Fallout of Bitter Anaheim Election May Hit City Hall

It has been called one of the dirtiest, most divisive elections in Anaheim’s history.

It also has been called one of the most important, a special election that will determine the direction of a City Council deeply split 2 to 2 and that may bring major changes in the way City Hall is run. It also may decide the fate of the controversial city manager.

There are 12 names appearing on Tuesday’s ballot for the single vacant Anaheim City Council seat, but the race has narrowed to a bitter match between two: William D. Ehrle, the top runner-up in last November’s election, and Charlene La Claire, a longtime planning commissioner.

The campaign has turned even more acrid in the waning days.

La Claire, in a mailer sent late last week, charged that Ehrle suffers from a “permanent psychiatric disability” that undermines his capability to hold public office; it cites his workers compensation claim for stress several years ago. La Claire also has charged that Ehrle is controlled by “special interests,” specifically, organized bingo and organized labor, that are out to take over City Hall.

Ehrle called the La Claire mailer questioning his psychiatric competence a “smear piece” made up of comments “taken totally out of context.” His mother, Tillie Ehrle, two weeks earlier had sent out a mailer defending her son against the rumor that he had suffered a “mental breakdown.” Ehrle himself maintains in a flyer, responding to La Claire’s mailer, that his opponent is the candidate of a “small group of power-hungry, budget-busting bureaucrats (who) want their own ‘puppet’ on the council.”

The campaign has even made the police log. The night the “psychiatric disability” mailer came out, two Ehrle supporters were arrested on suspicion of stealing La Claire campaign signs. La Claire said that her unsuccessful campaign last November also was marred by sign stealing, but she did not press charges. This time, however, she will.

Ehrle said he does not condone the actions of “overzealous volunteers” but said they were taking their “anger and frustrations out on a couple of signs.”

Also getting involved in the election are the four current Anaheim council members, whose campaign arguments and venomous insults are directed at each other as much as--or perhaps more than--the candidates.

“The main issue in this campaign,” said Mayor Ben Bay, who along with Councilman Fred Hunter supports Ehrle, “is change versus status quo.” Change is needed to put control of the city’s policy-making back into the hands of the City Council and take it out of the office of the city manager, said Bay, who has said he might resign if Ehrle loses. “I stated that because a lot of people didn’t know how deeply I felt about . . . not getting another puppet for the administration in there.”

Councilman Irv Pickler, who with Councilwoman Miriam Kaywood supports La Claire, believes the issue boils down to Ehrle’s “special interests,” specifically, big-time, organized bingo and the labor-management struggles at City Hall. “We need someone who is an individual, with no special interests. Ehrle will be a puppet for Mr. Hunter and Mr. Bay. Not many have that feeling about Charlene La Claire.”

The candidates are running for the seat vacated by former Mayor Don R. Roth, who was elected to the county Board of Supervisors. Pointing to Ehrle’s strong showing in last November’s election--finishing fourth with 21,662 votes in the race for three available seats--Bay and Hunter tried to appoint him to the vacancy earlier this year. (La Claire finished sixth last November, behind ousted Councilman E. Llewellyn Overholt Jr., with 10,228 votes.) Kaywood and Pickler staunchly opposed Ehrle’s appointment and between them nominated about 20 other people--all of them turned down in 2-2 votes. Deadlocked, the council set the special election.

Others whose names will appear on the ballot are Rosamond Claire Fergen, pharmaceutical sales representative; Manuel R. Hernandez, maintenance engineer; Andy Deneau, preservation consultant (who withdrew from the race Friday); Rick F. Vaught, real estate agent; Roger M. Emard, overhead door contractor; W.R. (Bob) Baker, operations analyst; Bill G. Burnett, constitutional historian; Gustave (Gus) Bode, retired businessman; Jim Grover, businessman, and Karl Law Waterman, electronics technician.

Expensive Campaign

It has been an expensive campaign for the $400-a-month seat.

