Izzy under assault

Nevada County Supervisor Izzy Martin started seeing her own likeness show up on anonymous political mailers a couple months before the March primary.

“Supervisor for sale?” asked one postcard, suggesting that she’d done favors for a major donor. Underneath Martin’s photo, a short message suggested she had accepted an illegal amount of money from a “corrupting influence” and had approved development plans in return. On the flip side, an invoice on fake county letterhead—complete with Nevada County seal—showed a payment from a donor for the purchase of Martin. In the middle of the invoice, dated the day of the March primary, was a photo of Martin stamped with the word “PAID.”

Martin laughed off the charges, but more of the crudely made pamphlets followed after the primary. One vaguely implied that Martin’s past included drug use, naked dancing and child abuse, but the majority suggested favorable treatment of a donor in exchange for campaign contributions.

Most were addressed to Martin’s donors, many of whom were listed along with their addresses on public campaign-finance forms.

But where the mailers were coming from, nobody knew.

Martin’s supporters suspected a pair of political operatives connected with her opponent. Martin had become something of a regular target for conservative groups because of her preservationist stands.

Martin, 45, is nearing the end of her first term. She represents Nevada County’s Fourth District, the county’s westernmost, which includes the rural foothills west of Grass Valley where she owns an organic farm. She’s also in the political fight of her life.

“They are personal attacks on us,” Martin said somewhat ruefully one day, just before heading out to the field to pick flowers she’d sell at a farmer’s market the next day. Martin didn’t want to talk much about how the salvos made her feel personally, but she did say she’s had to explain angry roadside signs to her children and that the attacks didn’t sit well with her husband.

The mailers were the start of what would be a turbulent year in Nevada County politics, in which Martin took more than her fair share of lumps. Up in the Sierra foothills, where quiet forests and historic Gold Rush-era towns now attract wealthy emigrants from California’s sprawling suburbs, the influx of flatlanders has increased demand for growth and has shaken up local politics. And, as calls for preservation of pristine land clash with demands for development and economic growth, Martin has found herself in a nasty street fight for her political survival in which she has endured name-calling, recall efforts and those mailed hit pieces.

Four years ago, she and another supervisor, Bruce Conklin, each defeated conservative incumbents, tilting the board for the first time to a 4-1 majority interested in making sure the county’s growth did not come at the expense of its quiet, rural atmosphere. As rural preservationists, they aimed to steer growth into established areas and avoid plopping new subdivisions onto farmland. It didn’t go over well with some county residents.

The board is a non-partisan office, but, in recent years, Nevada County races have become bitterly contested and exceedingly partisan affairs, pushed by the growth issue.

The 1998 shift in the board enraged conservative property-rights groups, developers and business groups. The new board further angered those groups by successfully lobbying state lawmakers to preserve the Yuba River and, later, by creating Natural Heritage 2020 (NH2020), a plan that would, in its own words, “develop a comprehensive strategy to identify, manage and protect natural habitats, plant and animal species, diversity and open space resources in the county.” In simpler terms, the plan would create a map to guide growth for the next 20 years.

NH2020 was modeled on a similar plan in Placer County, where citizen participation made it popular. Nevada County supervisors wanted to do the same thing: gather public input at workshops and open meetings instead of having a planner create the document in-house.

Open or not, it didn’t fly with staunch property-rights supporters who saw NH2020 as a roadblock to development. Opposition arose among groups that warned of condemnation of land by county bureaucrats.

The chief opponent of the new majority on the board was a local business group called CABPRO, the California Association of Business, Property and Resource Owners, which cast Martin as a kind of ringleader.

“Izzy caused ire,” CABPRO executive director Margaret Urke said. “She created resentment with a lot of people.”

Martin’s opponent this fall is Robin Sutherland, an unassuming political novice who garnered an impressive number of votes in the primary. Sutherland is bright-eyed and businesslike in public, but she also seems a little unsure about how to perform now that she’s been thrown into the crucible of a high-stakes race played out in front of a watchful public. She can come across as the kind of nice lady you’d meet at a church barbecue or behind the reference desk at the library, but she’s not shy about lashing out at her opponent. Sutherland has backup, too: the eager support of CABPRO, local Republicans and several property-rights groups.

