Patagonia Enters Fray With 4 Endorsements : Ventura: The activist clothing firm cites City Council candidates’ favorable stands on business and environmental issues.

Patagonia, the outdoor-clothing company that helped elect three Ventura council members in 1989, Monday announced its endorsements of four candidates in this year’s city elections.

With three weeks remaining before the election, Patagonia officials said they will spend about $10,000 on a series of newspaper ads supporting council candidates Steve Bennett, Nancy Cloutier, Todd Collart and Gary Tuttle.

“There are some big issues facing the city,” said Paul Tebbel, Patagonia’s director of environmental affairs. “The City Council could take a turn (toward) being an extraordinarily strong, pro-growth council. We would like to see it maintain a far more moderate balance.”

Patagonia is one of the city’s largest employers and Ventura’s most environmentally active firm. Four of the seven seats on the council are open, and Tebbel said Patagonia decided to back Bennett, Cloutier, Collart and Tuttle because they show concern for the environment as well as local businesses.

The selections were largely based on personal interviews with the candidates, Tebbel said.

Bennett, an environmental activist who teaches at Nordhoff High School, received Patagonia’s endorsement in his 1991 bid for a council seat. Bennett ran as a write-in candidate and came in fifth with 5,315 votes.

Cloutier, who is new to politics, is publisher of the Ventura County & Coast Reporter, a local entertainment weekly. She has some ties to the Chamber of Commerce, but did not receive the group’s endorsement this year.

Tebbel said Cloutier was selected because of “her style and the fact that she maintained an independence from special-interest groups.”

Cloutier said she believes she represents both environmental and business interests and expressed happiness with the endorsement.

“I think it will enhance my candidacy. I’m not only pro-business,” Cloutier said, adding that she wants to designate the Ventura River bottom a wetlands preserve.

Collart and Tuttle were part of a slow-growth slate with Councilwoman Cathy Bean that Patagonia helped catapult onto the City Council four years ago.

“I think it’s a critical endorsement because they’re so well respected in the community, and they will spend some money,” Tuttle said.

In 1989, Patagonia spent about $18,000 in political ads, and the company’s spokesman Kevin Sweeney, who had had experience in national politics, advised and directed political strategy for environmentalists. Sweeney now holds a post in the Clinton Administration.

In the last city election, two years ago, the company kept a low profile because it had laid off 20% of its work force and was preoccupied with internal problems, Tebbel said.

“We didn’t have money to spend on an election,” Tebbel said. In the 1991 election, Patagonia donated office space for fund-raising events and endorsed Bennett and Don Villenueve--neither of whom was elected.

Tebbel said Patagonia decided to get involved again because the council that is elected on Nov. 2 will decide many important issues, such as the downtown revitalization, the Buenaventura Mall expansion, the desalination plant and the Ventura-Oxnard greenbelt.

“It won’t be as explosive as the ’89 campaign,” Tebbel said. “Everybody is putting themselves in the middle this time. It’s tougher to tell the difference between the candidates.”

Last week, the police and fire unions announced their endorsements of Bennett, Councilman James Monahan, Rosa Lee Measures and Clark Owens.

John Garner, president of the police union, said officers and firefighters will volunteer to walk precincts for the candidates. The two unions will also buy advertisements to support their endorsements, Garner said.

Other candidates in the running: Neil Demers-Grey, a writer and gay-rights activist; Charles Kistner, a small-business owner; Dick Massa, owner of a medical-supply company; Brian Lee Rencher, a Ventura College student; Kenneth Schmitz, an accountant; Virginia Weber, an educational grants administrator, and Carol Dean Williams, a local activist.