Ehrle, 44, has raised more than $146,000 in contributions, loans and pledges, much of the money carried over from his campaign last year, and with more than $45,000 of the loan funds coming from his own pocket. Among his major contributors have been the Anaheim Municipal Employees Assn., a group called the Anaheim Coalition of Taxpayers, the firefighters’ and police officers’ associations, the United Auto Workers and several developers. He reportedly has spent $20,243. La Claire’s supporters point out that mailers sent by Bay and Hunter have not been listed in expense reports. Ehrle’s campaign is being managed by Lois Lundberg of the firm of Nason Lundberg & Kiley.

La Claire, 49, reportedly has raised more than $35,000. Among her biggest financial backers are Kaywood, who spent $8,778 on a mailer for La Claire’s campaign; Pickler, who gave $3,000, the Los Angeles Rams and several developers and investment corporations. She reported she has spent $30,831. Her campaign is being handled by consultants Frank Caternicchio and Harvey Englander.

The campaign has been a quagmire of issues, from bingo to city management. La Claire’s people have accused Ehrle and his supporters of trying to take over City Hall and letting “special interests” rule, while Ehrle’s camp has countered that La Claire has invented those issues to scare voters.

Talley a Main Issue

Ehrle has made City Manager William O. Talley his main campaign issue. If elected, Ehrle plans to vote to fire the 11-year chief executive.

“The real issue is who is going to govern the City of Anaheim, either the bureaucrats, Talley and his puppets, or the people,” Ehrle said. If he is elected, he can join Bay and Hunter, “and people are going to see a change of policy and direction of the city.”

Ehrle is critical of Talley’s handling of the city’s lawsuits with the Angels over development of the stadium parking lot and with the employees’ union, which has sued over a job study. He also is critical of the city’s lawsuit over Anaheim Hilton and Towers, whose owners, the city alleges, are behind in paying off a redevelopment loan.

“This man has led the city into multimillion dollar lawsuits. He is the city’s designated negotiator, and he has failed to resolve these lawsuits . . . which are all directly related to Bill Talley,” he said. In past years, a weak City Council has “allowed him to take control” and has not held the city manager in check, he said.

The city manager takes his orders from the council majority, Ehrle acknowledged, but if elected, he does not plan to see if he can work with Talley.

“I don’t have to work with the man. I know he’s not doing the job. His record is clear.”

His criticisms are echoed by Councilman Hunter, who was elected last November and who has been calling for Talley’s firing. Calling Kaywood and Pickler “weak-kneed, milquetoast” council members, Hunter said they have “rubber-stamped everything and allowed him (Talley) to usurp their authority.”

Criticism of Talley

The city has been close to settling the Angels lawsuit, but “his bullheadedness, his stonewall attitude, has cost the city millions. Sometimes you have to know how to back off and compromise,” Hunter said. The financial troubles with the Hilton’s owners could have been avoided if Talley had better analyzed the firm’s credit background, he said. He also blames Talley’s style for low morale among City Hall employees.

Bay, while acknowledging that he has been critical of Talley in the past and has voted against his pay increases, won’t say whether he would join Hunter and Ehrle in ousting the city manager should Ehrle be elected.

“It’s my opinion that Mr. Talley got into the policy-making mode because of the weakness of the City Council majority: Lew Overholt (who was not reelected last November), Irv Pickler and Miriam Kaywood,” the mayor said. “When there’s a power void, it’s only natural (for the city manager) to fill the void. I wasn’t in agreement, but I’m not three votes. I criticize him now because he has continued that pattern.”

However, if Ehrle is elected, Bay foresees that “the buck will stop with the elected officials. . . . The policy-making would surely come back to the council majority.” That majority would exert more control over the budget, spending more money on “direct services,” such as street repairs, traffic problems and capital improvements, and less on staff functions “that add to the dollar growth of the bureaucracy,” Bay said.

He added that labor-management relations “are at a new low. As far as the morale problem is concerned, you bet that reflects on the talents, or lack of same, of the management, starting with the city manager.”