Conservatives are drooling at the prospect of defeating Martin and Conklin. So much so, in fact, that an argument about how best to defeat Martin led to an actual brawl among three Republicans at a Central Committee meeting last month.

Meanwhile, Martin’s supporters were doing their best to unmask the sender of last year’s mysterious hit pieces.

On her farm in the rolling foothills, Martin hardly appears to be such a menacing figure. As the August sun sank behind the oak trees to the west one day, Martin and her daughter Yara, 7, grabbed buckets and went out to the field to pick flowers. Martin’s husband, Mike Pasner, and her son, Jake, 11, were out picking sunflowers already.

Martin and Pasner own and operate a small organic farm at the end of a long, unpaved road near the tiny hamlet of Penn Valley. It was here that they built their own home.

Martin can be much more steely than her credentials as an organic farmer with a soft spot for Mother Earth may suggest, but she allowed that the often-bitter opposition does get to her at times. Harsh words have shown up in the letters section of The Grass Valley Union, a small daily that covers the western half of the county and doesn’t mind running ad hominem letters. Some barbs have been over the top, like one comparing her to terrorists. One critic, she said, equated her with “the people who crash airplanes into buildings” because of her preservationist stances.

Rather than the eco-terrorist she’s been called, Martin sees herself as much more of a centrist. After many years as a registered Democrat and a brief stint as a Green, Martin is now a “decline to state” voter. She promotes herself as a fiscal conservative who rescued the county’s poor bond rating by working to turn the county budget around. And, rather than being anti-growth, Martin said she wants the county to grow, just not in a way that destroys its character.

Martin loves to talk policy. She wasn’t shy about diving into complex public-policy issues in a long interview. In a candidate’s debate, she threw her knowledge of land-use issues, the budget, and other intricacies of county government out there in a way that dared anyone else to take her on.

Even though supervisors voted this summer to kill NH2020, the plan still serves as a rallying cry for conservatives who desperately want to regain control of the board. And those foes are doing their best to keep NH2020 alive as an issue, charging that supervisors will resurrect the plan after the election.

On the farm, Martin said she knows that watchful opponents are just waiting for her to slip up. She points to a rusty old 1959 Ford truck her husband fixed up and still uses for hauling. Even though it never leaves the farm, Martin said, “that truck is registered and licensed because, if it wasn’t, it would be in the local newspaper.”

Driving up to Nevada County, the dreary suburban sprawl that lines miles of Highway 49 in Auburn gradually gives way to fields and rolling, oak-studded hills. Crossing the county line, there’s a hard-to-miss sign of the county’s deep divisions. It is, literally, a sign, several feet tall, emblazoned with an unsubtle message: “No NH2020.” It gives the name of a property-rights group and contact information. This sign and others like it are planted all over the county, along the freeway between Nevada City and Grass Valley, in small towns and on the quiet, rural road leading to Izzy Martin’s house.

Since NH2020’s demise, many have been modified with a green addendum that warns: “It’s alive!”

Next to one of these signs at the county line, an elderly man with a drill added a sign that proclaims: “Still Alive!” Bill Forcum works for two local property-rights groups: Citizens for Responsible Government and Citizens for Property Rights in Nevada County (called CPR). He is confident that the candidates backed by CPR will win. “When they do, we’ll get our county back from Izzy Martin and the socialists,” he said.

Forcum is bitter. “She’s the one that instituted this NH2020, which is taking away all our property rights,” he said. Forcum’s concerns and charges echo those of his colleagues in the property-rights movement.

But county officials say NH2020 never included plans to rezone, restrict or condemn property.

There were more signs across the street from the county fairgrounds where Martin and her family sold produce and flowers at a recent Saturday morning farmer’s market beneath towering ponderosa pines. At the booth next to Martin’s was an old friend and fellow farmer who first showed Martin and Pasner the 33-acre farm they bought in 1986. Two guys playing bluegrass music plucked away nearby.

As people dropped by Martin’s booth for tomatoes or an eggplant, Martin greeted most by name. The market is also a place where constituents can ask questions or make complaints. “Sometimes there’s a line of people waiting to talk,” Martin said. “Everyone knows where to find me.”

