Will mellow man be heard above the din?

He’s been around for all of Santa Ana’s big political battles of the last generation -- and been in the middle of some of them -- but John Palacio seems strangely mellow. And while some in the city have long wished he’d either go away or just be quiet, Palacio has no plans to do either.

“I’m the kind of person who will question things,” says the three-term school board member.

But will anyone pay attention?

With municipal government moving under the watchful eye of longtime Mayor Miguel Pulido and the school board majority often relegating Palacio to a minority dissenter, the question is: Can this veteran activist still make a difference in town?

You bet, he says. But not boastfully. Nor defensively. Nor defiantly.

“I will always be a voice,” he says evenly. “My very nature is to question and question for the right reasons. The nice thing about not always being on the right side of the vote is you can modify the outcome. You can move people to the middle.”

That’s not where a lot of people have put Palacio over the years. Now 55, he’s been an immigrant-rights activist for much of his 28-year residency in Santa Ana and was visible and vocal during the 1996 congressional election in which Loretta Sanchez unseated Rep. Bob Dornan amid charges that much of her support came from unregistered voters in Santa Ana.

In 2003, Nativo Lopez, Palacio’s closest ally on the school board and a renowned immigrant rights activist, was recalled. Some in the winning camp hinted Palacio might be next. It never happened, but new board members reduced his clout. Two weeks ago, voters passed a bond measure for school district improvements that Palacio didn’t even want to put on the ballot.

Nowadays, City Hall is pondering a “Renaissance Plan” that would remake a large area around downtown. Some say it would “gentrify” the area by eventually displacing small shops and businesses with more upscale housing -- including condos -- and more modern businesses.

Palacio opposes the current plan, but what I wanted to hear from him was whether he thinks anyone cares.

“I don’t think of myself as the loyal opposition,” he says. “I don’t go along to get along. I ask the questions I need to know to make an informed choice. Oftentimes, elected people are just concerned about getting elected.”

He won’t have a vote on the redevelopment plan, but his argument against the current version sounds like an echo of his long-standing fight for the little guy.

“Santa Ana hasn’t learned to take advantage of its strength,” he says. “That strength is its diversity. We have something a lot of communities don’t have, that blend of people with different experiences, languages and cultures. Instead of trying to remake it, we should embrace it.”

In its zeal to redevelop downtown, Palacio says, the city will drive out both small businesses and industrial companies that provide blue-collar jobs. But, he suggests, he could live with that if those people had more of a say in the proposed redevelopment.

When I ask why the prospect of a jazzed-up downtown bothers him, he says, “It’s not that it bothers me, it’s that they’re not giving consideration to the people who have already invested in it. There are businesses there that have taken risks and made the investment over the years who should be part of it.”

Some of them are places like check-cashing outlets or bridal shops or jewelry stores. The city thinks it has too many of them, Palacio says. “The market should determine the outcome of an area. What cities should be doing is to provide the instruments for those already invested to invest more. It’s not the role of government to determine that we’ve got too many of a particular type of business.”

Many city councils do just that, however. Urban redevelopments are councils’ polite way of saying that things need to get torn down before they can be built back up.

Santa Ana lags behind other Orange County towns in the percentage of people who live in houses they own. If city officials want to upgrade housing, Palacio says, “Why are we building housing to encourage outside residents to come to Santa Ana, rather than housing for people who already live here to buy?”

The City Council won’t vote on the plan until after the fall elections. That should provide time for the public to weigh in. For now, Palacio says he’d like to see the plan modified.

When the vote comes, it’ll be another significant moment for the city. Another indicator of whose voice carries the day.

“We all want more economic development in the city,” Palacio says. “The question is how you go about it. Is it from an ivory tower approach or community-based?”

After we parted, it occurred to me that I’d interviewed Pulido a couple of years earlier on an unrelated matter. We talked in the mayor’s finely appointed office, and he cut an impressive figure in shirt and tie and trousers.

I met Palacio at a place he suggested -- a finely appointed Denny’s -- and he arrived in T-shirt and blue jeans.

The anti-Pulido?

Sure, you could say that. But Palacio, the veteran warrior, isn’t in a combative mood. At least, not today.

You wonder if, come later this year, he’ll be heard above the din.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his columns is online at latimes.com/parsons.