Ehrle is endorsed by 17 groups throughout the city, among them the municipal employees’ union, which has spent upward of $6,000 toward his election. One of the group’s efforts was a letter asking all the county’s labor unions to advise members who live in Anaheim to campaign and vote for Ehrle.

“He’s supportive of employees,” said Sharon Ericson, president of the Anaheim Municipal Employees Assn. “We’re in a lawsuit with the city now, and they (Ehrle and Hunter) feel that it wouldn’t have gotten to where it is, if not for management.”

Election Called Important

She called Tuesday’s vote “the most important election Anaheim’s ever had, because of the city manager. They (the voters) need to give the power back to the City Council for making policy. . . . We are putting our heart and soul into this campaign.”

The city manager--who usually stays out of the election of his bosses, the City Council members--said he believes he has been made an issue because “that was the promise these people had to make to get the support they’ve received.” His two critics--although Talley didn’t name them, he was apparently referring to Ehrle and Hunter--started calling for his firing before they had “seen any of my performance. Neither of them worked with me before.”

He also finds it “dangerous” for organized labor to be such a key backer in a municipal election.

“Labor almost believes they’re in control of the city, and if they’re successful in (the) election, they’re going to be,” Talley said. Although the employees’ group also has been involved in past elections, “I think it’s dangerous when labor in effect feels they can or do control one or more members of the council.”

Labor, he said, is organized “solely to better the lot of the employees and extract dollars from management and the city.” That’s not necessarily bad, because labor needs representation, he said. “But this is one of the few instances where it has the opportunity to take over the board of directors, if you will, and pack the board who then votes on their raises. That’s happened in school districts, but not in private industry,” which is what Anaheim’s city management models itself after, he said.

The acrimony is scaring away people who are looking to invest in the city, he said. What’s more, he said, the campaign promises are undermining management’s--and the entire city’s--credibility, and thwarting the standard, proven way city councils and city managers do business together.

“The council tells management what they want; then management, through the employees, implements the council issues. But when you criticize management and work directly with the employees, you obviously first are hurting management credibility and not working through the process or with the process,” he said. “It takes a mature and responsible council to work through management rather than around management.”

Talley’s Council Comments

As for charges that he has usurped policy-making from the council, Talley said: “I do whatever any three members of the City Council vote to do.”

He disputed that he has taken over because of weak-willed council members. He mentioned his work with former mayors John Seymour (now state senator), Bill Thom and Supervisor Roth, along with former Councilman Overholt and current council members Bay, Pickler and Kaywood. “I would argue that those people are not a bunch of weaklings. Collectively and individually, they are strong-willed people, most of them with a great deal of integrity and interest in running the city effectively,” he said.

Talley concurred that morale at City Hall is low, although he said, “it’s in the employees’ best interest to say the morale is down” because it enhances their ability “to go around management with the council.”

There are other issues in the campaign besides Talley. The latest, raised by La Claire, is Ehrle’s psychiatric condition.

La Claire’s mailer, sent Wednesday to 15,000 “high-propensity voters” over 40 years old, proclaimed in large white letters on a blue background that “Bill Ehrle’s decision-making ability is hampered by a permanent psychiatric disability. Electing him to the City Council is a risk we cannot afford to take.”

The fold-out flyer, taking excerpts from Ehrle’s workers’ compensation hearing in 1984, quotes a “Dr. K” as advising Ehrle to receive weekly psychotherapy and recommending that he not physically overextend himself “or place himself under undue mental stress.” The same physician is also quoted as saying Ehrle “ . . . has difficulty in decision making and withdrawal from administrative type of functions.”

“It’s all the truth,” La Claire said. The information, including the phrase “permanent psychiatric disability,” is in public records, she said. Rumors of a psychiatric problem had surfaced in the City Council chambers in January when Bay and Hunter tried to appoint Ehrle to the vacant post. La Claire said she decided to come out with the flyer because “I think people deserve to know the truth, even though it is sometimes hard to face.”