Martin’s great grandparents were 19th-century farmers in what’s now the City of Oakland, and she grew up on a walnut orchard in Concord. She watched the small farm town transform into a sprawling suburb, and the experience still colors her efforts to keep sprawl at bay and preserve farmland.

Martin graduated from UC Davis with a degree in environmental policy analysis. Then, she worked in Washington for the U.S. General Accounting Office. “I know how to read a budget,” she said flatly.

Long before she became a public figure, Martin spent nearly two decades learning the political process behind the scenes.

Martin founded the California Alliance with Family Farms in 1980, which works to promote organic farming and has pushed for tougher pesticide laws. Through her work, Martin allied herself with legislators and key staffers in Sacramento. A young aide named Fred Keeley, who worked with Martin’s former roommate, used to sleep on her floor rather than make the long drive back to Santa Cruz. Martin knows how to arm-twist some of her old friends in the Capitol: Senator John Vasconcellos (D-San Jose) loves tulips. Senate President John Burton (D-San Francisco) loves daffodils. Assembly Speaker Pro-Tem Fred Keeley (D-Santa Cruz) loves sweet peas.

Those Sacramento connections, Martin proudly said, helped her secure $130,000 in new funding for county mental-health services, although state funds for every other county were cut during this year’s budget fiasco.

Since her election to the board, Martin has taken a special interest in mental-health issues, especially since an unstable gunman killed three people in Nevada City in January of 2001. One of the workers slain at the county mental-health clinic was a longtime friend of Martin’s.

Though Martin had experience in politics, she didn’t plan to see her name on a ballot. But, through a string of improbable events, Martin became a write-in candidate and won her seat by defeating conservative incumbent René Antonson.

Ironically, Antonson helped defeat himself. Though Antonson is a staunch conservative, he’s also fiercely independent. When Antonson was elected in 1994, he appointed Martin to the planning commission. Antonson said it angered fellow conservatives, but he felt Martin was well qualified. When Antonson ran again in 1998, he dismissed Martin from the commission for supporting his opponent, Nancy Kiel (Martin denies having backed Kiel). Suddenly unburdened of her allegiance to Antonson, Martin joined the Kiel camp. Then, Kiel became seriously ill a few days before the election, and Martin stepped into the race as a last-minute write-in candidate. Martin and a local attorney both bested Antonson, and Martin won the November runoff by just 188 votes.

As a supervisor, Martin used her political savvy to push for preservation with a move that provoked conservatives. During her first year in office, Martin led an effort to preserve the Yuba River when a local water agency wanted to build a dam on the northern edge of her district. Relying on political skills built during years of lobbying in Sacramento, Martin tried to block the dam by getting state legislators to confer “wild and scenic” status on 39 miles of the river. But Assemblyman Sam Aanestad (R-Grass Valley) and Senator Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City), the county’s representatives in Sacramento, opposed that plan, so Martin approached green-friendly Senator Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto). The bill passed and became law. Property-rights advocates and some landowners were furious because the new status would make it harder to build along the river.

The next year, supervisors embarked on NH2020. Perceived as the ringleader behind the project, Martin bore the brunt of the criticism thrown at the board by property-rights advocates. One activist even put up signs around the county as part of a recall effort against Martin, but it died when backers couldn’t gather enough signatures.

“It was 120 days of ugly signs,” Martin said, allowing that it brought a personal strain. “People believed it was their right to be as rude as they wanted to be. My husband has always supported me, but it was a huge trial. It’s hard to watch your wife be treated like that.”

This summer, as the battle over NH2020 threatened to overshadow everything else, supervisors unceremoniously killed the effort. As this year’s election nears, opposition mobilized by NH2020 was keeping the issue alive.

The opposition was led by Drew Bedwell, who created an organization called Protect Your Property Rights to sink the measure and is now running against Supervisor Conklin. Bedwell reportedly said at one candidates’ forum that the United Nations was connected to NH2020. Bedwell declined an interview request for this article, but he told SN&R in January 2001 that he feared the county was planning to use NH2020 as an excuse to find endangered species on private property and then condemn the land for conservation easements. (County planners say they weren’t doing anything like that.)

