Conservatives Clash in Redondo Mayoral Contest : Opponent Accepts Pro-Business Label

When it comes to maintaining a manageable work load, mayoral candidate Jerry Goddard claims he knows where to draw the line. That’s why--because of on-the-job stress and a heavy campaign schedule--Goddard says he is stepping down this month as principal of Redondo Union High School.

So now, Goddard, preparing for the March 5 municipal election in Redondo Beach, will limit himself to the following four occupations: high school government teacher, City Councilman, reserve deputy sheriff and reserve naval officer. He used to practice law on the side too--but he gave that up when he became a school administrator in 1980.

“I know I’m a workaholic and I enjoy that,” said the lanky, home-grown South Redondo resident in a recent interview. “But I also feel that I’m realistic about how much work I can do well and be successful.”

To his supporters, Goddard, 41, stands out as a sort of surf-side Superman--a mild-mannered concerned citizen who devotes the bulk of his spare time to stamping out crime and defending the American way.

“He has always been the personification of what everyone wants their young sons to grow up into,” said one of his several bosses, Supt. Hugh Cameron of the South Bay Union High School District.

But unlike those of the Man of Steel, Goddard’s detractors are hardly limited to archcriminals. Indeed, the list of those who question his mettle includes some of Redondo’s leading citizen activists and members of his high school faculty.

Business Bias Charged

In short, the anti-Goddard forces ask whether Goddard is anything more than a front man for the business community and for school district officials who last year sought to sell off the entire closed Aviation High School campus for office development. What’s more, they charge, Goddard applied undue pressure on faculty members during the Aviation fray.

“I feel he has been manipulated and used by (Cameron),” asserts 1981 mayoral candidate Tony Baker, who led a successful referendum to save a portion of Aviation for city-run recreation facilities. “I think he (was promoted to the post of) principal only because he was a councilman and he could use his council position to influence other council members.”

Goddard takes both the praise and the criticism in stride, listening intently with the same teacherly look of earnestness, one that seems as if it were etched in stone on his angular, deep-eyed face.

“I’ve learned to accept the fact that in the political arena you’re going to be subject to criticism,” he said. “(But) while it’s a tired old cliche . . . I feel very comfortable, win or lose, that I have a legitimate support base in this city.”

So just who is Jerry Goddard and why is he running for mayor when he’s not running from job to job or for exercise (about four miles a day)?

By his own assessment, Goddard is strait-laced, conservative, somewhat of a loner whose manner and goals were heavily influenced by events early in his life.

A key factor, he acknowledges, was the early death of his father--a Strategic Air Command pilot who was killed in an air crash when Goddard was 13.

“‘I know my mother made it very clear I had to be the man of the house, I had certain responsibilities that fell to me,” recalled Goddard, an only child. “You realize your obligations, your duties; you’re more serious-minded.”

While a student at Redondo Union, Goddard says, he was extremely quiet--the type of teen-ager who sat at the back of the classroom. But he was also an achiever and he did not go without notice, winning election as president of the Key Club and delegate to California Boy’s State.

“I’ve had approximately 6,000 high school seniors in the past 33 years in my classes and I would place Jerry Goddard beyond a shadow of a doubt in the top 20 students I ever had,” said Redondo’s social studies department chairman Wayne Roy. Goddard says Roy remains a major influence on his life--a relationship that has been questioned as a possible conflict of interest by some of Goddard’s detractors at Redondo High.

After graduating from USC and serving in the Navy, Goddard returned to the high school to teach. He also returned to his childhood home, where he continues to live with his mother, Bette. (At a recent campaign fund-raiser for Goddard, who is single, emcee Jolene Combs posed jokingly as the candidate’s mate, explaining, “He has everything to be a great politician except a wife.”)

Reserve Policeman

Goddard is no newcomer to multiple jobs. In the late 1960s, he supplemented his teaching duties by working as a reserve police officer in Hermosa Beach. At the time, Hermosa was a mecca of the youth culture, but rather than joining the more free-spirited souls of his generation, Goddard worked as an undercover narcotics officer.

He later patrolled the city’s streets in uniform on weekend evenings (“The chief picked the three youngest, biggest and dumbest cops he could find,” joked Goddard). Eventually, he switched to the county Sheriff’s Department, where he has served as a reserve officer for four shifts a month in the Lennox station for the past 17 years.

Goddard says the ultimate reward of police work is saving lives--and he has done so, he said, by medically assisting the victims of traffic accidents and stabbings. But he has not been afraid of taking a life, either, having shot to death a suspect when gunfire erupted during a drug arrest in Hermosa Beach in 1969, he said.

During the early 1970s, Goddard also studied law, receiving a degree from the Southwestern University School of Law in 1975. For four years, he practiced summers and weekends, engaging primarily in probate, estate, divorce and other types of cases that require limited in-court appearances.

While in that role, he met fellow lawyer Randy Kimose, who remains one of his closest associates. Kimose, last year’s president of the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce and a member of the city’s Harbor Review Board (Goddard nominated him for the post), is one of the candidate’s many links to the city’s business community.

Seeker of Common Ground

“He (Goddard) is able to take people with diverse opinions and positions and seek a common ground,” says Kimose. “(And) if you need to have a job done, find a busy man to do it. I don’t think he’s too busy to do the job (of mayor). One has to remember that a lot of us have families, kids, wives to take care of; Jerry doesn’t; he isn’t married so he doesn’t have that commitment.”

