polls open and close.

The scene was repeated in other cities, where campaigners for local and state elections will spend thousands of man hours making last-minute appeals to voters.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Donald Tanney predicted more than half a million people will vote in the county Tuesday, about a 50% turnout, although some campaign officials predicted that the turnout would be closer to 40%. There was a 49% turnout in the last June primary in 1988.

In the closely contested district attorney’s race, incumbent Michael R. Capizzi on Saturday sharply criticized a mailer urging residents to vote for any of his rivals. The form letter, which attacks Capizzi’s performance in office, is “absolute, total nonsense,” Capizzi said.

The letter, mailed to an unknown number of county residents, carried a signature of Lawrence S. Krain, a dermatologist whose license to practice was suspended in 1984 and who agreed to enter a psychiatric hospital in lieu of serving a jail term. Krain is not listed in the phone book, and could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Capizzi, who was appointed to the post in January, faces three challengers from his office: Deputy Dist. Atty. Tom Avdeef; Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James G. Enright; and Assistant Dist. Atty. Ed Freeman.

Incumbent Orange County legislators face no serious challenges, except perhaps Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) in the 70th District, which extends from Newport Beach through most of South County. Ferguson is facing an under-funded campaign by Phyllis Badham, the 30-year-old daughter of Robert E. Badham, former Newport Beach congressman.

Badham insists she will win, and promises to talk about the need for campaign finance reform once she does. However, most political observers in the county figure Badham can’t win without reforming her own campaign finances a couple of hundred thousand dollars upward.

Other campaigns may not have been memorable, but they had their moments.

In the 72nd Assembly District--which includes parts of Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Westminster, Stanton and Anaheim--there was the debate in a Mexican restaurant between Democratic contenders Jerry Yudelson and Tom Umberg. Over the din of a bridal shower party downstairs, the two candidates traded insults, barbs and accusations, and found themselves face to face, jabbing fingers at each other, with the startled audience wondering who would throw the first blow.

No one did. At the end of the debate, with the party downstairs getting even louder, Yudelson walked over to Umberg and handed him a boxed Burger King Whopper--as in a “whopper” of a lie.

Umberg didn’t bite.

The winner, or survivor, of that race will take on freshman Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) in November.

In the 58th Assembly District--the only open seat in the county and therefore the race with the most contenders--two of five Republican candidates received developers’ money at fund-raisers hosted by city or county planning commissioners, then insisted there was only a “sleaze factor” at the other candidate’s event.

First, Huntington Beach Mayor Thomas J. Mays said businessman Peter von Elten was beholden to special interests after two county planning commissioners hosted a dinner attended by developers and lobbyists.

The next day, Von Elten gleefully noted that a Mays fund-raiser was held at the home of a city planning commissioner and was attended by at least one developer with a major project pending in Huntington Beach. Von Elten called Mays “the biggest hypocrite” he had ever encountered.

Also running in the Republican primary in the 58th District, which extends from Huntington Beach to Long Beach, are Long Beach City Council members Jan Hall and Jeff Kellogg, and Long Beach physician Dr. Sy Alban.

On Saturday, the three-year-old California Family Planning Political Action Committee offered a last-minute endorsement of Alban, saying he is the only candidate in the Republican primary who advocates abortion rights.

The winner will take on Democrat Luanne Pryor in November.

Perhaps the most exciting race in terms of daily developments and open disagreement on issues has been the battle for mayor in Irvine.

There, Sheridan claims that Agran is out to destroy her “personally, professionally and politically” by attacking her real estate activities on behalf of city employees and Irvine Co. officials.

Agran, meanwhile, was found to have obtained campaign office space in a local hotel owned by an Agran contributor at the daily rate of $6.50 per room; the rooms would otherwise have gone unused, hotel owner J. Michael Ray explained, and the same deal was available to any candidate. All they had to do was ask, Ray said.

By comparison, the county supervisors’ races have been quiet and uneventful. Supervisor Thomas F. Riley’s opponent, Peer A. Swan, dropped out of the race the day after he filed papers to run. His name, however, still appears on Tuesday’s ballot.

Board Chairman Don R. Roth is facing Christian Basquette, who hasn’t actively campaigned beyond spending a couple of thousand dollars to get on the ballot.

Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, however, faces four challengers--Westminster Councilwoman Joy L. Neugebauer, Seal Beach activist Marie Alexis Antos, Huntington Beach businessman John Harper and Sunset Beach businesswoman Sonia (Sunny) Sonju. Wieder has raised far more money than all four challengers together.

Times political writer Dave Lesher and staff writer James M. Gomez contributed to this story.