One of the biggest regrets of her tenure, Martin said, was not doing better community outreach regarding NH2020.

Asked about a possible resurrection of the measure, Martin pronounced unequivocally that “it’s dead.”

A lack of outreach or not, the debacle of NH2020 may have been somewhat preordained in a county with increasing growing pains. Nevada County, which stretches from the Central Valley to the Nevada state line, includes just three small municipalities: Grass Valley, Nevada City and Truckee. Most residents live in unincorporated areas. The county’s population has tripled in the last 30 years to 93,000, and state projections predict that it will be home to more than 133,000 residents by 2020. Along Nevada County’s southern border, Placer County is California’s fastest growing county, home now to 258,000 and expected to hit 407,000 by the year 2020.

Given all that forecast growth, land-use issues seem likely to dominate local politics in coming years.

“The area has gone through a dramatic change,” said Tim Duane, a professor of urban planning at UC Berkeley. “Many people moved there for a better quality of life, with open space, good schools and small-town character, but they also want to maintain that atmosphere.” Duane, who grew up in Grass Valley, recently authored a 600-page tome on Nevada County called Shaping the Sierra: Nature, Culture and Conflict in the Changing West. (He is also a donor to Martin’s campaign.)

After a period during which supervisors didn’t sweat the environmental impacts of development, suddenly a new board came along in 1998, Duane said, and the rules changed overnight. The property-rights revolt followed. “Like many parts of the Sierra, Nevada County has a contingent of very extreme private-property-rights advocates, and they feel threatened by the very idea of anyone telling them what they can do with their land.”

But the divisions aren’t as simple as they appear.

Political rhetoric tends to be extreme, Duane said, “but it’s not newcomers versus old-timers, or liberal versus conservative, or environmentalist versus developer.”

Martin agrees. Whether newcomers are liberal or conservative, many moved up to the foothills because it’s a nice place, so they’re supportive of rural preservationists, she said, offering herself as proof. Republicans hold a 46 percent to 32 percent registration advantage over Democrats among the county’s 60,000 voters. “People here walk into the polls, and they vote for George Bush for president, and they vote for Izzy Martin for supervisor,” she said.

In mid-September, Martin hosted a fund-raiser in downtown Nevada City. The event featured performances by beat poet icon Gary Snyder and famed Scottish fiddler Alastair Frasier, who both live in Martin’s district.

Joey Jordan, Martin’s volunteer fund-raiser and events coordinator, met arrivals with a hug. “That’s how we do politics up here in Nevada County,” she said. Four years ago, Jordan didn’t know Izzy Martin. Then her phone rang. It was someone phone banking for attorney Jeff Ingram, Martin’s opponent in the runoff. “They told me not to vote for Izzy because only lesbians vote for Izzy,” she remembered. Incensed by the smear, Jordan called the Martin campaign and volunteered to help.

Outside the fund-raiser, Marty Pezzaglia was smoking unfiltered Camels. He’s a retired merchant marine chief engineer who learned hardball politics as a union organizer. Pezzaglia, a friend of Martin’s, isn’t on the campaign payroll, but he’s doing opposition research on her opponent Sutherland, Bedwell and CABPRO.

Pezzaglia is trying to unmask the sender of the hit pieces—something in which he has a personal interest. One mailer showed a picture of Pezzaglia next to a paragraph that made Martin sound corrupt, giving the appearance that the charges were from Pezzaglia. The mailers did not have a name or return address on them, except one. It listed a non-existent group, Nevada County Citizens for Ethical Government, along with an e-mail address that belonged to someone named Bob Finch. Pezzaglia e-mailed the address and got a reply that came through an Internet provider in Chico. The response urged contributions to René Antonson.

Pezzaglia was sure that Finch was someone named John Gillander, a Chico political operative who is a friend of Sutherland’s former campaign consultant, David Reade. Gillander, according to Chico’s assistant city attorney, has a past conviction in Chico for distributing pamphlets illegally.

