ELECTIONS / VENTURA CITY COUNCIL : Business-Backed Candidates Sweep to Victory in Race

In a dramatic rebuff to two years of slow-growth politics in Ventura, three pro-business candidates swept into office on the Ventura City Council Tuesday, led by 33-year-old native son Greg Carson.

Carson, a fifth-generation Ventura resident, was followed by personnel consultant Jack Tingstrom, 56, and labor attorney Tom Buford, 43, on the victorious slate backed by the Ventura Chamber of Commerce.

With slow-growth incumbent Deputy Mayor Don Villeneuve, 60, winding up in fourth place in final, unofficial returns, many local politicians said the pro-business win was the result of a poorly organized slow-growth ticket going up against a professional, well-financed pro-business campaign.

Slow-growth write-in candidate Steve Bennett came in fifth in the voting, followed by Jamie Stewart-Bentley, the only woman in the race.

“This shows that the sentiment of the voters is that they want to see a positive business environment come back to the city and a balance brought back to the City Council,” said Tingstrom. “They want a more humanistic type of city government, one that can get along.

But Villeneuve blamed his defeat on an anti-incumbent fervor fueled by Ventura’s lagging economy.

“What’s happening is people are upset because the economy has stalled and there’s high unemployment,” he said. “They’re disappointed, angry and frustrated and who do they take it out on? The people in office, whether they’re guilty or not.”

The victory by Carson, Tingstrom and Buford could tip the philosophical balance of the City Council toward pro-business and away from slow-growth, where it has remained for two years since three slow-growth candidates were swept into office in the 1989 election.

Patagonia spokesman Kevin Sweeney, who helped engineer the slow-growth victory in 1989, said that the pro-business candidates outspent and outgunned the slow-growth movement. He said the slow-growth movement failed to put together a solid ticket this year, leaving only the incumbent and a write-in candidate to face a well-tuned pro-business campaign.

“I think last election a lot of people were angry with the council’s pro-growth attitude and came out to vote,” Sweeney said. “This year, the people that were against slow growth were the ones who came out and voted.”

There was no official tally of the number of votes for Bennett, 41, because write-in ballots must be hand-counted, a process that could take until next week, officials said.

However, Bruce Bradley, assistant registrar of voters for Ventura County, estimated that between 85% and 90% of the write-in ballots cast will be for Bennett, the only registered write-in candidate.

The winners of the election will be sworn in Dec. 2. The new council then will elect one of its members to serve as mayor.

Carson, Buford and Tingstrom were backed by donations and advertisements from the Ventura Chamber of Commerce and a pro-business coalition of ranchers, bankers and merchants called Venturans for Responsible Government.

Carson often chafed at support from Venturans for Responsible Government, saying he disliked its ads for attacking the City Council and blaming the council for the city’s lagging economy.

Carson owns the Mound Nursery on Telegraph Road.

Buford is a labor attorney who shares office space with attorney and now-lame duck Mayor Richard Francis.

Tingstrom is a personnel consultant who owns a Camarillo company called Gallant Solutions.

Bennett ran a strong campaign with backing from slow-growth groups, Patagonia Inc. and the Ventura police and firefighters’ associations.

Villeneuve also was backed by Patagonia and a variety of slow-growth and environmental groups.

The incumbent Villeneuve was running with a built-in advantage--hours of TV exposure in City Council meetings televised every Monday night on cable.

But local politicians say the air time also served as an impairment when Villeneuve got into arguments with pro-business Councilman Jim Monahan and when he made several unpopular remarks.

Villeneuve once said, “Ventura can’t remain a cow town forever,” while discussing the need for a state university campus in Ventura County. A year earlier, he had vetoed a plan to locate a campus at the Taylor Ranch just outside Ventura.

The remark stuck with him. It spawned an anti-Villeneuve newspaper ad published Monday that pictured the deputy mayor astride a raging bull whose hindquarters he had just branded with the letter V.

Campaign spending in the 1991 council race has rivaled the expensive race of two years ago, which at the time was the most costly council race in Ventura’s history.

In 1989, Patagonia shoveled thousands of dollars into advertising for the three slow-growth candidates it was backing, to oppose a slate of five pro-growth candidates who were bankrolled by a group of Orange County developers.

In that election, voters elected slow-growth candidates Cathy Bean, Todd Collart and Gary Tuttle by nearly 2-1 margins, along with pro-business Councilman Jim Monahan, who finished a distant fourth.

This year, contributors gave nearly $100,000 to the campaigns of the 18 candidates. Final contribution reports are due in January.

Carson raised the most money, taking in $24,331, while Bennett raised $17,199. Buford amassed $16,850 in contributions and Villeneuve took in $13,000.

The other candidates in Tuesday’s election included:

Alan Berk, 40, a photographer and sales representative; Donald R. Boyd, 53, a maintenance machinist; Keith Burns, 45, an author and book publisher, and Louis J. Cunningham, 47, an operations manager for the Ventura Unified School District.

Andrew M. Hicks, 29, a store clerk; Kenneth Vernie Jordan, a retired Army sergeant who has been absent at nearly all the candidate forums, and Marcum Patrick, 30, a mortgage banker and landlord who led opposition to mandatory earthquake-proofing for unreinforced masonry buildings downtown.

Brian Lee Rencher, 31, a business administration student;John T. Sudak, 30, an advocate for children and the homeless; Bob van der Valk, 50, who owns three service stations; Carroll Dean Williams, 49, a perennial gadfly at Ventura City Council meetings, and Stan R. Wyatt, 60, a general engineering contractor.

Times staff writers Santiago O’Donnell, Joanna M. Miller, Christopher Reynolds, Daryl Kelley, Gary Gorman and James E. Fowler contributed to this story.