ELECTIONS / THOUSAND OAKS COUNCIL : ‘Citizens to Save Our City’ Group to Stay Out of Candidate’s Campaign

Linked to harassing phone calls to candidate Trudi Loh and rebuked by the candidate it chose to support, Thousand Oaks’ Citizens to Save Our City is backing down from its plans to wage an active campaign for June’s special election.

A police investigation this month tied at least one suspicious call made to Loh, a City Council candidate, to a key member of the pro-business political group, James Lee Henson.

On Tuesday, Mike Markey, the candidate the group had picked to back in the special election to fill a council vacancy, asked Citizens to Save Our City to stay out of his campaign.

Though Markey said that he had decided to publicly disassociate himself from the group before he knew of the harassment allegations, he said that the charges confirmed his desire to refuse the group’s support.

“There is a negative stigma attached to them and I don’t want it attached to my campaign,” he said.

Members of the group said they would honor his request. They have also written letters of apology to Loh, stressing that they did not condone Henson’s behavior. Henson has since left the organization.

Loh said she began receiving harassing phone calls in December, shortly after she was first discussed as a possible candidate for the empty seat. In some instances, the caller simply hung up. In others, the caller made offensive, though not threatening, statements.

She consulted detectives in the East County Sheriff’s Department and followed their instructions to install a call-back feature on her telephone. On Feb. 28, she arrived home after a City Council meeting at which she asked her fellow candidates to sign a clean-campaign pledge.

Loh said the phone was ringing when she walked in the door. When she picked it up, the caller hung up. Using the call-back feature, Loh traced the call to Henson’s home.

On Thursday, Henson said he called Loh’s home only the night of Feb. 28. He has since written an apology to Loh, in which he explains that he called her to challenge her on the clean-campaign pledge, then thought better of it and hung up. He said he was not trying to harass her.

“I was kind of ticked off and I decided that I was going to call her and let her know,” Henson said in an interview. “But I’ve always been taught to back away from a fight, so I hung up. This is something everybody has done. That doesn’t make them a criminal.”

Henson said he discussed the incident with detectives and believes the matter is closed.

But a Sheriff’s Department detective confirmed that a request has been filed with the Ventura County district attorney’s office for a misdemeanor warrant. He declined to identify the suspect in the case. Because making harassing phone calls is a misdemeanor, he said, sheriff’s deputies cannot make an arrest without witnessing the crime.

No information on the warrant was available from the district attorney’s office.

Henson said he has dropped out of the pro-business group.

“That was my decision,” Henson said. “It’s because I have other things in my life that I need to take care of.”

Brian Collier, the co-founder of Citizens to Save Our City, confirmed that Henson has left the group.

“I didn’t tell him I wanted him out,” Collier said. “But I don’t really care to have him participate.

“What Jim Henson did is reprehensible behavior,” he added. “I was very upset when I heard about this. I won’t tolerate that kind of activity.”

Collier and former Planning Commissioner Mervyn Kopp, also a member of the group, both wrote letters to Loh apologizing for Henson’s actions.

Loh said that the harassment has ended, and that she is satisfied with the results of police action.

“I received apologies from the people responsible,” Loh said. “In the interim I have been told that former supporters are disassociating themselves from the group. I think we have effectively put the pressure on them and we can return to sane campaigning in this community. Now only time will tell.”

The pro-business political group formed in the last few weeks before the fall election and spent $7,000 campaigning against Councilwoman Elois Zeanah’s slate.

Since then, Citizens to Save Our City, led by Collier, had selected Compton police detective Mike Markey as its candidate for the crucial fifth seat on the council, seeing him as a swing vote on many issues on which the current council is likely to deadlock.

Collier had vowed to raise and spend thousands of dollars to promote Markey’s candidacy while aiming negative publicity at his opponents, particularly Loh.

But at Tuesday night’s council meeting, Markey took steps to disassociate himself from the group, branding their support more a hindrance than a help.

“I did not at any time solicit their support,” Markey said during the public comment period. “Nor did I accept it.”

He even suggested that Citizens to Save Our City should back out of the election season altogether. “I truly believe it would be in the best interests of the city if they did not participate at all in the campaign,” Markey said.

In an interview Thursday, Markey said he did not know about the police investigation of Henson when he made the request at Tuesday’s meeting.

“I heard somebody called her,” Markey said. “I didn’t know it was him.”

Both Collier and the group’s co-founder, Raul Guttierez, said Citizens to Save Our City will comply with Markey’s request.

“As far as I’m concerned, we’ve got nothing to do,” Guttierez said. “Mike is perfectly capable of running his show. As far as what we do, it is not up to him. But it is very much up to him if he wants our help or not and he was very clear about it.”

The group will not pick out another candidate to support, Guttierez said, nor will it focus negative campaigning on Loh.

“Of course not, absolutely not,” Guttierez said. “Why should we?”