End of an Era : Soon to Retire, Ralph B. Clark Looks Back on 16 Years as a County Supervisor

Ralph Beach Clark was on a roll. He had talked about being born in Columbus, Ohio, his schooling at Loyola High School and Loyola University in Los Angeles, his move to Anaheim to run a gas station--and now he was describing his move into public life.

“This is something I got into accidentally,” Clark said. “I was an independent service station dealer. I ran my own business. I hired and fired and I bought and sold on the open market to make a living in this great free-enterprise country that we live in. . . .

“When the government started to tell me how I should run my gas station--well, that’s when I decided to talk to the government. And I got pretty good at politics because I stood up to them and the ordinance that they proposed in the City of Anaheim and before you know it I ended up running for City Council out of that.

“And pretty soon I’m leasing out my gas station and letting someone else do the work, and I’ve gone into the full-time area of serving the people. I love it. It’s been a great experience.”

Last Meeting

Wednesday, the experience ends. After two years on the Anaheim City Council--one of them as mayor--and 16 years as an Orange County supervisor representing the 4th District covering Anaheim, Buena Park, La Palma and a part of Orange, Clark is retiring.

Although he technically won’t leave office until Jan. 5, Wednesday’s meeting--the supervisors’ last of the year--is expected to be the occasion for Clark’s last major act as a member of the board. He spent last week discussing his planned “state of the county” speech with current and former aides.

For years Clark was considered perhaps the county’s most invulnerable politician, a silver-haired man built like a football lineman--6-foot-1 and 230 pounds--who used a base of service clubs in his district and close attention to his constituents to make himself a fixture in county government.

“I’ll be 70 years old (in April),” Clark told friends and supporters attending the $50-a-plate dinner at the Disneyland Hotel on Dec. 4. “I think that I’ve had my time in the sunshine out here, and it’s time to let other people take over.”

The speech was vintage Clark, a mixture of humor, political philosophy, nods to friends and family, delivered in an orator’s cadences and with an Irish politician’s voice that would resonate as well on the streets of New York.

But the oration was a rarity of late, for Clark, although chairman of the Board of Supervisors this year, has been generally quieter since announcing in August, 1985, that he would not run for reelection.

Clark said when he made the announcement that his age, his health and “the W. Patrick Moriarty matter” prompted his decision.

Moriarty, an Anaheim fireworks manufacturer and contributor of hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians over the years, pleaded guilty in March, 1985, to a variety of public corruption charges and is now serving a federal prison sentence.

He testified last year that he provided prostitutes for politicians in the state, although he said he could not recall the politicians’ names.

Denied Sex Charges

Two of Moriarty’s aides, Richard Raymond Keith and John E. (Pete) Murphy, told The Times in January, 1985, that Clark was one of the politicians supplied with prostitutes. Clark denied it and said that he had never engaged in sex with a prostitute.

In a written statement saying he would not seek reelection, Clark said he had known Moriarty “as a legitimate, respected Anaheim businessman” who never tried to influence any of his decisions.

“But being constantly linked to Mr. Moriarty’s legal troubles still is bothersome and hurts a whole lot . . . after so many years of public service free of even a whisper of impropriety,” Clark said.

One of the two candidates to succeed Clark, Orange Mayor Jim Beam, was considered likely to use the Moriarty allegations in a race against the supervisor if he ran. When the race became a contest with Anaheim Mayor Don R. Roth, Beam tried to link Roth to Moriarty. Roth won the race by a narrow margin, and his victory was attributed in large part to an 11th-hour endorsement from Clark.

Unscathed by Scandals

Clark, who at retirement is the senior supervisor and the only Democrat on the board, which is technically a nonpartisan body, was unscathed by the scandals of the 1970s that removed some of his supervisorial colleagues.

Ralph A. Diedrich, who was indicted in 1977 on charges of taking a $75,000 bribe from developers and conspiring to conceal campaign contributions to another supervisor, Philip L. Anthony, was convicted in 1979 of bribery and conspiracy and sent to prison. Anthony pleaded no contest in 1981 to a misdemeanor campaign finance report violation and paid a $5,000 fine. Robert W. Battin was convicted in 1976 of illegally using members of his county staff in a fruitless 1974 attempt to get the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor.

Clark rolled on, winning reelection in 1974, 1978 and 1982 with either token opposition or none at all, and devoting much of his time to the issue he believed to be of primary importance--transportation.