The mailers in Nevada County also took shots at Michael Funk, who owns a natural-foods distribution center called Mountain People’s Warehouse. Funk is Martin’s biggest donor. The mailers showed Funk’s house and gave his address. To unmask Bob Finch, a name Funk’s lawyer could not find in the phone book or any public record, Funk filed a harassment suit against Finch. The suit sought to establish his identity by subpoenaing records from the Chico Internet service where the e-mail originated.

Inside the fund-raiser, Martin took the stage to adoring applause.

“Protecting this place has guided my work as a volunteer, activist, planning commissioner and county supervisor,” she said. “This campaign is really about fighting for the place that we love. We are not fighting change, because we know change is inevitable. This fight is to protect our home … and we’re girding our loins for the struggle we know is coming.”

Snyder, the bespectacled Pulitzer-prize winner with silver hair and beard, read an unpublished poem about the history of Nevada County, including recent political skirmishes and Martin’s ascent. It included a different take: “I have a hunch that the old-timers and the nature-loving newcomers are more united than it seems.”

The old-timers, at least as represented by the groups of Martin-and-Conklin foes that are also girding their loins, would seem to disagree.

Dumping Martin is their highest priority, and CABPRO is leading the charge. The group is dues-funded, but it won’t disclose how much money it has, who its members are or how many members it has. Working with its own spinoff political-action committee, CABPRO is backing Sutherland, who is a member.

“We’re working to replace business-unfriendly supervisors,” said CABPRO’s Urke.

CABPRO isn’t the only player trying to restore the board’s conservative majority.

Much to the horror of the area’s environmentalists, lumber giant Sierra Pacific Industries, the largest private landowner in the state, is funding and training Sutherland and Bedwell. So far, the company has given Sutherland $2,700, including $500 for Sutherland to attend a daylong candidate-training class. (Local tree huggers also are alarmed that SPI is funding and training county supervisorial candidates in several other counties in the Sierras and North Coast. Lobbying reports show SPI handing out checks in Shasta, Calaveras, El Dorado, Plumas, Tuolomne, Humbolt and Siskiyou counties.)

Sutherland slipped when she didn’t report SPI’s training (she later filed amended disclosure reports). But that wasn’t her only image problem. During the primary, word got out that Sutherland had declared bankruptcy, had skipped property-tax payments and had only voted in the county once. In August, after months of questions, Sutherland wrote an editorial in The Union in which she said the bankruptcy and unpaid taxes were the result of “a divorce and a poor business deal.” Sutherland also wrote that she wouldn’t talk about the issues ever again. County elections records confirm that Sutherland voted only once in the county before her name appeared on the ballot.

Ironically, the darling of the private-property-rights types makes a living by specializing in something they despise: taking private property for public use. Sutherland owns a small consulting firm that specializes in school-site acquisition. Before that, Sutherland said she ran the real-estate program for the state Office of Public School Construction.

Nevertheless, Republicans are eagerly backing Sutherland. They’re so eager, in fact, that René Antonson’s write-in candidacy is causing a well-publicized rift.

At a September 11 Republican Central Committee meeting, Antonson got the cold shoulder when he asked fellow Republicans to back him over Sutherland. The meeting turned into a heated argument when another member, Greg Saghezzi, said Antonson should drop out because he would hurt Sutherland’s chances. Antonson and his wife, Janet, walked out. Saghezzi followed, and the exchange led to a brawl. As the two grappled, Antonson’s friend Ron Fereira rushed out to break it up. Instead, he took several punches from Saghezzi. Police cited Fereria and Saghezzi for misdemeanor battery.

After the dust settled, Antonson also was angry about the mailers that used his name. He was convinced it was Gillander, working on Sutherland’s behalf.

While Reade’s consulting firm, Pillars, was working to get Sutherland elected, Gillander started writing letters to The Union slamming Antonson. One letter called Antonson a racist because he criticized Sutherland, who is Native American, on American Indian gaming issues.

“You have this group from Chico, David Reade and Pillars,” Antonson grumbled. “And they’ve got this guy Gillander calling me a racist and everything else. He’s a hitman for David Reade.

“He’s working with Pillars, and Pillars is working with Robin. They’re trying to do a character assassination on me.”

As the lawsuit attempting to get at the e-mail identity proceeded, Antonson hinted that there would be more to the story: “They’re going to get their comeuppance pretty soon.”

