2-Way Race Heats Up in 5th District : Incumbent Riley Challenged by Former Laguna Beach Mayor

“You’re a liar,” Supervisor Thomas F. Riley bellowed at his opponent. “You’re the littlest person I’ve ever run against.”

Jon S. Brand, former mayor of Laguna Beach and Riley’s challenger in the June 3 election for the 5th District Board of Supervisors seat, was momentarily taken aback.

“Do you want to take over the microphone?” Brand asked. Riley kept his seat, grumbled and steamed, but Brand continued with his campaign speech last month to about two dozen Newport Beach residents at a candidates’ forum.

The issue was whether Riley had voted to allow a population increase for Aliso Viejo from 10,000 to 20,000 people. But more important than the issue was Riley’s reaction, which showed why, even after 10 years on the board and three elections, his fellow supervisors consider him the least politic board member.

Riley conceded that he takes attacks on his record personally. He even asked Brand one time why the challenger wasn’t mentioning the good things Riley has done.

“Of course he’s done some good things,” Brand said. “But does he expect me to mention them when I’m running against him? He’s so childish.”

Riley, 73, is a retired Marine Corps brigadier general who had never held elective office when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed him supervisor 12 years ago to replace Ronald Caspers, who was lost at sea in a boating accident.

He ran successfully in 1976 to fill the two years remaining in the four-year term and then won full terms in 1978 and 1982. In the last election, Riley polled 67,148 votes against 14,669 for his nearest challenger in a four-way race.

According to financial disclosure reports filed in March, Riley reported more than $100,000 cash on hand for the current campaign. Brand had $2,821, most of it raised from donors in Laguna Beach. A third candidate, Kenneth Pratt, reported raising only $550 and spent it all to pay his filing fee.

As he campaigns across the south county coastal district that stretches from Costa Mesa through San Clemente, Riley proclaims the virtues of Orange County as an “oasis” in the maelstrom of urban life, a county with a “life style second to none.”

He lauds his efforts to get developers to provide land for parks and greenbelts, plus his efforts on behalf of last year’s compromise plan allowing limited expansion of John Wayne Airport--which lies in his district. He also stresses the need to do something about traffic congestion, calling it a “disaster in our county.”

Brand agrees that transportation is a crucial issue, but his proposed solutions differ significantly from Riley’s.

Riley supported Proposition A in 1984, which would have increased the sales tax in the county to pay for transportation improvements, including a new rail project, freeway widenings and local street upgrading. Orange County voters decisively rejected the proposal.

Brand opposed the measure, contending that without better management of county growth, “all such plans are doomed to failure.”

A professor of geography at Orange Coast College, the 52-year-old Brand stresses the need for growth management, and cites approvingly the limits on development that have been imposed in recent years in San Diego, Solano and Napa counties and in San Clemente.

However, Riley said Brand’s proposed limits on growth are “totally unacceptable to the economic vitality of the county.”

Brand said that as he campaigns, he gets the feeling that “people are now starting to look for someone else” besides Riley to be supervisor.

Boosting His Kitty

He said he hopes to capitalize on that feeling by boosting his campaign kitty to the $30,000 mark so he can mail a political brochure to every registered voter in the district.

Riley, with plenty of money on hand for campaign material, said he is treating Brand “as a very viable candidate,” even though “a lot of my advisers, my friends, . . .” don’t consider him a threat.

Four weeks after Riley’s Newport Beach appearance with Brand (others are planned later in the campaign), the incumbent was still steaming about a format in which he was forced to speak first and had no time for rebuttal unless he interrupted Brand’s remarks.

“My integrity . . . means a whole lot to me, and I have difficulty not being emotionally upset when people (attack it),” Riley said. “When you talk about things, you ought to tell the whole truth or maybe not say anything at all.”

Public Display of Anger

Brand said Riley’s public display of anger showed his inability to negotiate with adversaries, a crucial task on a board peopled by five supervisors described by one county official as having “egos the size of Montana.”

Meanwhile, in the county’s 2nd Supervisorial District--stretching up the coast from Huntington Beach to the Los Angeles County line and inland to Garden Grove--Supervisor Harriett Wieder faces an opponent whose only action so far seems to have been spending $539 to get his name on the ballot.

Wieder, a board member since 1979, began the year with $247,665 on hand. She said she knows nothing about her opponent, David J. Meslovich, an operations manager at an ambulance service.

Meslovich did not return phone calls seeking comment on the race.