Ferguson, Rep. Dornan Funded Letters : Irvine Will Investigate Council Race Mailers

The Irvine City Council decided Tuesday to launch an inquiry to determine whether mailings in a critical City Council election last summer, paid for by U.S. Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and state Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), violated state elections laws.

According to Mayor Larry Agran, who was the subject of several pieces of campaign literature that arrived late in the hard-fought campaign, the sources and details of the funds for the mailings were not filed in the City of Irvine as required by state law.

The one-page letter from Dornan, written on congressional letterhead, explained that one City Council candidate, Ed Dornan, was a liberal Democrat and no relation to the Garden Grove Republican. The letter criticized Ed Dornan’s wife, Patti, as a participant in the “radical left-wing ‘Great American Peace March.’ ” The letter also urged the defeat of Agran.

Another mailer cited Tuesday was marked “paid for by Free Space PAC, P.O. Box 160604, Sacramento, CA 95816, Assemblyman Gil Ferguson.” The Ferguson mailer was a two-page letter signed by Col. Edward R. Rogal (Ret.) that supported council candidates Tom Jones and Hal Maloney and attacked Agran and Ed Dornan for their alleged association with Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and Hayden’s wife, Jane Fonda. Hayden’s and Fonda’s names appeared 10 times in the letter.

Agran and Ed Dornan, the letter charged, “are a team, and if they win, they will vote as a team on our City Council to make Irvine a Hayden-Fonda socialistic experiment like Santa Monica.”

Nancy C. Lacy, Irvine’s city clerk, told the council that the details of the Robert Dornan and Ferguson mailings were never filed with the city.

Rep. Dornan’s chief of staff, Brian Bennett, said Tuesday that the congressman had done nothing wrong. Bennett said that Robert Dornan’s only expenditure in the Irvine race was to pay for a mailer that disassociated himself from Ed Dornan. Bennett noted that Robert Dornan and Ed Dornan are not related and have different political viewpoints.

“There were no contributions (by Rep. Dornan) to any of the candidates in that (Irvine City Council) race,” said Bennett. “We paid for a letter to the voters.”

Bennett said the letter by Rep. Dornan was intended “to point out that Ed Dornan was not Bob Dornan, that Ed Dornan is a liberal and Bob Dornan is a conservative.”

Bennett also said that “when Mrs. Ed Dornan marched in a peace march, people called our office demanding to know why Bob Dornan’s wife was in the march. . . . We had to explain it wasn’t Sally Dornan.”

Bennett said the cost of Rep. Dornan’s letter was about $3,000 to $4,000, “which we paid for ourselves. . . . We didn’t contribute to anyone’s campaign, so that charge is without substance or merit.”

The City of Irvine is not in Robert Dornan’s congressional district, Bennett noted.

Agran and Ed Dornan finished first and second in a field of 10 candidates, each with a roughly 2-1 margin over the third- and fourth-place finishers. Following the election, Agran was named mayor.

The June, 1986, council election was considered especially critical for the future of Irvine, a master-planned community of nearly 90,000 that was developed by the Irvine Co.

Until the election, council members considered friendly to the Irvine Co. and supportive of a more rapid pace of development, including more freeways, maintained a 3-2 majority, led by Mayor David Baker.

Agran, a former mayor and the most outspoken critic of the Irvine Co., was running for reelection to the council, sounding a theme of more controlled growth. Most observers felt that he was not politically vulnerable in the contest, and Agran’s principal ally on the council, Ray Catalano, a nationally renowned urban planner and UC Irvine professor, was not up for reelection.

Attention focused on the seat vacated by Barbara Weiner, an ally of Baker, and incumbent Sally Ann Miller, a realtor. Weiner announced in January of 1986 that she would not seek reelection.

The field for the two seats was a crowded one, ultimately drawing 10 hopefuls.

Agran supporters and “slower-growth” forces lined up behind Ed Dornan, the city’s planning commissioner. Dornan was an unsuccessful council candidate in 1982.

“The rate of growth in the community will be very different with a council majority that is more in keeping with the will of the residents,” Agran predicted during the campaign. “It will be much slower.”

Baker’s allies in the city’s business community, including the Irvine Co., rallied around Tom Jones, president of the Irvine Chamber of Commerce, and Hal Maloney, the city’s finance commissioner.

“The Irvine Co. and the city’s fate are inextricably linked,” said Mike Stockstill, the company’s corporate affairs director and political watchdog. “We are married to each other and there is no possibility of divorce. So when you have no choice but to work with one another you find common ground.”

Tuesday night’s charges were not the first regarding the financing of the 1986 elections.

The Irvine Co. maintained an official “hands off” policy during the campaign, but a number of company executives appeared at a $250-a-plate fund-raiser for Jones at the Irvine Marriott Hotel, and many company employees solicited campaign contributions for Jones and Maloney during business hours.