Pezzaglia, too, was eagerly awaiting the subpoena results that he was confident would implicate Gillander. “We’re gonna smoke ’em out,” he said.

Reached at home, Reade said he worked with Sutherland for two months and only helped her write a candidate’s statement and fill out a few forms. Reade, who worked as chief of staff to his father-in-law, Assemblyman Bernie Richter, hired Gillander as a driver for Richter. When Richter died, Reade ran for the open seat in 1998, losing to Sam Aanestad in the primary. (Reade also helped elect the only conservative on the Nevada County Board of Supervisors: Sue Horne, who is also a former Richter aide.)

Around Chico, Reade and Gillander have earned a reputation as a political tag team. Several local political observers familiar with the two say they often work together.

Reade was clearly angered when asked if he employs Gillander. “John has never worked for me,” he said. “If you call me again, I’ll call the police.”

Gillander couldn’t be reached. A man who answered the phone at his house said, “Never call this number again,” and then hung up.

But, a few days later, the subpoenaed records arrived from the Chico Internet provider.

In a court filing, the Internet company’s response to the subpoena seeking the name of the e-mail sender, lists John Gillander of Chico.

When the three District 4 candidates held their first public debate September 16, Martin’s supporters were buzzing with news of the Gillander connection. The news broke a few days before. KVMR, a Nevada City community radio station, did a news segment, and Yuba Net, a community news and events Web site, ran a story.

As locals filed in, a Martin supporter stood by the door handing out copies of the Yuba Net story. An older man in a flannel shirt looked at the story, crumpled it up and threw it back in the face of the guy who handed it to him.

“You guys are supposed to be grown men!” shouted a woman wearing an Izzy button. “Why don’t you act like it?”

“Oh, stick it in your ear,” the man yelled back.

When she arrived, Sutherland agreed to set up an interview with SN&R, but she didn’t return subsequent phone calls.

Seated at a table in front of the room, Martin and Sutherland wore dark, smart looking business suits. Antonson, between them, was casual in khakis and a salmon-colored shirt. The two women stared ahead, avoiding eye contact with each other.

Sutherland’s first question came from a Martin loyalist: What are your connections to David Reade? Do you know John Gillander?

Sutherland kept mum about Gillander and offered that Reade only worked for her at the start of her campaign, when he helped produce fliers and write a candidate statement.

Martin saw an opening when her turn came.

“We have now heard through the Nevada County media and the subpoenaed court documents that the Chico political consultants Pillars, who were paid thousands of dollars by Ms. Sutherland, have sent out unethical, anonymous and illegal mailers targeting me and my supporters,” Martin said, as she turned to face her opponent. “I think this is a very serious problem for you, Ms. Sutherland.”

Chaos erupted. Sutherland’s campaign manager, Donna Kingwell, came forward. “I would like to respond to this,” Kingwell said, grabbing a microphone. The volume rose. Kingwell was both shouted down and urged to speak. Ultimately, Kingwell backed off when the moderator from the League of Women Voters threatened to throw her out if she didn’t quiet down.

The debate continued, getting back to more mundane topics such as fire protection, schools and affordable housing. In closing statements, Martin got in one more dig on Sutherland: “Now is not the time to put a novice in the driver’s seat.”

Sutherland may be a novice—she has even admitted attending only one board of supervisors meeting—but with the energetic backing of CABPRO and other groups, her chances of winning a seat on the board may not be so slim. In the primary, Martin won 38 percent of the vote in a field of five candidates, but Sutherland was just four points behind.

On the other hand, conservatives continue to fear Antonson’s write-in bid will siphon conservative votes from Sutherland.

That may or may not put Martin on top, but one political observer who asked to remain nameless said that even though Martin is vulnerable, her opponents may have overplayed their hand. “They had this won,” he said. “They could have run a straight, positive campaign around their own candidate instead of trying to use the anger against Izzy. But now they’re just beating themselves.”

As she sat in her backyard, Martin shrugged off discussing details of the harsh words, the recall and the signs. There is an issue, she said, deeper than those: It’s the shift occurring in the Sierra Nevada, where an old power base must deal with new attitudes.

The story, she said, “is not about me at all.”