ELECTIONS VENTURA CITY COUNCIL : Patagonia Endorses Villeneuve, Bennett

Patagonia Inc., which helped push three slow-growth candidates to victory in the 1989 Ventura City Council race, endorsed two slow-growth candidates Thursday for this year’s race.

Incumbent Deputy Mayor Donald Villeneuve and write-in candidate Steve Bennett won endorsements from Patagonia, ending speculation about whether the Ventura-based clothing maker would take an active role in this year’s council race.

With pro-growth and slow-growth factions already lined up on opposite sides, local politicians were waiting for Patagonia to make its move.

In the 1989 council race, Patagonia ran advertisements and mobilized hundreds of precinct walkers to take the slow-growth message to potential voters.

This year, the company again will ask its 350 employees to volunteer for door-knocking duties on the candidates’ behalf, said Paul Tebbel, a Patagonia spokesman.

The company is also offering the two candidates use of its buildings and cafeteria for campaign functions, but neither free food nor photocopying is part of the deal, he said.

Patagonia has not decided whether it will buy advertisements for Villeneuve and Bennett, Tebbel said.

The impact of Patagonia’s endorsements on the 1991 council race will depend on what the company winds up doing, said Carolyn Leavens, a spokeswoman for the pro-growth Venturans for a Responsible Government.

“If they put the tremendous amounts of bucks behind it and the people, if they take all the Patagonia employees and get them involved in the election as they did last time, it could be significant,” Leavens said.

“They played a very, very heavy role in the last election that was far heavier than the dollar investment showed, because they had all their employees involved,” Leavens said. “It’s not quite kosher, but on the other hand, they seem to be able to get away with anything they want.”

The Chamber of Commerce’s political committee spokesmen were out of town at a convention and could not be reached for comment.

Tebbel said the company’s endorsements will not carry as much weight this year as they did in 1989, when three Patagonia-backed slow-growth candidates fought a loud, heavily financed battle against five pro-growth candidates. Of those five, only incumbent Councilman Jim Monahan won election--by a narrow margin.

“This time, it seems like everybody’s more on the same keel,” Tebbel said. “It doesn’t seem like any of the candidates are spending an extraordinary amount of money, and we’re not seeing the blizzard of ads we did last time.

“Grass-roots work is going to win this election,” Tebbel said. “Getting out to talk to people, telephone banks, that kind of thing.”

Villeneuve said Patagonia’s endorsement is important. But he said it carries no more weight than the endorsement that he received from the Ventura County employees’ union--the 6,000-member Public Employees Assn. of Ventura County (AFL-CIO Local 998).

“They’re out walking the precincts too, and they run their own telephone banks,” he said.