Moriarty: The City Hall Connection : Waged an All-Out Campaign for Real Estate, Cable TV Projects

Orange County businessman W. Patrick Moriarty, best known at Los Angeles City Hall for his efforts to legalize “safe-and-sane” fireworks, also waged a high-stakes campaign to win city approval for real estate and cable television projects potentially worth millions of dollars, The Times has learned.

The lobbying involved some of Los Angeles’ most influential political consultants and included large contributions to 12 elected city officials. Prostitutes were provided to one councilman, according to former Moriarty aides and authoritative sources.

Besides his effort to legalize fireworks, Moriarty sought city approval for a controversial San Fernando Valley landfill and luxury housing development. And one of his aides secretly offered political assistance to a cable television firm in hopes of winning a $5-million construction contract.

The 53-year-old Anaheim businessman, whose political and banking shenanigans have triggered a widening statewide corruption probe, failed to win any of these Los Angeles projects.

But the little-known story of Moriarty’s City Hall lobbying--a brash, often arrogant campaign that spanned five years and allegedly reached from penthouse brothels in New York and Beverly Hills to lavish fund-raising dinners--shows how he tried to use cash, political clout and personal favors to influence politicians.

Moriarty pleaded guilty last month to corruption charges and is now cooperating with an investigation of his activities by the U.S. attorney’s office and the Orange County district attorney. He has agreed to testify against state and local politicians who allegedly received bribes from him in the form of money, prostitutes, vehicles, vacation homes and the hiring of relatives.

Jan Lawrence Handzlik, Moriarty’s attorney, said his client would not discuss any matter pertaining to Los Angeles City Hall that might be a part of an ongoing investigation.

However, council members offered a variety of comments about their dealings with the controversial businessman.

Charges Called ‘Ridiculous’

Councilman David Cunningham, who dismissed as “ridiculous” charges by former Moriarty associates that he was provided prostitutes by the fireworks manufacturer, says Moriarty was just like many other promoters who frequent City Hall and contribute money to council members.

“He seemed to be another individual that always comes before the city, and that’s the kind of relationship I had with him,” said Cunningham, who explained that he ran into Moriarty at many political events over several years.

“I’m not about to say that I haven’t socialized with him,” Cunningham added.

But former Councilman Bob Ronka described a darker side to Moriarty.

“I remember him as relentless, never taking no for an answer,” said Ronka, who twice voted against proposals by Moriarty’s Pyrotronics Corp. to legalize the sale of so-called safe-and-sane fireworks in Los Angeles.

The morning after he lost his 1981 race for city attorney against Ira Reiner, Ronka added, he discovered a box of large fireworks from Moriarty’s company in his driveway. Ronka said he saw it as a pointed reminder that Moriarty had not forgotten how the councilman had voted.

“This guy never gave up,” he said. “He’d hammer on you any way that he could.”

Money tells much of the story.

Since 1979, the fireworks manufacturer and his aides have given more than $75,000 to 10 City Council members, Mayor Tom Bradley, Reiner and two unsuccessful council candidates, campaign records show.

The largest contributions were made to Councilmen Cunningham ($11,500), Arthur K. Snyder ($7,700) and Joel Wachs ($5,925).

According to campaign records, council members Ernani Bernardi, Marvin Braude, Peggy Stevenson, Joy Picus and Zev Yaroslavsky received no money from Moriarty.

Richard Raymond Keith and John E. (Pete) Murphy, two former Moriarty associates, told The Times that more than $32,000 of the City Hall contributions were laundered--that is, they were made by individuals and companies who later were reimbursed by the fireworks manufacturer.

It is a violation of state law to offer or knowingly receive such campaign gifts. However, candidates who do not know the source of laundered contributions can legally accept them, said Lynn Montgomery, media director of the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Council members who Murphy and Keith say received laundered money include John Ferraro, Cunningham, Wachs, Joan Milke Flores and Robert C. Farrell. Michael Woo, a political aide to state Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), and Jim Keysor, a former Democratic legislator, also received allegedly laundered contributions during their losing 1981 campaigns for Los Angeles City Council.

All say they had no idea the contributions may have been laundered.

Moriarty’s laundered donations--ranging from $500 to $5,500 apiece--were intended to conceal the fact that he was giving money to certain elected officials, said Keith, a 47-year-old Cathedral City businessman who was once Moriarty’s closest business associate.

