Three former local government officials from Ventura County — all Republicans — warned voters in Northern California on Thursday that Tom McClintock is not the kind of representative who puts much stock in serving his district.

McClintock, a Republican state senator who has represented portions of Ventura County in the Legislature for more than two decades, is now running for Congress in a district that stretches from the Sacramento suburbs to the Oregon border. He retains his voting address in Thousand Oaks.

Madge Schaefer, former Thousand Oaks mayor and county supervisor; Greg Stratton, former Simi Valley mayor and school board member; and Judy Mikels, former Simi Valley councilwoman and county supervisor, jointly signed a letter advising voters in the congressional district that McClintock is "disinterested in representing the people who elected him."

The letter to Republican voters in the congressional district was mailed by McClintock's opponent in the June 3 primary, former Congressman Doug Ose.

The charges dragged up some longtime political hostilities dating from the 1980s when McClintock and Schaefer openly clashed when she was a supervisor. Mikels ran against McClintock in a state Senate primary in 2000, creating bad blood between the two.

"Looking at who is reaching back into the past, into the shadows, I don't place a lot of stock in it," Thousand Oaks City Councilman Dennis Gillette said.

"If you look at a balance over the years, I think Tom has more than adequately represented his constituents," Gillette said. "He was always accessible, always willing to listen. When there were differences, they were always legitimate differences of opinion."

Could not comment

Camarillo Mayor Charlotte Craven, whose 22 years in local government span McClintock's tenure in the Legislature, said local officials tend not to go to McClintock for help "because he's not responsive. I don't know that he's been particularly helpful to any of the cities or special districts he represents."

Craven said other local legislators, including Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, former Assemblyman Tony Strickland and former Sen. Cathie Wright, sponsored bills at the city's request, but never McClintock.

Simi Valley City Councilman Glen Becerra, who's been on the council for 10 years, said he could not comment on McClintock's responsiveness one way or the other.

"I have just not had a relationship with him," Becerra said. "It's not a bad relationship; it's not a good relationship.

'A tad presumptuous'

Pressed for an example of how McClintock neglected local needs, Stratton said that several years ago the lawmaker did not help the city in its efforts to bring a Department of Motor Vehicles office to Simi Valley to better serve its residents. "Tom was just nowhere in that process," Stratton said.

Stan Devereux, spokesman for the McClintock campaign, called the letter "political posturing by people who at one point in their political careers had been opposed by McClintock. Why would they care about this district?"

The letter goes well beyond castigating McClintock for not being attentive to specific issues affecting his district, using language that personally attacks the senator as someone who is "bitter and hostile."

Schaefer, who was defeated for re-election to the Board of Supervisors in 1990, now resides in Hawaii, where she was active in the campaign of Gov. Linda Lingle.

She said she and Stratton, a regular visitor to Maui, talked several times about McClintock's congressional campaign before deciding "it would be in the best interests of the people in this congressional district to understand what it is like to have Tom represent you."

She said voters in the 4th Congressional District will probably take the letter for what it's worth.

"We don't live in the district, and we're not his constituents," she said. "This may be a tad presumptuous on our part."