Roth Denies Two Alleged Ties to Moriarty

Anaheim Mayor Donald R. Roth denied Thursday that he ever used a Palm Springs-area vacation house provided by W. Patrick Moriarty, who is serving a prison sentence for political corruption.

Roth, who is battling Orange Mayor James H. Beam in the race for county supervisor in the district covering Anaheim, Orange, Buena Park and La Palma, also denied that Moriarty contacted him this summer to lobby against the Anaheim City Council’s decision to put a fireworks measure on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Moriarty, who once owned the nation’s largest fireworks manufacturing firm, and who, with associates, spent nearly $500,000 in the early 1980s to influence government decisions across the state, is serving a seven-year federal prison term after pleading guilty in 1985 to charges of laundering money, fraud and bribing public officials.

A former Moriarty associate, Richard Raymond Keith, wrote in a letter to a federal judge this month that Roth “was provided with free use of a home by Mr. Moriarty on occasions in the Palm Springs area.” In the letter, which dealt primarily with matters unrelated to Roth, Keith also said he had overheard Moriarty lobbying against a proposed fireworks ordinance in phone conversations with Roth and two other members of the Anaheim City Council.

Keith is serving a four-year federal prison term for tax evasion, bankruptcy fraud and making false statements on loan applications.

Asked Thursday if he had used a house provided by Moriarty, Roth said, “No, I did not.”

State law requires elected officials to report gifts of goods and services in periodic written disclosures of political contributions.

Roth said he and his wife “try very carefully to report every gift or contribution to the letter of the law.”

He also said he had not been lobbied this summer by Moriarty on the fireworks issue.

“I received no phone calls from Moriarty,” Roth said.

Asked when he last spoke to Moriarty, whose business empire was based in Anaheim, he said, “I can’t even remember, it’s been so long. I have had no communications with him whatsoever.”

Earlier, as he and Beam were being interviewed for a KOCE-TV show to be aired in October, Roth acknowledged accepting a $1,000 campaign contribution from Moriarty in 1982 during his first campaign for mayor. Roth said Moriarty at the time was “a respected businessman who had business in the City of Anaheim.”

Roth reported the donation at the time in his regular campaign contribution disclosure statement, as required by law, and said Thursday that “it’s been looked at by every single person in the whole world.”

Several months after receiving the donation, Roth and two other members of the City Council who also received contributions from Moriarty quashed a ballot proposal to ban fireworks in the city, a vote that was widely reported at the time.

Moriarty, who promoted the sale of so-called “safe-and-sane” fireworks that his company manufactured, worked for state legislation that would have barred cities from banning the sale of such fireworks. The Legislature passed the bill supported by Moriarty, but then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. vetoed it.

Roth and other City Council members this year agreed to ask Anaheim voters in November if they want to prohibit all fireworks in the city, including the “safe-and-sane” kind. The action came three weeks after a July 3 fire gutted 40 apartments in Anaheim and caused the evacuation of 256 residents. The blaze was blamed on fireworks.

After the taping of the television show Thursday, Roth’s political consultant distributed a three-page statement in which the candidate denounced Beam for raising the Moriarty issue.

Letter Passed on to Reporters

Beam said he had received a copy of Keith’s letter to U.S. District Judge William J. Rea in Los Angeles, with a Santa Ana postmark but no return address or other indication as to who had sent it. Beam said he gave it to his campaign manager, Michael Schroeder, who said he passed it on to newspaper reporters in the hope that they would determine if it was authentic and whether the charges were true.

Roth said providing the letter to reporters was a continuation of Beam’s “gutter-level political campaigning” and “sleazy campaign tactics.” The two men, who began the campaign for supervisor as friends, pointedly did not shake hands or talk to each other while waiting to appear at the television taping.

Roth said Beam or Schroeder should have turned the letter and envelope over to the U.S. attorney or a federal judge to see if it was a public document and who in the federal court process might be leaking information.

Roth said he was requesting that the U.S. attorney investigate Beam’s receipt of the letter and his handling of it, and that the State Bar of California look into Schroeder’s actions.

Beam and Schroeder said they have done nothing wrong.