Businessman a Harsh, Blunt Political Force : Ventura: Thrift store magnate Ray Ellison is called by some a man of integrity. To others, he’s the godfather of mudslinging.
Thrift store millionaire Ray Ellison leaned back in his office chair and laughed.
He knows a liar when he sees one, he said. And he knows a liberal. He doesn’t like either.
“I called him a slimeball, scum-sucking liar,” said Ellison, 65, reciting a description of then-Ventura Mayor Dennis Orrock that he painted on a truck parked near a freeway in 1984.
Ellison took on the mayor’s ally the following year, dubbing Councilwoman Pati Longo “The Phony with The Toni” in full-page newspaper ads that declared her a liar, too.
In 1991, Ellison’s large ads depicted Councilman Donald Villeneuve astride a defecating bull, stating: “Screw the Marketplace.” Last fall, two councilmen and a challenger were featured as smiling fish in ads titled: “A Fish Stinks From The Head. Take A Sniff of These.”
Of the forces that have reshaped Ventura’s political landscape in recent years–pushing campaigns to increasingly personal attacks–none has been consistently harsher than Raymond W. Ellison.
Spending tens of thousands of dollars, including at least $14,000 last fall, Ellison has been described by critics as Ventura’s godfather of mudslinging.
“Based on the ads he ran, I would judge him to be venal and mean, coarse and crass,” said former Councilman Todd Collart, defeated Nov. 5 after he was caricatured as a smelly fish. “He continues to set lower and lower standards to be aimed for by others. And that works against good people seeking elective office.”
Councilman Gary Tuttle–also featured in the “fish ads”–said he considered not running for a second term last year because of Ellison.
“I knew he was going to come after me, and I had to think, ‘Do I want to put my family through this?’ ” he said. “My mom, my wife, my sisters, they got very upset. The Tuttle name has always been a positive in this community.”
Even some candidates backed by Ellison distanced themselves from his methods. Newly elected Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures called a press conference before the election to say she was not associated with Ellison, and asked that he cancel future ads.
Councilman James Monahan, a recipient of Ellison political assistance for 16 years, said recently that he does not condone his friend’s advertisements, because they “can have a negative effect on everyone. You can turn people off.”
But to many of Ellison’s political allies and friends, the Ventura businessman is far more complicated and admirable than his crude public persona might suggest. And his opinions–though presented in a blunt style–air the frustrations of Ventura’s business community, they said.
Supporters say Ellison holds work, family and religion most dear–that he is generous in his donations to church and charity and in his employment of society’s least employable.
A high school dropout turned business whiz, Ellison says he started the nation’s first privately owned thrift store in 1948 with money he earned as a paratrooper in World War II. Now semi-retired, he claims about 1,300 employees in the 28 stores he and his two sons own or operate in seven states.
Officials at organizations for war veterans say Ellison’s thrift stores keep them in business by paying the charities millions of dollars a year for donated goods or by operating charity-owned stores at a healthy profit.
“The United States could use more Ray Ellisons,” said Jim Pechin, business manager for the Vietnam Veterans of America in Washington. “We probably wouldn’t be here today without Ray, because he developed our funding base.”
Locally, Ellison donates to charity golf tournaments and gives time and money to the First Baptist Church of Ventura. In recent days, he helped decorate the church for Christmas dinners–then washed dishes afterward.
“He’s just a very helpful, generous man,” said Nick Bailey, a church associate pastor. “He’s not afraid when he sees needs in the church community and in the ministry here to be a part of the solution.”
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Ventura attorney William D. Fairfield, who has known Ellison for 20 years, said of his friend:
“I have tremendous respect for this man–for his integrity, for his business acumen, for him as a family man. And I think he’s done more for this community than any single individual by asking public officials to be accountable.”
Banker Bob Alviani, president-elect of the Ventura Chamber of Commerce, said the comments of Ellison–whose philosophy is pro-growth, pro-business and anti-government waste–reflect the sentiments of others.
“I don’t think Ray Ellison is alone in his feelings or alone in how he expresses his opinion,” Alviani said. “If he wants to pay the price to say what he’s saying, fine. If you take it to heart, fine. If you choose to ignore it, fine too.
“The wonderful thing about our politics in this country is that a person has a right to say whatever they want,” Alviani said.