Filed Compensation Claim

Ehrle acknowledges that in 1982 he quit his high-stress job as project director for the Santa Ana Unified School District’s Exploratory Learning Center on the advice of his cardiologist. The following year, on the advice of his attorney, he filed the workers’ compensation claim. It was not until 1984 that Ehrle was tested for his claim by psychiatrists--one hired by his attorney, the other by the state--just two weeks after his 7-year-old son had died in his arms from a freak swing-set accident, he said.

The final settlement, awarded in 1984, was $1,128, he said. He was out of work six weeks before he started his own public relations consulting firm, and he has been working in his own business ever since, he said.

“I’ve been able to overcome that experience and I’m probably stronger than 99% of the people out there, having gone through the experience I went through,” he said.

But La Claire said she believes that people should know what’s in the public record “before they put someone in office who is easily manipulated.” Ehrle, she contends, is controlled by “special interests,” specifically, organized bingo operators, citing his long-standing relationship with Thom, a former mayor. Thom is the community relations director of the Cooper Fellowship, which operates an alcohol recovery program financially backed by one of the biggest bingo operations in the state. Bingo used to be allowed five days a week in Anaheim but was cut back to once a week in 1979.

“It’s my duty to warn voters there is an attempt to take over city government by an organized bingo operation,” La Claire said. She said she was asked to run for City Council by the business community, which is scared of bingo working its way back into Anaheim.

“Business people realize it will bring a criminal element into the city,” she said. “This is a family-oriented city, and we’re not talking church bingo. We’re talking multimillion dollar bingo.”

La Claire’s concerns are echoed by Councilwoman Kaywood. Ehrle represents “big organized bingo with millions of cash coming in,” she said. Whereas La Claire has a “proven record of service . . . with a public voting record from broad experience” on the Planning and Park and Recreation commissions, Ehrle has no record of public service, she said. “He’s been a puppet of Bill Thom’s for 15 years.”

Acknowledges Friendship

(Ehrle acknowledges that he is a longtime friend of Thom’s and managed his campaign for mayor during the first direct election in the early 1970s. But Ehrle said he has no connections to the Cooper Fellowship. In earlier news reports he said he would support increasing bingo to two days a week--which Hunter said he might endorse--but Ehrle said Friday he has no plans to change the city’s bingo ordinance.)

La Claire said she is also concerned by “big” labor’s support of Ehrle. Although Ehrle has the city employee union’s endorsement, she said she has the support of many City Hall workers who disagree with union leaders. She said she also has endorsements of former Mayor Roth; Herb Leo, a community activist and former redevelopment commissioner known as “Mr. Anaheim; Don Karcher, president and chief operating officer of Carl Karcher Enterprises, and a wide range of business operators and residents.

Ehrle’s backing by bingo and labor shows he, Bay and Turner “want complete control of City Hall,” she said.

To his opponent’s charge, Ehrle replied: “There’s no question that I am the candidate of special-interest groups, which includes everyone, from police and fire to Congressman (Robert K.) Dornan, mobile home park residents, a total cross section of people from Latinos to builders.”

But Councilman Pickler sided with La Claire. “Ehrle has one thing on his mind: fire Bill Talley. . . . He doesn’t know the first thing about the city of Anaheim.” While La Claire is an independent, Pickler said, Ehrle is committed to the mayor, “and Ben Bay wants to take control of the city and run it the way he wants to run it.”

La Claire said Ehrle has painted her as favoring the construction of a jail in Anaheim, which she said she has been fighting for three years.

On the question of the city manager, La Claire said she does not know if she would support retaining or firing Talley. The city manager has been responsible for many Anaheim accomplishments, but “there are problems in the city,” she said, adding that she believes the Angels dispute-turned-lawsuit “could have been handled differently in the beginning.” Morale is bad at City Hall, she agreed, but she does not know how much of it is due to the “battling between the two factions,” which should end with the election.

“If I find that it is Mr. Talley’s fault, he’ll have to go. But I want all the facts first,” she said.

Despite the bitter 2-2 split now on the City Council, both sides in the election say there will be no predictable 3-2 bloc formed if their candidate wins.