Candidates on the Attack : Primary: Contenders in both parties are closing their campaigns by dishing out dirt about opponents.

One candidate compares her rival for a seat in Congress to a wart hog. Another blasts her primary opponent as a “traveling political consultant.” One Assembly candidate is portrayed as the puppet of “fanatic right-wing” groups. Others are painted as too soft on crime.

Over the last two weeks, as months-long Ventura County campaigns have prepared for Tuesday’s primary election, these images have been delivered to voters in a rash of flyers and brochures and radio and television ads.

For many of Ventura County’s 320,665 registered voters, those images--candidates on the attack, candidates with families, candidates citing issues--will provide voters their only glimpse of the campaigns.

In most races, candidates are spending freely--encouraged by open seats created by once-a-decade redistricting and new limits on the number of terms state legislators can serve.

Several veteran officeholders in the county have either shifted to new districts or are running for higher office. That has forced them to reach a new set of voters.

Many candidates--aware of the success of negative campaigns elsewhere--have chosen to leave voters with a final impression not only of their own virtues but of the warts of their opponents.

“In the past there was always what we called the 11th Commandment, which was that you don’t do things dirty to fellow Republicans in the primary,” said Bob Larkin, a veteran Ventura County Republican Party official. “But it certainly has been on the dirty side this time. In the last few years, the negative campaigns, the smear tactics have moved into Ventura County.”

Four state and federal primary races have been notable for their aggressiveness.

Working an anti-incumbent theme, Republican congressional candidate Daphne Becker is portraying her opponent, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), in a television ad as a wart hog feeding at the trough of perks provided to incumbents in Washington.

Democrat Anita Perez Ferguson, who hopes to defeat environmentalist Kevin Sweeney and face Gallegly in the fall election, distributed last week a flyer describing Sweeney as a “traveling political consultant . . . a political insider . . . from outside our communities” who is “just passing through Ventura on his way to his next campaign.”

A mailer by Oxnard Mayor Nao Takasugi in the 37th Assembly District Republican primary depicts conservative opponent Alan Guggenheim as a businessman who has written $250,000 in bounced checks and who is supported by “fanatic right-wing groups.”

Guggenheim has mailed a brochure that pictures only Assembly Speaker Willie Brown on its cover and asks: “Which candidate for State Assembly does Democrat Willie Brown NOT want you to vote for?” A Takasugi spokesman said the flyer is racist because the only reason to show Brown’s face is to point out that he is black.

And in a bitter battle to determine who will replace veteran state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), both Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) and former Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette, recently have hammered at each other with mailers that attack the integrity of the other.

“This is the period when the majority of people make up their minds,” said La Follette, who has sent five of her seven mailers in the last two weeks after infusing the campaign with $199,000 of her own money.

Big money has made its way into several Ventura County races as some candidates have dug deep to send out their message.

In addition to La Follette, Becker is spending $100,000 of her own money, 24th Congressional District candidate Bill Spillane has loaned himself $300,000, and Republican oil magnate Michael Huffington is spending more than $2.3 million against Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura) in a new congressional district encompassing Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

Large special-interest contributions have also returned to fuel high-cost campaigns after court decisions this year struck down limits on donations in state races.

Even those involved in the campaigns say they sometimes wonder if the last-minute mailers, which cost $25,000 to $30,000 in state legislative races, are altogether productive.

“I couldn’t believe how much campaign mail I got yesterday. They call it ‘crazy Thursday’ when all the mail hits,” La Follette campaign manager Martha Zilm said Friday. “Not only did I get three pieces from Cathie (Wright), I must have gotten a dozen pieces. People are probably overwhelmed. Or they just scoop it up and throw it in the trash.”

In many cases, the flyers reveal a clash of candidate styles that are indicative of overall campaigns, though the latest brochures tend to be more strident and biting.

For Becker, 50, an Ojai businesswoman who had never run for office, her closing media blitz in the 23rd Congressional District race is indicative of her tactics throughout the campaign against Gallegly. The newly drawn district covers Carpinteria and all of Ventura County except Thousand Oaks.

In April she interrupted a Chamber of Commerce speech by the congressman, who has refused to debate her, to say that he had lied about the impact that illegal immigrant families have on welfare roles.

Now she is airing her hog commercials.

While most candidates have favored direct mail over television, Becker is spending about $30,000 on radio and television spots that assail professional politicians in a “do-nothing Congress” in general and go after Gallegly by name in an ad that features a black hog with white tusks noisily having a meal.

Gallegly, an off-screen narrator says, has “feasted on the perks of office” and “voted himself a $35,000 pay raise at a time when our country’s economy was falling apart.”

