Roth Skips Last Appearance With Beam, Whom Aide Accuses of Slander

Anaheim Mayor Don R. Roth on Thursday bowed out of his last scheduled joint appearance with his opponent in Orange County’s 4th District supervisor race, citing scheduling conflicts.

Meanwhile, Roth’s attorney in the campaign, Floyd L. Farano, warned the other candidate, Orange Mayor Jim Beam, that statements about the attorney in a Beam political mailer were “clearly slanderous” and might result in a lawsuit.

Judith Reekstin of the Orange branch of the American Assn. of University Women, co-sponsor of a “candidates’ night” forum at the Orange YWCA, said Roth’s cancellation of his planned appearance was “kind of curious” and “a disappointment.”

Another Roth adviser, Jeff Adler, said Roth had promised to attend the opening of a senior citizens center in Anaheim, originally scheduled for Oct. 23 but later rescheduled to Thursday night.

“We felt his time could best be used in Anaheim,” Adler said. “It strictly comes down to how do you use a candidate’s time best in the last days of a campaign.”

No Debates Held

Roth and Beam have appeared together a handful of times since the June 3 primary, and none of those have been in the form of a debate. The two have made statements and answered a question or two, the same format that was planned for the YWCA meeting.

In a separate action, Farano, a longtime friend of Roth, said he had received no reply from Beam to his letter Wednesday demanding that Beam apologize and retract statements in campaign literature referring to Farano.

At least two mailers have raised the issue of Farano’s representation of Hong Kong-based developers Alexandra Ltd. and Becker Ltd., and also of the Anaheim City Council when Roth and the council voted 4 to 0 on June 3 to condemn nearly four acres of a 58-acre farm for access roads to a development planned by the Hong Kong firms.

“Mayor Don Roth of Anaheim voted to force a local farmer to sell his land to a big foreign developer,” a Beam mailer says. “The City (of Anaheim) is trying to take the land away for $30,000 an acre when it is worth $1 million per acre.

“It was recently discovered that the foreign developer hired Mayor Don Roth’s campaign attorney to help ‘secure’ the land for them! The development company has in turn given a substantial campaign contribution to Roth’s campaign for supervisor!”

An accompanying three-paragraph statement names Farano, who is also president of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, as the attorney.

Death Not Mentioned

The mailer does not mention that a month after the condemnation, Masao Fujishige, an owner of the family farm, committed suicide. He and his family had pleaded with the council not to condemn the land, but Fujishige’s brother later told the council members and Roth that they should not feel guilty, that his brother was “a sick man.”

Beam’s campaign manager, Michael Schroeder, said the death was not mentioned “because we did not want to politicize something as unfortunate as that.”

But Farano said the intent of the statements that were in the mailers “is to demean, ridicule and to cast aspersions upon the integrity of me, my firm and my client, by (implying) that I, my firm or my client have conducted ourselves improperly. . . .” He called the inferences “absolutely incorrect.”

He said also that Beam knew in 1983, not “recently,” that Farano was representing the developers because Beam told him then that he had a client who might be interested in investing in the project--a hotel, condominiums and office building.

Farano said Thursday that he had still not decided whether to sue Beam over the mailers. He said he expected tough charges and countercharges between the candidates, but he portrayed himself as an “innocent” bystander.

Farano’s letter also said the development companies had not contributed to Roth’s campaign, which Roth’s campaign financing statements show to be true. The general manager of the Alexandra company, however, has given $2,000 in his and his wife’s name, the Roth campaign reported.

Schroeder called Farano’s letter “a blatant piece of political garbage. It’s obviously politically motivated.”