ELECTIONS / 23RD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT : Primary Races Marked by Strong, Often Combative, Personalities : Democrats: Sparks fly as Anita Perez Ferguson and Kevin Sweeney each use personal attacks as a key part of their campaigns.

Holding up a box of Bold laundry detergent, congressional candidate Anita Perez Ferguson was ready to mock her Democratic rival Kevin Sweeney’s message that he would offer bold leadership if elected.

“So what is bold leadership and who is the bold candidate?” she asked the audience in the Camarillo union hall, opening the carton to reveal nothing inside. “It’s simply empty rhetoric.”

Sweeney, in turn, stood up to attack Perez Ferguson for a letter sent out by her campaign director warning influential Democrats that “the Kevin Sweeney campaign is about to engage in an assault of distortions, innuendoes, half-truths and outright lies.”

The letter, he told the audience, “is absurd on its face. They can’t find any lies I’ve told. So what they do is talk about the lies I might tell.”

Ultimately, the exchange of political barbs became too much for Roz McGrath of Camarillo, a Democratic Assembly candidate seated in the audience. She rose and in a quiet voice addressed both candidates like a mother gently scolding her children.

“I just want to say as a Democratic candidate, I feel really bad that both of you have come to this point,” she said. “I hope that this other stuff will stop because I really have a lot of faith in both of you.”

Although Democrats see this year as one of their best chances in decades of winning a House seat representing Ventura County, the two candidates have begun trading blows rather than saving their strength for a tough battle with a Republican in November.

Perez Ferguson, 43, of Oxnard, an education consultant, and Sweeney, 33, of Ventura, an environmentalist, are competing in the June 2 Democratic primary in the 23rd Congressional District that includes Carpinteria and all of Ventura County except Thousand Oaks.

The winner is expected to face Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), a three-term congressman, in the general election--although in this chaotic election year even Gallegly says he cannot take the primary for granted.

Gallegly said that normally he does not like to comment on a Democratic primary. But the Perez Ferguson-Sweeney fireworks have caught his eye too.

“It’s always unfortunate when candidates digress to being personal,” he said. “I really believe when candidates start doing that it’s a sign of their own weakness.”

Although Perez Ferguson is engaged in a combative campaign with Sweeney, she is also looking ahead to a bitter battle with Gallegly. Her radio ads, for instance, attack the incumbent.

Gallegly “should be fighting to save our jobs” instead of voting for a pay raise for House members, a narrator says in one radio spot. The ad also criticizes him for using the congressional mailing privileges to fund mailers to voters in the new district earlier this year. Gallegly dismisses the ads as political rhetoric.

Sweeney has also taken aim at Gallegly’s voting record on a wide variety of issues.

Sweeney, who spent most of his three-plus years in Ventura as public affairs director for Patagonia Inc., an outdoor clothing firm, has underscored that he takes a back seat to no one as an environmentalist.

“I’ve been a real leader in this state and in this country in the environmental movement,” he told the labor gathering in Camarillo.

Yet, Sweeney, after a personal lobbying effort, could not get the endorsement of the Sierra Club--one of the nation’s most influential environmental groups.

Seven votes were required on the 10-person executive committee of the group’s Los Padres Chapter, which covers Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, to confirm a Sweeney endorsement. But chapter chairman Tim Frank said Sweeney fell short of the needed votes. “It was a question of whether we wanted to take action in the primary or not,” Frank said. Perez Ferguson did not get an endorsement either, he said.

“I’m not disappointed,” Sweeney said. “I don’t consider it an embarrassment in any way. Endorsement politics are a thing of the past.”

Meanwhile, Sweeney has challenged Perez Ferguson’s ability to manage her campaign’s finances. In a letter to federal election authorities earlier this month, he complained that she continued to violate campaign laws for failing to return an illegal $4,000 contribution that she accepted in her 1990 campaign.

Perez Ferguson said the cash would be repaid to a Puerto Rico-based business group if her attorney tells her to do so. Furthermore, she said the complaint has “backfired” because it is a non-issue.

Sam Rodriguez, director of Perez Ferguson’s campaign, suggests that a better issue is Sweeney’s hollow promises of bold leadership in Congress.

“He said ‘bold’ 22 times,” at a Moorpark College debate, Rodriguez said. “We have it on tape.” Rodriguez proudly displays a picture of his candidate holding up the empty box of Bold at the recent Camarillo debate.

In the final days before the primary, both candidates expect to spend at least $70,000 in an effort to woo voters. Both have volunteers walking door-to-door. And both are making as many appearances as they can squeeze in at gatherings for coffee at private residences and the like.

“We have enough money to run a good campaign,” Sweeney said.

He noted that he has raised cash from about 150 people, partially relying on former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart’s 1984 and 1988 contributor lists to Hart’s presidential campaign. Sweeney was a field organizer in Hart’s 1984 campaign and his press secretary in 1988.

Thus far, Sweeney has used the donations to finance three mass mailings, largely targeting absentee voters who already have received their ballots.

“I feel very good about the campaign,” he said.

Perez Ferguson’s organization is waiting until the final week before the June 2 primary before sending out mailers, Rodriguez said.

“It’s going very well,” Perez Ferguson said, reflecting on her campaign. “Just in the last two weeks we’ve picked up steam with local support.”

Still, the spirited campaign has dismayed those who admire both candidates, including Malinda and Yvon Chouinard, co-owners of Patagonia.

“We certainly never foresaw such an unpleasant situation,” they wrote in a recent note to Perez Ferguson. “Having two people we feel personally enthusiastic about running against each other makes us very sad.”

CANDIDATES QUESTIONNAIRE: B4