Becker has bought air time for 2,000 spots on six local AM and FM stations and 2,000 spots on KADY-TV and nine cable channels. The cable spots are cheap at $48 for 30 seconds, and radio ads cost a maximum of $28 a minute, according to her campaign.

Most candidates say that cable television’s share of the audience is far too low to convey their messages, especially to specific groups such as frequent voters and those who requested absentee ballots.

In her ads, Becker also contrasts her position supporting women’s right to an abortion with Gallegly’s opposition to abortion except in cases of rape or in life-threatening emergencies.

Gallegly has raised nearly $400,000 but is saving most of it for what he considers to be his real challenge this year--the November general election against either Sweeney or Perez Ferguson.

The congressman said Friday that he’s convinced that Becker’s attacks have made his primary race easier.

“It has certainly played to our advantage,” Gallegly said. “Most people don’t like negative ads. And several people have called to say they’ve seen something or got something in the mail from this lady. They said they were definitely not going to support her and wanted to know more about our positions.”

Candidates revert to negative ads if “they have very little to sell themselves,” he said. “It’s an act of desperation.”

Gallegly has sent four mailers this month--two of them letters of endorsement from Lagomarsino and President Bush. He is also running a 60-second radio ad that emphasizes his law enforcement support--including endorsements from Sheriff John Gillespie and Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury.

“Our campaign is pretty much on track,” Gallegly campaign consultant Ben Key said.

By contrast, Sweeney and Perez Ferguson, both liberal Democrats, are engaged in an intense campaign with no clear favorite. Both said they plan to spend $70,000 to $80,000.

Sweeney, a onetime press secretary to former Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart of Colorado, has distributed three flyers over the last month. He has not mentioned Perez Ferguson in his mailers and insists that he waged a positive campaign.

“Is it possible to tell the truth, and still get elected?” he asks in a recent mailer.

Sweeney, however, did file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission this month, accusing Perez Ferguson of breaking campaign and ethics laws by failing to repay a questionable $4,000 contribution taken in 1990, not promptly reporting her candidacy to authorities and failing to file her personal financial disclosure statement.

Perez Ferguson’s campaign manager, Sam Rodriguez, said Sweeney’s complaint was an example of “political dirty tricks.”

Perez Ferguson, a former aide to state Sen. Gary Hart (D-Santa Barbara), has saved her resources for the final days of the campaign.

“You can’t just send out mailers for the sake of sending out mailers,” Rodriguez said.

After a contentious series of debates, both Sweeney and Perez Ferguson said their final mailers would be positive and issue-oriented. And, in general, Perez Ferguson’s campaign has focused on the need for more jobs and opportunities for the poor and minorities.

But a Perez Ferguson flyer released last week depicts Sweeney, a three-year Ventura resident, as a political transient.

“Everything we have is documented. We used his own words,” Rodriguez said. “We wanted to present Kevin exactly as he really is.”

But Sweeney called the flyer, mailed to all district voters who participated in the last three elections, “a negative hit piece.”

Nels Henderson, chairman of the Ventura County Democratic Central Committee, said he has been disappointed by the campaign’s negative turn.

“I was hoping that the campaign would end up being more about the issues,” he said. “Unfortunately it’s denigrated into this. . . . And without naming any names, it’s obvious that there’s one candidate who’s waged a more negative campaign than the other and one that’s been raising issues.”

The seven-candidate race for the open 37th Assembly District seat has been no less contentious, especially between two of the apparent front-runners. The new district includes the cities of Camarillo, Moorpark, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, and Thousand Oaks.

Takasugi said he intends to spend up to $150,000 to win the seat being vacated by Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), who is running for Congress.

In recent flyers, the Oxnard mayor has aggressively poked what he considers the soft spots of the well-funded Guggenheim, a Newbury Park financial consultant.

In a new flyer titled “Conservative Republican Alert,” Takasugi notes that Guggenheim, a native of France, has voted in only one election. “Now he wants to vote for you in the state Assembly.”

Takasugi also raises again the issue of Guggenheim’s bounced checks in 1987 and his links to arch-conservative groups such as the National Rifle Assn. “Even his campaign staff are on loan from out-of-town fanatic right-wing politicians,” it says.

Guggenheim, who expects to spend $110,000, said he is the victim of a “sleaze and whispering campaign” that has focused on his nationality and the spreading of misinformation.

“It is really dirty,” Guggenheim said of a Takasugi flyer. “It’s basically lies. And coupled with the attacks being made by phone, telling people they should not vote for me because I’m an immigrant, has really touched a nerve.”

