COUNTY ELECTIONS / THOUSAND OAKS : Winslow Is Running Hard, Says His Checkered Past Is Behind Him

Campaign flyers in hand, Thousand Oaks City Council candidate Lance Winslow was sprinting down Sorrelwood Court. Sprinting, as in, running really fast. As in, exuding energy from every pore. As in, exhausts you just to look at him.

Like some kind of cartoon character, Winslow, 30, campaigned through the Westlake neighborhood at an impossible speed, dropping flyers and smiles on every resident he encountered.

“I guess it’s kind of like time sharing--exercise and polling,” said a bemused Priscilla Robinson, looking up from the brochure Winslow had just handed her to watch him dash down the street.

With plans to hit every household in Thousand Oaks on foot before the June 6 special election, Winslow will be expending a great deal of his considerable energy in the next eight weeks.

“No one else is going to go to that end house and knock on the door,” Winslow boasted, pointing up Tamarack Street.

As the youngest candidate in the council race, Winslow is banking on his vigor, enthusiasm and ability to run a mile in less than five minutes to woo voters. He also has a healthy amount of name recognition, thanks in part to the mobile carwash business he owns and operates in Thousand Oaks.

Winslow also owes his name recognition to a sketchy financial past that came out during the 1994 council campaign, a past involving bounced checks, speeding tickets and serving time in jail for both.

While washing cars in a Westlake parking lot on a hot spring day recently, he explained that he spent about 15 days in jail in 1988 for bouncing payroll checks to employees, then the next year served 20 days after allowing traffic tickets--including an exhibitionist ticket for doing a wheelie on a motorcycle--to go unpaid.

“Ah, you learn things,” Winslow said, spraying down a white Mercedes. “Anyone who has ever gotten a speeding ticket should vote for Lance. Or how about anyone who has ever sped should vote for Lance.” He laughed.

“I guess it’s really not funny,” he added. “But I have to look back and laugh or I’d cry.”

The time spent in jail hurt him during the fall campaign, in which he finished ninth out of a field of 16, as did accounts of a hit-and-run accident in 1992. Winslow pleaded no contest to charges he left the scene without identifying himself to the motorcyclist he had sideswiped. Additionally, a Municipal Court judge found him delinquent on payments of a 1986 loan and ordered him to start making payments.

Winslow said his checkered history is behind him now.

“I see that . . . as totally insignificant,” he said, drying off the Mercedes with a brown towel. “People said, ‘Oh you got to watch his integrity.’ That’s a crock. Maybe what I should do is take a class in how to lie like the rest of these politicians.

“Everybody has got something in their closet,” he added. “Mine’s already out, so I don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

He protests that people should give him equal credit for good deeds he said he has done, including transporting 12,000 gallons of water in his fleet of carwash trucks to Northridge in the aftermath of last year’s quake, or stationing the trucks near threatened homes during the Green Meadow fire in 1993. Winslow also takes credit for starting the area’s Neighborhood Mobile Watch Program.

He said he has raised money for charity in the past five years, mostly through carwash fund-raisers at local high schools.

Raised in Camarillo, Winslow graduated from Rio Mesa High School and earned two associate degrees, one from Ventura College and one from Oxnard College. He moved to Thousand Oaks soon after.

“As soon as I graduated I moved up the hill,” he said. “I like it better here.”

He likes Thousand Oaks so much, in fact, that he has taken on the role of informal booster for the place.

“Where you from?” he asked one woman who opened her door to him and said she wasn’t registered to vote because she had just moved to Thousand Oaks. “New Jersey? You’re going to love it here in Thousand Oaks.” Then he handed her a voter registration card and sprinted off, Levi-clad legs pumping down her walkway.

Coming upon a quiet cul-de-sac, Winslow waved his arms above his head.

“See, this is what everyone in Thousand Oaks wants, a nice neighborhood,” he said. “You know, everyone talks about how we’ve got to stop the Conejo Valley from turning into the San Fernando Valley, but I don’t think it will. I just don’t think it can happen.”

His confidence in the city is matched only by his confidence in himself.

“I would be such a great council person because I’m so approachable,” Winslow said. “I guess I’m very disarming.”

Possessed of an extremely friendly nature, Winslow seems to have a fleeting relationship with a phenomenal number of people in Thousand Oaks, or at least those with dirty cars.

An average front-doorstep conversation between voters and Winslow goes something like this: “Hi, I’m Lance and I’m running for City Council,” Winslow says. “Hi Lance,” the voter says back. “I know who you are! You’re the carwash guy.” Friendly chuckles and hearty handshakes ensue.

“He is a real good entrepreneur,” regular customer Judy Linton said, watching Winslow yank a hose of his truck to wash her car and her husband’s car. “He’s a good example of somebody trying really hard to make a living.

“He’s got a great attitude and a great smile,” she added. Recently Winslow encountered one roadblock to his perpetual perkiness--divorce from his wife of nearly four years, Leslie.

“She was in search of a party and I was in search of excellence,” he said with a rare sigh.

He drives his truck--fire engine red with stars and stripes painted on its hood--around town all day, poking his head into offices to ask if anyone needs a wash. In car-conscious Southern California, he has hit upon what seems like a gold mine. In the course of 90 minutes he offered carwashes to 13 people. All but three said yes.

Winslow started his business at age 12. He used to hang around Camarillo Airport, eager to become a jet pilot like his father, and eventually plane owners started offering him $10 a week to wash their planes once a week. Eventually a way to earn spending money as a teen-ager evolved into a business with trucks in 39 cities from Cincinnati to Provo, Utah. Winslow collects $25 a day from a total of 53 operators in those cities for use of the name, Car Wash Guys.

It was the business that first brought him in contact with the Thousand Oaks City Council. Concerned that mobile carwash operators were polluting the environment, Councilwoman Elois Zeanah proposed that car washers drive the car onto a plastic mat, wash it, then suck the mat dry with a vacuum hose. Her proposal became a city ordinance, despite Winslow’s frequent protests at council meetings.

The ordinance still irks him. He received a ticket last year for not using the mat and fought the $110 fine for months. Even now, he doesn’t use the mat and said he will fight any future tickets on the grounds that the ordinance is unfair to small business owners.

Which side he would fall on in the frequently split council is unclear, he said. There are some issues he agrees with Zeanah and Mayor Jaime Zukowski, but on others he finds himself siding with council members Andy Fox and Judy Lazar.

Although he vows to offer support and advice to small business owners if elected, he said he does not have a pro-business platform, or any platform for that matter.

“Maybe I’m too confident about this,” Winslow said. “But I don’t think I need one.”

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FYI

Voters in Thousand Oaks go to the polls June 6 to elect a fifth member of the City Council to replace Frank Schillo, who stepped down after being elected to the county Board of Supervisors. This is the first in a series of profiles The Times is running on the six candidates.