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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/06/national/06napa.html

July 6, 2004

A Wine Region's Future Is Centered on 2 Rivals

By Carol Pogash

These are uncertain times in California's Napa County, a pastoral region of fertile hills that produces some of the world's best cabernet and, recently, accusations of voting fraud.

At stake is not just the county board of supervisors seat that Mike Rippey, the incumbent, apparently lost to Harold Moskowite. The pace of development and the very face of Napa Valley, on the edge of one of the hottest real estate markets in the United States, could be in the balance.

"Growth is the pressure that will never go away," said Moira Johnson Block, a writer and supporter of Mr. Rippey. "It's absolutely centered right now on those two men."

Mr. Rippey, a Democrat and soft-spoken biologist intent on preserving open space, streams and the Napa River, has held the seat for 12 years. In an upset, he lost on March 2 to Mr. Moskowite, a Republican third-generation rancher and former county supervisor who favors property rights over environmental regulation.

Mr. Rippey, 54, is convinced that the election was stolen from him. He filed a lawsuit against his opponent and the registrar of voters, John Tuteur, with whom Mr. Rippey led migratory bird hikes in happier times.

Mr. Rippey noted that a number of Democrats had received absentee ballots that did not include the Rippey-Moskowite race and that the vote-counting machines were initially calibrated incorrectly, so they could not recognize some types of ink. He also hired a documents expert who testified that on more than 30 ballots, the choice in the Rippey-Moskowite race was marked in a different ink from the rest of the ballot.

But a judge has issued a preliminary finding that there is not enough evidence of tampering to nullify the result.

Mr. Rippey has asked the California attorney general's office to investigate. On Friday the office said it was still reviewing the case.

Mr. Moskowite, 76, who will take office in January if the results are not overturned, says he has done nothing wrong and is baffled by Mr. Rippey's accusations.

"I'm an honest person," Mr. Moskowite said. "I didn't steal anything."

Though Mr. Moskowite did not make development a cornerstone of his campaign, his opponents fear he will tip the balance in the county toward more building because of his aversion to what he calls "regulations, ordinances and taxes."

Mr. Moskowite's critics still shudder at his unsuccessful campaign for a new highway through the hills when he last served on the board of supervisors, 14 years ago.

"This is more than a setback," Ms. Johnson Block said. "It's a lightning strike, a fireball. It's a war of values that we thought we had won."

Nowhere in California is the housing crunch as severe as in the San Francisco Bay Area, said Hans Johnson, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Napa County has wide swaths of iridescent green-grooved farmland and 131,000 people. Pressure to build on that land comes from developers wanting resorts with golf courses and grapeseed-oil massages, workers desiring moderately priced homes and wealthy Bay Area residents who want Tuscan villas and Georgian mansions.

For several generations, Napa County leaders have been vigilant about limiting development, establishing the nation's first agricultural preserve in 1968. Thirty years later, after a campaign led by Ms. Johnson Block, county voters agreed to tax themselves to thwart flooding and to restore the natural flow of the Napa River, the throbbing artery of the valley. The board of supervisors has limited the number of new houses each year to 1 percent of the county's total housing stock.

But the board's critics contend that the rights of property owners have been trampled. Even before Mr. Moskowite's victory, two of the five county supervisors had expressed support for more development.

Mr. Rippey, who had nearly every major endorsement in the race, was so confident of victory that he never bothered to hire a campaign manager. Nor did he attack his opponent. In fact, he never mentioned Mr. Moskowite at all, preferring to focus on his own "vision and objectives."

Mr. Moskowite took nothing for granted. He knocked on so many doors that he lost 40 pounds, he said. Though he lacked formal endorsements, he had more money than Mr. Rippey. He hired a consultant and paid for opposition research. He sent out a mailing that he called "a hit piece," accusing Mr. Rippey of ignoring the presence of unregistered sex offenders in the county.

Vic Ajlouny, Mr. Moskowite's campaign consultant, said that Mr. Rippey had "lost contact with his constituency."

"He took them for granted," Mr. Ajlouny said.

Mr. Moskowite was helped by the presence on the ballot of a measure that would have restricted new vineyards and other development near streams. It raised the ire of many landowners.

"There have been continuous attacks on property rights with more and more restrictions," said George Bachich, chairman of the Napa Valley Land Stewards Alliance, a group that led the fight against the ballot question, known as Measure P.

Mr. Moskowite opposed the measure. Mr. Rippey favored it.

The measure lost and so did Mr. Rippey. Or did he? Mr. Rippey asks.

About 90 Democratic voters mistakenly received absentee ballots for another county district, which did not include Mr. Rippey's seat. On election night, Mr. Moskowite was declared the winner by 52 votes, but that was before anyone noticed that the optical-scan vote-counting machines were unable to read certain inks. Two weeks and several counts later, Mr. Moskowite was declared the victor by 108 votes out of 6,548.

Mr. Tuteur, the registrar of voters, who also is the county assessor, recorder and clerk, called the series of election mishaps "a comedy of errors" and "tragic."

"I cannot rule out tampering," he said in an interview. "The possibility that it occurred is very disturbing."

During a hearing in May on Mr. Rippey's lawsuit, a documents expert testified that in examining some of the absentee ballots, he had found more than 30 in which one ink was used throughout the ballot except on the Rippey-Moskowite race, where, he said, another ink, from a ballpoint pen, had been used. Almost all of those ballots were marked for Mr. Moskowite, the expert said.

Mr. Rippey's lawyer, Lowell Finley, asked for time to allow the expert to analyze palm prints on the ballots, but the judge denied the request.

Mr. Finley pointed out in court that 26 county employees had keys to the election office. He also hinted that county workers who had entered the building during the weekend before the final count was finished, including Mr. Moskowite's daughter-in-law, could have gotten into the registrar's office by climbing over an eight-foot-high divider. Mr. Moskowite's daughter-in-law denied scaling the wall.

Mr. Moskowite's lawyer, Charles H. Bell Jr., who serves as general counsel to the California Republican Party, said in an interview that the tampering claims were "speculative." Sometimes, he said, people take their time in voting and may use two pens.

In a preliminary decision, Judge Peter Allen Smith said that the registrar's office might have been negligent. However, the judge did not agree that there had been tampering.

"The high burden of proof has not been met," he ruled in the preliminary decision.

Each side later submitted briefs; a final decision is expected soon. Feeling good about the preliminary decision, Mr. Moskowite strolled over to shake Mr. Rippey's hand in the courtroom, but Mr. Rippey, still bitter over Mr. Moskowite's aggressive campaigning, refused to extend his.

"You don't deserve this," Mr. Rippey said to him. Mr. Moskowite said in an interview that he "didn't think that was very smart of him."

But Mr. Rippey said last week that he remained indignant, adding, "I know I won this election."

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