Goddard, first elected to the City Council in 1977, said he stopped practicing law when was appointed assistant principal at Redondo in 1980. In mid-1983, he was named principal but is stepping down because of the pressure--”the No. 1 key reason was the effect it was having on me personally, and I can sum it up in one word--stress . . . it’s because you are at the heart of basically 2,500 people--students, teachers and staff--every single day. And out of that group of 2,500 there’s always a significant number of people who need problems solved right away.”

Also a factor, he said, is the time involved in seeking the mayor’s post. “If I’m going to go out and campaign to the citizens of Redondo,” he said, “I’m making a promise to them that I’m going to do my best to be a successful mayor. Well, I think I have have to be realistic then in saying that I’m willing to commit a certain amount of time to that position.”

When Goddard, whose final four-year council term expires in March, announced his mayoral candidacy, he did so in unusual fashion: He informed the press--when asked during an interview after the narrow defeat of a ballot measure concerning development at Aviation--before telling his mother, girlfriend or other close associates.

Expressing Anger

“Perhaps that was my mechanism for expressing my anger (over the defeat),” said the usually even-tempered candidate, who is precluded by the City Charter from running for a third council term.

Goddard blames Doerr’s opposition for the Aviation loss--which, by reducing the size of the parcel for sale, also reduced by $10 million the price the school board expects to receive. Goddard also holds Doerr responsible for delays in the construction of a proposed Sheraton hotel in the Triangle Redevelopment area across from King Harbor--costing taxpayers more than $1 million more in lost revenues, he says.

To some observers, the upcoming election can be viewed primarily as a struggle over development issues. While Goddard insists that he does not favor all new development, he does “believe there remains certain selected development that yet needs to occur in the harbor to finish out a well-rounded, complete project.”

One such development, he said, is a proposed eight-story, 156-room hotel in King Harbor that Doerr is trying to stop through a forthcoming ballot measure.

“My philosophy of government is shaped by my philosophy of economics, which happens to be a business free-market orientation,” Goddard said. “If someone says Jerry Goddard is the businessman’s candidate, I will accept that cliche. If you say ‘in the pocket of,’ I don’t think that’s fair or true.”

Leading Supporters

Goddard’s leading supporters include Kimose, fellow council members Archie Snow and Ron Cawdrey, and Claudia Little, a real estate agent for the firm that handled the district’s sale of Aviation.

Although the city’s Chamber of Commerce cannot officially endorse candidates, director Jonathan Bernstein says there is no question that “the business community feels Jerry Goddard has a better understanding of their needs than Mayor Doerr does.”

Adds Bernstein: “(Goddard) is the best listener and the best synthesizer of a wide range of information . . . of any politician I’ve ever met. He’s able to get yellers to talk quietly and able to force people who make no sense to make some sense.”

Goddard said he also would provide stronger leadership than Doerr, who, he charges, does not include the word “compromise” in her vocabulary. Doerr retorts that Goddard’s own style of leadership is a proclivity for cutting back-room deals with council allies.

Among his achievements on the council, Goddard said, have been his roles in creating a Harbor Review Board that serves as a type of planning commission for the city’s waterfront, a neighborhood crime prevention program and a Police Department drunk-driving enforcement team. He also successfully called for the elimination of city credit cards for elected city officials.

Ethics Questioned

Critics, though, raise performance and ethics questions resulting from his multiple roles.

Doerr, for example, said that Goddard has not devoted enough time to his council duties during the last four years. As she likes to point out, Goddard does not even have a listed home phone number.

On Aviation, she continued, it was difficult to decipher whether Goddard was representing his constituents or the tri-city school board--particularly when he loaned $5,000 to the pro-development forces, most of which he says will never be returned.

“Whatever the school board wants, he will give them,” said Doerr, who acknowledged that Goddard had been given legal go-ahead by City Atty. Gordon Phillips to become involved in the Aviation issue.

While school district officials have praised Goddard’s performance as principal, a few teachers have said that Goddard spent too much time off campus and that he exerted undue pressures during the Aviation battle.

“He brought a great deal of pressure on teachers to participate in the (campaign) for sale of Aviation . . . to come out and attend meetings and put pressure on the City Council,” said social studies teacher Doris Jones. Jones said that Goddard once called her out of her classroom while she was teaching to discuss whether she wanted to help work for the pro-Aviation forces. Goddard said he does not recall any such incident and added that he has created a number of enemies on the faculty because he has fired inept staffers.

Teacher Complaints

Some teachers also question Goddard’s decision last fall to have his friend Wayne Roy, who plans to retire in a couple years, teach seven classes a day. Teaching the extra classes boosts Roy’s base salary by 40% and will similarly increase his pension, which is based on his earnings in the years before retirement. Goddard said Roy agreed to teach the extra classes as a favor because Goddard could find no other teachers to take them.

During Goddard’s tenure, Redondo students have performed poorly on statewide assessment tests. Goddard blames a portion of the problem on “our local beach culture (that) makes the competition for the minds of young people much more difficult.” Besides, he said, it takes any principal three to four years to turn a school around.

By that time, Goddard hopes to be firmly entrenched in the mayor’s office.

So far, he has raised more than $12,000 for the campaign, including $3,550 of his own funds. Among the larger contributions are those from such businessmen as harbor leaseholder Les Guthrie, $250; Pancho & Wongs restaurateur David Letchworth, $100, and Pier Properties, $100.

As for future ambitions, Goddard said, “I’m not running for the mayor’s position to run for higher office.

“But if somebody walked in and offered me the opportunity to run for governor,” he added, “I’d probably sign on the dotted line.”