Keith pleaded guilty last month to a variety of fraud charges and agreed to cooperate with the investigation into bribes and other illegal assistance politicians have received from Moriarty. Before entering his plea, Keith had granted several lengthy interviews to The Times.

Besides giving campaign contributions, Moriarty hired some of Los Angeles’ most powerful and influential political consultants to lobby council members on behalf of his projects:

- Phillip Krakover, a civil engineer considered to be one of City Hall’s most powerful lobbyists. Krakover, who has represented many clients besides Moriarty, has independently contributed more than $260,000 to city politicians in the last five years, according to public records.

- Harvey Englander, a Newport Beach political consultant and campaign manager to Councilman Howard Finn.

- Peter Lynch, a former Planning Department official and donor to council members.

- Jack McGrath, former deputy and campaign manager to Ronka and Councilman Yaroslavsky.

Finally, The Times reported in January that Keith and Murphy said that Moriarty offered prostitutes to Cunningham, former Assemblyman Bruce Young (D-Norwalk), Assembly Democratic Leader Mike Roos of Los Angeles, Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) and Orange County Supervisor Ralph Clark.

Keith, the former Moriarty associate, said these favors were provided to Cunningham between 1980 and 1983 in hopes of gaining his support for Moriarty’s fireworks legislation and other City Hall ventures.

Cunningham Angered

Cunningham--who got $11,500 in allegedly laundered money from Moriarty, and whose wife, Sylvia, was given a $30,000-a-year sales job at a Moriarty condominium project in Baldwin Hills--angrily rejects any suggestion that he had been compromised.

The councilman refused to confirm or deny the allegations about prostitutes, saying: “I won’t grace that with an answer. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Other council members downplay Moriarty’s activities at City Hall and minimize the significance of his financial contributions, saying they regularly get money from a variety of donors.

Ferraro, for example, said he was surprised to learn that he received $2,200 in allegedly laundered contributions via Murphy, Moriarty’s one-time business partner. The 1979-1980 contributions came at a time when the council was considering proposals to legalize safe-and-sane fireworks.

“I didn’t do anything illegal or improper,” said Ferraro, adding that he voted twice against the fireworks measures.

Wachs, who received an allegedly laundered $3,500 contribution in 1982 from a corporation controlled by Keith, said he, too, didn’t know the money had come from Moriarty. The Anaheim businessman “bought tables at fund-raisers for several council members,” Wachs said, “but I wouldn’t know Richard Keith or his company from Adam.”

Woo, who is running again this year for the 13th District City Council seat held by Peggy Stevenson, said he did not know that he allegedly had received a $5,400 laundered check from Moriarty and stressed that he opposes the sale of fireworks in Los Angeles.

He also said it is “not unusual” for politicians to get large contributions during the last days of a campaign from unknown companies or individuals.

2 Companies Allegedly Used

Most of Moriarty’s allegedly laundered money came to city politicians via Card Construction Co. and Condovest Inc., two entities run by Keith that were “sham companies . . . nothing more than bank accounts,” said Chief Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard E. Drooyan, who is spearheading the Moriarty probe in conjunction with the Orange County district attorney’s office.

While some council members were surprised to learn about these contributions, others initially had difficulty remembering their past dealings with Moriarty.

Councilman Finn, who opposed Moriarty’s effort to build a garbage dump in his district, told a reporter that he had never met Moriarty or discussed the issue with him. A few days later, however, Finn recalled that he had talked with Moriarty about the project three years ago.

Finn said the half-hour meeting was arranged by his campaign manager, Harvey Englander, who then was a Moriarty consultant. The encounter “slipped my mind,” he explained.

Also, Councilman Hal Bernson at first said he doubted that he ever received financial contributions from Moriarty and noted in an interview that he had strongly opposed efforts to legalize fireworks in Los Angeles.

But Bernson acknowledged receiving contributions after being told that public records show he got $2,900 from Moriarty--a small amount in 1979 and the rest in 1982, according to campaign records. He co-authored the 1980 proposal to legalize fireworks, but eventually voted against the measure.

Like a majority of his colleagues, Bernson said he was influenced by the opposition of hillside homeowners, who feared that fireworks could spark disastrous fires in their neighborhoods.

