Unions Go to Work to Stop Measure F

Union activists are mobilizing behind the fight to defeat an anti-El Toro Airport measure as the campaign enters its final two weeks with both sides focused on pivotal undecided voters.

Unions oppose Measure F on the March 7 ballot but to date haven’t campaigned against it. That changes this week, with appeals to 35,000 union households countywide. Union leaders are painting Measure F as a job killer: If passed, it would require two-thirds voter approval for airport projects, large jails and hazardous waste landfills, effectively crippling needed public works projects.

Union activists declined to discuss specific strategies or budgets. But the effective methods they’ve employed in other campaigns are known: phone banks, person-to-person appeals and mail targeted to loyal members.

“We are a grass-roots army,” said Mike Potts, business representative for the Allied Orange County Building Trades Council. “We’ll be firing up our machine.”

Measure F opponents have an uphill battle, according to a recent poll commissioned by the Times’ Orange County edition. A slight majority of likely voters--56%--said they favor the measure, while 18% opposed it. Key to the outcome will be the 26% of voters who are up for grabs.

Most of the undecided voters are from North County, which has been ambivalent at best about the proposed airport. North County is key to the election, however, because it is home to 70% of the population.

The unions’ involvement has a single goal: to engage its members against a measure that many have ignored. By energizing a new group of voters, Measure F foes hope to tilt the outcome, seen by both sides as too close to call.

That strategy could pay dividends in a tight election, said Sal Russo, political consultant with Russo Marsh & Rogers in Sacramento, which isn’t involved in the El Toro battle.

“You need to have some emotion [to encourage turnout] and the emotion is with the anti’s,” he said. “It’s a fear of loss that motivates people. In the south, that’s easy for them to see. In the north, it’s much more difficult, much more theoretical.”

About 8 in 10 South County residents oppose the county’s plans to build an international airport at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, which closed in July. Voters countywide approved the airport in 1994 by a slim margin, then rejected an attempt two years later to rescind the earlier vote.

Supporters of Measure F, meanwhile, stress in direct mail appeals and cable television advertisements that the ballot initiative is the only way to protect the public from an overbearing county government set on building unwanted projects despite the objections of the people most affected by them.

The union involvement will backfire, they predict, because voters will see it is a payoff for the Board of Supervisors’ decision last month to hand unions 85% of future public works projects for the next five years, including the $2.8-billion airport.

“This isn’t a union issue, it’s a voters-rights issue,” said Jeffrey Metzger, a Laguna Hills attorney and chairman of Citizens for Safe and Healthy Communities, the main group supporting Measure F.

“If union members are fair-minded and look at both sides, they’ll realize that we have the right message,” he said.

Measure F supporters have surpassed the $1-million mark in fund-raising, Metzger said, and plan to counter whatever arguments are raised by measure opponents.

So far, the bulk of the spending against Measure F has come from Orange County millionaire George Argyros, who has spent more than $2 million promoting the airport since 1994.

Bruce Nestande, chairman of Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, the group Argyros formed in 1994, declined to say how much more money Argyros would commit to the campaign.

There are 440,000 frequent voters in Orange County--out of 1.1 million total voters--and sending a piece of mail costs between 40 and 60 cents each.

That’s about $250,000 per mailing, he said.

“They’ve been outmailing us 3 to 1 and it’s hard to cut through the clutter,” Nestande said. “But we’ll be competitive.”

Latino union activists said they will spread the message that the measure would make it tougher to relieve overcrowding at county jails, most located within blocks of ethnic neighborhoods in Santa Ana and Orange.

Another worry is that passage could force more cities to build jails, since the measure only limits actions by the Board of Supervisors on county property.

Arturo Montes, with United Latino Democrats, said Latino voters have largely ignored the airport issue.

But he predicted they will respond to the argument that the central county area already bears the brunt of the county’s jail population.

“Why should we become the bedroom community for hard-core convicts?” he said.