Gruff, lean and balding, Ellison is skittish about public attention. He wants to have his say every so often in political advertisements and letters to the editor, and leave it at that.
But the nature of his business–and his family’s pioneer role in it–have prompted a series of television and newspaper reporters to knock at his door.
“I’ve had lots of stories,” Ellison said in a recent interview. “You name it–NBC, CBS, ’60 Minutes,’ ‘The Today Show.’ . . . It’s a big pain in the ass.”
The theme of those stories, including a 1987 investigation by The Times, has been that private thrift store operators such as Ellison use charities’ names to collect tax-deductible donations of clothes and household goods, then sell them for large profits, most of which go into the pockets of the operators and not the programs of charities.
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The Times’ investigation found that private thrift store operators nationwide typically made $1.50 for each $1 the charities got. Ellison, his extended family and the Ellisons’ former employees dominate the private thrift store industry, The Times found.
But in Ray Ellison’s case, the charities generally have not complained about the revenue they receive from the stores he owns or manages for them. They say their share of profits is higher than industry standards. For instance, charity profits reach about $1.45 million a year–about two-thirds of the total profit–at five stores owned by the Disabled American Veterans organization of Colorado and operated by Ellison.
“Ray runs the Cadillac of the thrift store management,” said Fred Friedrich, president of the DAV’s Colorado thrift store committee. “The guy’s good. He’s got a lot of respect out here.”
Ellison’s Ventura-based M & M Management wrote checks totaling $7 million to veterans’ groups last year, including $4 million in profit from the 28 stores, he said. He won’t say how much his company earned, but he has prospered.
Ellison and his family valued M & M at $5 million in 1985, according to public records. His two sons, Matthew and Mark, and the husbands of his two daughters all work in the family business, Ellison said.
Ellison’s 142-acre ranch just north of Ventura is for sale for $3 million. He has a condominium in Colorado, where he spends summers and holidays. His family owns most of the 28 stores they operate. He’s a real estate developer in Texas, where he recently sold 40 acres to Wal-Mart, and in Washington state, where he’s building a 180-house subdivision and shopping center.
Ellison’s prosperity is surely greater than he could have imagined as a Depression-era son of a Salvation Army officer. As a boy, he said he struggled in school because of frequent family moves along the West Coast, and dropped out in ninth grade.
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But he began to learn the skills that would make him rich. He remembers watching his parents directing teams of men sorting salvaged goods for the Salvation Army.
Family lore credits his mother, Stella, with coining the term “thrift shop” as the Ellisons helped the Salvation Army transform its bulk salvage operation into a retail one in the 1930s.
Eventually Ellison’s father, Orlo, and four uncles all entered the private thrift store business. But it was young Ray and one uncle who Ellison said started the first private thrift store 46 years ago in Santa Ana with $3,500.
By 1965, Ellison, who lived in Ventura briefly in 1947, had returned to the city with his wife, Sue, a Westmont College graduate, to raise his two sons and two daughters, Ellison said.
Since then, Ellison has left a legacy of hard work and hard feelings.
Even in semi-retirement, the Montana-born Ellison said it is not uncommon for him to arrive at M & M’s national accounting office on Main Street in Ventura by 4 a.m.
“Get your buns out of bed, get your work done before the traffic gets too heavy, then go home and enjoy your family,” Ellison once wrote.
In a recent written statement, Ellison described his children and their spouses, all Ventura residents, as loving and hard working. “Neither they, or my wife and I attend social functions, bridge parties, or have our names associated in any way with playing Santa Claus. Our lives focus around our families, church, friends and business,” he wrote.
Despite such tendencies, Ellison has become well known, first as the Ventura Keys homeowner who led a successful seven-year legal battle against the Ventura Port District to force dredging at the mouth of Ventura Harbor.
The 1968 case cost Ellison $50,000 in fees, but is now cited in law school textbooks as an example of a citizen forcing government to keep its word, he said. More recently, he lost two lawsuits that challenged Ventura County’s General Plan and rezoning policies because of changes he claimed lowered the value of his ranch.
“I have no use for people who lie or abuse their authority to rule over me,” he said in a written explanation of the lawsuits. “I give due respect to every type of authority until that body proves unworthy.”