To counter this, Moriarty mounted heavy lobbying efforts in 1979 and 1980. Both fizzled, but they offered a glimpse of the strategies that he would use over the next five years to push for several projects at City Hall:

- In 1980, Moriarty hired consultant Jack McGrath to promote the idea of safe-and-sane fireworks in the local press and also to lobby council members, particularly Ronka and McGrath’s former boss, Yaroslavsky. McGrath sponsored a fireworks demonstration at a Press Club event, took out ads in local newspapers and set up booths to promote the legislation in supermarket parking lots. But the lobbying effort sparked criticism from homeowners, and the council later defeated the proposal on a 10-3 vote.

- Moriarty pulled off a lobbying coup when, in a surprising development, then-Fire Chief John C. Gerard expressed strong support for the fireworks bills in 1979 and 1980. Gerard told council members that the dangers posed by such products had been exaggerated. The Times reported last year that Moriarty’s B & M Development Co. paid off a $20,000 bank loan for Gerard after he retired in 1982 and also revealed that the former official had netted $33,562 from his investment in a Moriarty condominium project. Gerard has denied any wrongdoing.

- Wayne Avrashaw, who worked as an aide to Ronka when he was on the council, said he got a phone call from Moriarty in 1980 asking if Ronka could be persuaded to support the controversial fireworks measure, or at least tone down his opposition. “The guy (Moriarty) said he would be happy to give a $20,000 contribution to Bob if he could be convinced to stop making speeches about fireworks,” Avrashaw said. “He told me the money was no problem. I told him that would be an impossible thing to do.”

Undaunted by his fireworks defeats, Moriarty began plans to build a northeast San Fernando Valley landfill and luxury housing project in February, 1982.

He and his attorney, Henry Bear, purchased 925 acres of undeveloped land in La Tuna Canyon in a mountainous part of the Sunland-Tujunga area.

Former Moriarty aide Keith said either the dump or the housing development could have generated millions of dollars in profits.

Finn’s Opposition

But the plan faced a formidable obstacle in newly elected Councilman Finn, whose district included the Moriarty property. During his campaign, Finn had made it clear that he opposed any new garbage dumps in his district.

Moriarty decided to hire Harvey Englander, Finn’s campaign manager and fund-raiser, as a public relations consultant for the project.

“He (Moriarty) was very good at matching up the right people to lobby council members, to get the right guy to lobby the right official,” Keith said. “We knew that the way to get Finn was through Harvey.”

Englander, a Newport Beach political consultant, said he was hired chiefly to work with community leaders in Finn’s district and smooth over opposition to the proposed landfill.

He added, however, that he arranged a meeting with Finn and Moriarty in 1982 to discuss the proposal. One week before Moriarty applied for a permit to build the landfill, he gave a $4,000 contribution to Finn at Englander’s suggestion.

Soon after hiring Englander, Moriarty retained Krakover’s Engineering Technology Inc. firm to prepare blueprints for the landfill. Keith said he had been told by Englander and other associates that Krakover was “the one guy you bring on board to get things done at City Hall.”

“He was an excellent guy, very nuts and bolts, right down to it,” Keith said. “He was a political activist and let the other guys do the engineering.”

However, the lobbyist said he was hired only to do $10,000 in engineering plans and never did any political work for the landfill.

$2,000 to Finn

Moriarty also hired Lynch, a consultant who has given more than $24,600 to council members in the last five years. Two weeks before he filed the application for the La Tuna Canyon project at City Hall, Lynch gave Finn a $2,000 contribution.

Over the next 20 months, Moriarty and his associates contributed $47,490 to council members and prepared to mount a major lobbying campaign for the landfill. But the project died, largely because of Finn’s opposition and Moriarty’s mushrooming financial problems.

In June, 1983, Englander delivered a $2,500 check from Moriarty to Finn. But the councilman returned the money a month later, saying he opposed the landfill and would not accept money from a donor who had a proposal pending in his district.

Finn said another reason he chose to return the check to Englander was that “negative publicity” was beginning to surface about Moriarty’s banking and political activities. “Certain people we won’t even touch because we know what kind of reputations they have,” Finn said. “Moriarty happens to be one of them.”

The curtain finally fell in November, 1983, when Moriarty’s La Tuna Canyon partnership declared bankruptcy and lost the property in foreclosure. The company was later sued by the previous landowner for defaulting on more than $5 million in payments.

“It could have been one helluva deal,” Keith said.

