He is a first-time candidate with little money, no campaign mail and no endorsements.
His opponent is a popular politician who has represented the northeast wedge of Orange County for a dozen years in the Legislature and on the Board of Supervisors, is flush with campaign cash and backed by the county's powerful GOP machine.
It is the kind of campaign that highlights all the difficulties faced by any relatively unknown challenger. But that has not stopped Donald Ritze from trying to persuade voters in the 3rd District that it is time for change.
Ritze wants to oust Supervisor Bill Campbell in Tuesday's primary for what he sees as Campbell's poor record -- including twice endorsing the now-indicted former Sheriff Michael S. Carona, brokering the agreement among supervisors that allowed troubled county Treasurer Chriss Street to retain his investment powers and voting to move forward with plans to finance a jail expansion in the district.
"Is this any way for a supervisor that is over the 3rd District to act?" Ritze asked. "He doesn't have the best interests of the 3rd District right now."
Campbell is well known and well liked in his district, which is home to about 600,000 and includes the large cities of Irvine and Orange. After three terms in the Assembly, he was elected supervisor in a 2003 special election with 75% of the vote, and was reelected without opposition to his first regular term the following year.
On the board, his persona is that of the sage grandfather, finding common ground among the often disparate supervisors and guiding the board to compromise solutions that a majority would support.
Ritze was born in Missouri but moved to Orange County as a boy. He is a construction contractor and contract pilot, has coached youth and high school baseball, and recently started an avocado orchard of more than 200 trees with his wife, Sandra, on his property near Silverado Canyon.
He decided to run for office after growing increasingly dismayed over the news headlines in Orange County in recent years, as the sheriff was indicted, financial problems with public pensions and retiree medical costs mounted, and the county treasurer stumbled into a thicket of private and public legal troubles. To Ritze, the problems were evidence of a lack of tough management at the top.