Clark has spent 15 years as the first and only chairman of the Orange County Transit District. When he first became its leader, the district had five old buses. Now it has 600, carrying more than 37 million passengers a year. He was also a founding member of the county transportation commission, which coordinates and plans all major ground transportation in the county.

Liberal Causes

Although he relishes a reputation as a fiscal conservative, Clark has worked for liberal social causes, from better conditions for workers in farm labor camps early in his county career to this year’s battle to keep cut-rate bus fares for senior citizens.

And then there are the Rams--the professional football team that Clark induced to move down the freeway from their Los Angeles home to play in his city.

Various local officials were involved in the negotiations to bring the Rams to Anaheim. But when a Los Angeles County supervisor wondered out loud who would move to Anaheim, it was Clark who went on television to defend the city and who organized business people to start a newspaper advertising campaign.

He got 26 mayors, 51 businessmen, 6 assemblymen, 3 state senators and a congressman to sign the ad that outlined the benefits of playing in Orange County. A tear-off coupon for readers to mail in as a show of support for a Rams move was returned by more than 1,000 people in two days. Within a month, more than 20,000 coupons wound up on the desk of Carroll Rosenbloom, then the Rams owner.

The Rams moved, and now, on a Sunday when the Rams are playing at home, if you want to get hold of Clark, try the 50-yard line at Anaheim Stadium.

‘Kind of Everyman’

“Ralph is kind of Everyman,” said Gary Granville, who covered Clark as a newspaper reporter, worked for him as an aide and is now county clerk. “He likes the sporting events. He likes the good joke. He’s a commoner.”

Although some Clark staff members, who call their boss “the big guy,” learned to dread his Thursday returns from Kiwanis Club luncheons because of the dreadful jokes he would pick up, they appreciated the good ones.

At his retirement dinner, Clark told the Disneyland Hotel crowd, “I spent World War II on a Pacific island.” Two-beat pause. “Catalina.” Pause. “We called it Guadalcatalina.”

To a National Audubon Society representative who appeared before the supervisors last week to support a planned golf course next to a society wildlife refuge in southern Orange County, Clark said, “You like the birdies.”

“He’s a good old boy,” Granville said of Clark. “He likes telling stories. . . . He loves to laugh.”

Unfortunately for Clark, two topics that are no laughing matter and are special concerns of his coincided with his final days as a supervisor.

Anaheim Jail Site

One was the strike by OCTD bus drivers. The other is next Wednesday’s scheduled hearing on an environmental impact report on the jail planned for a site near Anaheim Stadium, a location opposed by Clark last March but approved by the other four supervisors.

“You mark my words: That jail will never be built there,” Clark said. Even without him on the board, the fight by Anaheim residents to put the jail somewhere else will go on, joined by Clark’s successor, Roth.

In an interview last week, Clark listed his accomplishments, including transportation, the Rams’ move and being a “strong supporter and maybe even the leader in supporting issues for law enforcement here.”

Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks got out of a sickbed to come to Clark’s retirement dinner and lead the Pledge of Allegiance. Sheriff Brad Gates gave Clark a Rams jersey with the number, “16,” and the name, “Clark,” on the back.

Emergency Telephones

He expressed satisfaction at starting the movement to get emergency telephones on freeways in the county and at getting the 911 emergency phone system installed.

He waxed enthusiastic about an employee suggestion program that he said has saved “millions of dollars” for the county.

Said Clark: “I always felt that the guy who was doing the job knew a heck of a lot more about what the problems were in there and what might be a good solution to taking care of the problem than some consultant outside or someone working in a factory somewhere.”

Under the program, employees whose suggestions are chosen receive a percentage of the amounts saved in the first year of their use.

Clark expressed discouragement at “some of the activities of late that have injected a lot of partisanship into these offices that were made nonpartisan by state law.” His departure will make the board entirely Republican, but Clark has insisted over the years that local offices should not be a battleground for party politics.

A disappointment of his time on the board, he said, was the county’s failure to find a site for a second airport. He said overburdened John Wayne Airport handles only a small fraction of the potential air traffic.

Despite unwavering objections by Defense Department officials to joint civilian and military use of the U.S. Marine Corps air base at El Toro, Clark said, “it’s time to talk” about shared use of the base and to stop treating the facility as a “sacred cow.”