Even as the landfill proposal faltered, Moriarty and his associates embarked on yet another City Hall venture--this time seeking a $5-million to $6-million cable TV construction contract in the East San Fernando Valley.

Through his work on the landfill, Keith said, he learned in April, 1983, that Krakover was representing United Cable TV, one of two firms competing for the 160,000-home East Valley cable television franchise.

Keith said he approached Krakover with the following offer as a luncheon meeting broke up at the Biltmore:

If Krakover guaranteed that United Cable would give an underground construction contract to RAC Inc.--an Anaheim building firm that earlier helped Moriarty secure an $800,000 bank loan--Keith said he would use Moriarty’s political clout with certain council members to win their support for United Cable.

Specifically, Keith said he offered to “push” several council members--especially Cunningham--toward United Cable in exchange for the contract.

At Krakover’s suggestion, Keith said he made the same offer a few days later to Mark Armbruster, an attorney who was spearheading United Cable’s political effort. Keith recalled that both lobbyists seemed “very excited” by the offer.

The proposition was enticing because the battle between United Cable TV and its rival, Valley Cable TV, was then thought to be extremely close. Indeed, United Cable eventually won the $100-million franchise in September, 1983, by a single council vote.

Krakover said he did not take Keith’s offer lightly.

“(Keith) said to me that they had some strength in the City Council and that they were very strong with one councilman,” he recalled.

Cunningham ‘a Good Friend’

“They said that David (Cunningham) was a good friend. Close friend. Which indicated to me that maybe they had been out drinking together and maybe they had some fun together, or something. They indicated that it (the relationship) was extremely close, extremely close.”

The lobbyist said, however, that he was never told that Keith and Moriarty allegedly were providing prostitutes to Cunningham.

Previously, Keith told The Times that he and Moriarty provided Cunningham with prostitutes at parties in a Beverly Hills penthouse and in New York hotels between 1980 and 1983. He recalled that Cunningham would periodically call him or Moriarty to request such favors.

“We gave a guy like Dave Cunningham an extra reason to do something for us,” Keith said.

At the time, Cunningham was thought to be opposed to United Cable’s bid for the East Valley franchise. Eventually he voted against the company.

But Keith said the councilman was sympathetic to RAC’s financial interests in part because Moriarty earlier had given Cunningham’s wife, Sylvia, a $30,000-a-year job. The councilman told him at a political dinner party that he would support RAC’s bid for construction work if Moriarty continued to “take care of Sylvia,” Keith recalled.

Cunningham said it is “conceivable” that he talked with Keith at a party, but said he does “not recall” if Keith ever mentioned the construction contract for RAC.

The councilman said Keith’s account was all news to him.

“This is the first time I’ve ever heard anything about (Moriarty’s involvement in) the East Valley,” Cunningham said.

Become Skeptical

In the weeks following Keith’s offer, Krakover and Armbruster said they became skeptical about Keith’s ability to deliver any votes for United Cable. Still, they did not turn him away.

“I didn’t want to turn him off in the sense of making him unhappy, to push him to the other side, so I think we kind of encouraged them and said, ‘Yeah, you know, let’s do something,’ ” Krakover said.

“I always felt . . . that they would never do anything because I don’t think they have the ability to do anything. I think it was more smoke than fire.”

Keith said his dealings with United Cable in Los Angeles came to an abrupt halt several weeks later.

Armbruster said he received a call from the Orange County district attorney’s office inquiring about his meetings with Keith. At the time, the district attorney was beginning a probe of Moriarty’s banking and political activities.

“They (the D.A.’s office) said . . . these guys have a history of going around promising political favors and trying to leverage themselves into the construction business,” Armbruster recalled.

“I filled in the D.A.’s office on everything and said I’d be glad to cooperate on anything else,” he added, saying that he was “shocked” to get the call.

Scott Adler, a United Cable attorney, said the last straw came when a RAC employee allegedly gave him a confidential rap sheet detailing the criminal record of a contractor who was competing with RAC for cable work.

It is against the law in California for civilians to procure or distribute such information. Armbruster said the document “went right into the wastebasket.”

“We got 20 or 30 more calls from these guys at RAC in the next few weeks,” he added. “We never returned any of them.”

Another Moriarty project had fizzled. As Keith put it: “The game was over.”

KEY PLAYERS IN LOBBYING OF CITY HALL