For example, Guggenheim said that two checks totaling $250,000 were returned to him by his bank, but that the checks were not cashed because of admitted mistakes by bank managers. He said he had enough money in accounts at the same bank to cover the checks.

Takasugi’s campaign manager, John Davies, said his campaign has never mentioned Guggenheim’s nationality. And Davies characterized a Guggenheim mailer sent out 10 days ago as “one of the most racist pieces I’ve ever seen. He uses Willie Brown’s photo to show that he’s a black man.”

The Guggenheim flyer, which has Brown’s picture on its cover, states that “Willie Brown hopes we cannot replace Assemblyman Tom McClintock with another strong Conservative Republican. . .because (Brown) knows that he can manipulate a Liberal Republican to support his Pro-Tax agenda.”

Guggenheim said it never occurred to him that he would be condemned as racist for reproducing Brown’s picture on his flyer.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “What it means is that you cannot attack a liberal any more if he’s black, and that makes no sense to me. . . . Willie Brown is the symbol of a liberal who is running the Assembly, so for me he’s the target.”

Willie Brown also has become an issue in the 19th state Senate District race between Wright and La Follette. The district covers a large swath of the county, including the cities of Camarillo, Fillmore, Moorpark, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley.

“Strong enough to stand up to ‘Willie Brown liberals’ in Sacramento,” says one La Follette mailer.

And Wright referred to Brown when reprinting a letter of endorsement from the California Republican Assembly.

“The Republicans needed a chief GOP budget negotiator to do battle with Speaker Willie Brown. . . . They chose Cathie Wright.”

In fact, Wright’s relationship with Brown has been a point of contention in the campaign. La Follette has blasted Wright for her alleged alliance with Brown, a San Francisco Democrat. She charged that Wright is indebted to the Democratic leader because he called a Ventura County judge on behalf of Wright’s daughter, who was facing jail time for her traffic violations.

Wright said she never asked Brown to call the judge and denied having any special relationship with Brown, the Democrat that Republicans love to hate.

“It’s a working relationship,” Wright said. She said one cannot be a lawmaker in Sacramento and not work with Willie Brown.

Brochures mailed last week reflect the continuing bitterness between Wright and La Follette, old rivals in the Assembly.

Wright criticizes La Follette, who retired from the Assembly in 1990, for leaving the Legislature when law enforcement was “under attack from liberals everywhere.”

“When law enforcement needed Marian La Follette most, Marian La Follette quit,” say the boldly printed letters in the brochure. Wright also criticized La Follette for writing a letter to a Ventura County judge in 1982 supporting the release of a drunk driver involved in a fatal crash. “Marian La Follette begged the judge to free the killer,” the flyer said.

In response, La Follette said that she left the Assembly less than two years ago to take care of her husband, who was dying of cancer. She said she supported the release of a reformed drunk driver who had rehabilitated himself and became a productive member of the community.

And La Follette counterattacked in a flyer on Thursday, restating her support from a number of law enforcement agencies and stating that the California Journal had given Wright a grade of F in its 1990 and 1992 rankings of legislators’ integrity.

In fact, Wright’s integrity was rated poorly by the politics journal this year, but it never was categorized by letter grades such as Fs. La Follette said Wright ranked 73rd among 80 Assembly members on integrity. Her true ranking was 66th.

Both Wright and La Follette have circulated letters of praise from Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren. But Lungren has endorsed neither.

Despite the vitriol of recent flyers and comments to reporters, both La Follette and Wright--whose voting records as conservative Republicans are similar--say they have run clean campaigns.

“The image I want voters to have is that I am a person who is concerned about people,” La Follette said.

Wright spokesman John Theiss said that “our strategy from the very beginning has been to run a positive campaign based on the issues.”

Fillmore Councilman Roger Campbell, a third candidate in the Republican primary race, said his low-key, low-cost campaign has had the positive appeal his opponents have only talked about.

“We’re dealing with the issues and solutions in our flyers,” he said, “something different than you’ll find in flyers from my opponents.”

Times staff writers Ron Soble and Carlos V. Lozano contributed to this story.

Voter Turnout

% Voter % Voter Primary Election County Statewide Turnout Turnout June, 1976 74.0 72.6 June, 1978 70.6 68.9 June, 1980 69.5 63.3 June, 1982 52.1 52.7 June, 1984 43.9 48.7 June, 1986 38.5 40.5 June, 1988 44.9 48.2 June, 1990 39.9 41.5

Source: Ventura County registrar of voters