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Ellison’s dramatic public entry into Ventura politics came in 1984, when he warned the Ventura City Council not to appoint attorney Dennis Orrock mayor, then attacked Orrock so tenaciously that the new mayor asked the council to appoint an ethics committee to investigate the charges.
On one large sign he placed near a freeway on-ramp, Ellison wrote: “For sale cheap, slightly used mayor. Outstanding qualifications. Unethical. Deceitful. Lies Frequently.”
“I still have the sign,” Ellison said with a laugh.
Ellison claimed Orrock, who years before had represented Ellison and other investors in an ill-fated business deal, knew or should have known that the deal’s promoter had failed elsewhere with similar proposals.
Orrock denied the accusation. And after hours of testimony, all carried on local cable television at Ellison’s expense, the ethics committee cleared Orrock of any wrongdoing.
“That was the first time it got nasty,” remembered John McWherter, a councilman for 18 years ending in 1991. “That was the first time that a personal vendetta had come into City Council politics.”
Orrock said he has not seen or spoken with Ellison since. And despite the “hurtful memories,” he even jokes about the experience.
“In 1984, he elevated me to one of 10 movers and shakers in the area, because I was on the front page of the newspaper for 23 days,” Orrock said. “I don’t know what motivates Mr. Ellison. The guy is kind of an enigma.”
Ellison said his motive was that Orrock was not fit to be mayor. The hearings were a whitewash, Ellison said, but that was OK because Orrock did not seek another council term.
“It was my intention that he never run again for anything,” Ellison said. “I didn’t care about the (lost investment). The money didn’t mean squat. I cared about who would represent the city.”
In 1985, Ellison took on Pati Longo. The councilwoman–whose politics were conservative and pro-business like Orrock’s and Ellison’s–had defended Orrock in his squabble with Ellison.
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Ellison bought a series of newspaper ads attacking her as a phony who had lied to the grand jury. He cited her admissions that she had been evasive when asked if she’d discussed the closed-door proceedings with others.
“I figured the public had a right to know, because she would have been mayor,” Ellison said.
Longo, who lost her bid for reelection, said she thinks Ellison’s reason for challenging both her and Orrock, and in opposing Villeneuve in 1991 and Collart last year, was to improve Monahan’s chances of being mayor.
“Ray Ellison’s motivation was that Jim Monahan had always been his resident politician,” Longo said. So when Monahan had a chance at the mayoralty, Ellison attacked the favorite, she said.
Villeneuve said he also sees a connection between Ellison’s attacks and Monahan’s political fortunes and agenda.
“His interest in politics is in the form of personal vendetta for somebody he disagrees with in ideology or most often in a very personal sense,” Villeneuve said. “He attempts to parallel his protege, Jim Monahan. I’ve had to sit and listen to Jim Monahan extolling the virtues of Ray Ellison. It’s almost hero worship.”
Both Monahan and Ellison said they are friends who generally see eye-to-eye politically. Ellison will occasionally check with Monahan on issues, they said. Ellison said he doesn’t follow politics closely and will ask Monahan about his reelection plans and the voting records of other council members. But he said he doesn’t ask Monahan’s advice.
“I know that Jim can fill me in if I’m wrong on how somebody has voted,” Ellison said. “I don’t even take the (local) newspaper. I don’t go to council meetings any more. I haven’t for many years. I can get behind on my facts. So I call Jim, or somebody else, but normally Jim.”
Monahan said he has never recommended who Ellison should oppose or support in an election.
“Believe me, he knows how to make up his own mind,” the councilman said. “Ray’s the kind of guy who’s a loner. He does everything on his own.”
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Monahan said Ellison has helped Ventura politics by bringing information to voters, but he said he didn’t care for the recent fish ads, and thought the Orrock hearings were an unnecessary “dog-and-pony show. That was a sad day for everybody.”
If Ellison opposed Orrock and Longo for perceived ethical shortcomings, he said he opposed Villeneuve two years ago and Collart, Tuttle and environmentalist challenger Steve Bennett this year because he did not agree with their politics.
“They’re discouraging almost carte blanche what needs to be done to rejuvenate the city. What it amounts to is no growth,” he said. “They don’t allow anything that will generate money. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on stupid studies.”
That was as detailed as Ellison got in critiques of his political opponents during two recent interviews. He had trouble remembering what he had written about them in campaign ads. At one point, he read his Villeneuve ad to refresh his memory about the councilman’s principal flaws.
“Let’s see what I had to say here,” he said. “Well, yeah, I did look up his votes. I ought to keep this crap (advertisements). . . . I don’t remember them. I just make them up and forget about them.”
In the Villeneuve ads–as with his fish ads–Ellison stated his pro-business philosophy and lashed his “liberal” opponents. He said his colorful headlines were only a way to grab voters so they will read his full message.
“You have to get people’s attention,” he said.
He does that. For example, in a Villeneuve ad segment titled “To Wee or Not to Wee,” Ellison repeated a second-hand comment Villeneuve allegedly made at a City Hall urinal during a break in a hearing about dredging the Ventura Keys.
Villeneuve and former Mayor Richard Francis, who had battled Monahan before leaving the council in 1991, said they responded with their own negative campaign this fall.
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Some of their “Anyone but Monahan” ads were more personal and biting than Ellison’s fish ads, especially a radio spot late in the campaign.
“I knew his ads were coming,” said Francis, a Ventura attorney. “I didn’t want to start slinging mud, but if mud is going to get slung and you’re going to get dirty anyway, you may as well get into the fray.”
Monahan doesn’t accept that explanation. “Richard Francis took a personal attack on me that was far worse than Ray’s comments about these other three,” he said.
Nor does Monahan think it’s fair that Ellison is seen as “the special interest in the black hat,” while Patagonia, an environmentalist clothing company that spent about $15,000 in the last campaign, “is seen as the special interest in the white hat.”
Patagonia owner Yvon Chouinard “doesn’t give a damn about anybody else’s business but his own,” Monahan said. “Ray Ellison cares about everybody’s business, and he’s willing to stick his neck out for it.”
Patagonia spokesman Paul Tebbel said the big difference between the two is that Patagonia endorses candidates positively, while Ellison attacks them personally.
“He’s strongly within his rights to do that,” Tebbel said, “I just hate to see Ventura politics reduced to who can put out the strongest negative ad.”
Ellison did also buy some endorsement ads last fall, backing Measures, Monahan and Clark Owens.
Whether Ellison has had much impact on election results is an open question. Longo, Villeneuve and Collart, who all lost their races after Ellison’s criticisms, think he has. Tuttle, who placed only fourth last fall, does too.
Others, including McWherter and Monahan, said that Longo, Villeneuve and Collart were vulnerable anyway.
As for himself, Ellison thinks his types of ads work. “I think it’s very effective,” he said.
Ellison said he recognizes the personal pain his ads may cause. Public criticism following news stories about his thrift stores has hurt his family too, he said.
“I feel sorry about that,” he said. “They all have kids. Just like our kids went to school and had to put up with having negative things said about their dad. It’s hard on them. But they become accustomed to it over a period of time. . . . It goes with the territory.”
Yet Ellison felt compelled to write a letter of explanation to Collart shortly after the councilman lost in November.
“I imagine you consider me a callous and insensitive disgrace to society,” Ellison wrote.
He said he respected Collart and considered him truthful. “I wish you well, apologize if you took personal offense to my methods, and thank you for your service,” he wrote.
But within the same letter may be an indication of things to come during the campaign of 1995.
While praising Collart for being true to campaign promises, Ellison chastised those “who forgot . . . what they were elected to do.” He pointedly mentioned Mayor Tom Buford and former Mayor Greg Carson as examples of two who have “breached their stated positions.”
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Carson and Buford, both originally backed by the business community, have been criticized by some businessmen for votes over the last two years. And Ellison referred to Carson in his fish ads as a weak conservative enticed by liberals with the promise of the mayor’s job.
Nursery owner Carson, who describes himself as a moderate and insists he’s broken no promises, said he first felt Ellison’s sting after council members chose him mayor two years ago.
Ellison immediately telephoned Carson to tell him he had considered him “a nice young man,” but now believed he was a jerk, Carson said. “He was upset because Jim Monahan didn’t become mayor.”
Carson said he considers Ellison’s ads detrimental to Ventura politics, and he said the specter of Ellison would not deter him in 1995.
“Somebody like Ray Ellison doesn’t scare me,” Carson said. “If anything, people like Ray Ellison would be a reason I would run.”
