Vasquez Has Lots of Money, No Opponents

There have been fund-raisers aimed at yuppies, fund-raisers targeting Hispanics, fund-raisers to lure the establishment, all designed to fill the campaign war chest of Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez.

Now, eight months after being appointed to the job and six months before he has to face the voters of his district for the first time, Vasquez, 32, figures he has about $260,000 in the bank, with plenty more to come.

“This is just a ballpark figure,” said Vasquez, who has three more fund-raisers set for next month, including one featuring the man who appointed him supervisor, Gov. George Deukmejian. “I’m going to say we’ll have a tad under $400,000 at the end of January.”

Even better from Vasquez’s standpoint: There may be no reason to spend the money.

Virtually everyone who competed with him to get the governor’s nod when Bruce Nestande resigned as supervisor last January--midway through his second four-year term--has now jumped on the Vasquez bandwagon.

A $250-per-person fund-raiser in October listed as members of the “host committee” former Tustin Mayor Donald J. Saltarelli, attorney Christian W. Keena, former Orange Mayor James Beam and attorney Ron Cordova, all of whom were candidates to succeed Nestande.

The big question in the months after Vasquez took office was Ronald E. Isles, an attorney, former Brea council member and founder of the Southern California College of Law in Brea.

Isles was considered to have enough personal funds to mount a challenge to Vasquez if he wished, although politicians try not to spend their own money.

However, political consultant Bob Kiley, who was working for Isles last April, said Isles “has decided not to run. He’s got his law school going on. He’s definitely got that into full swing, and that’s taking a lot of his time. That and his own law practice.”

Is there anybody else? “It’s real quiet out there,” Kiley said. “I haven’t seen or heard anything” about other candidates, except for vague mutterings. “Nothing has any substance, it’s all rumor.”

Gregory A. Hile, an attorney working with proponents of a slow-growth initiative planned for next year’s ballot, said weeks ago that he was thinking of challenging Vasquez, but he has been silent on the subject since then.

Candidates for the 3rd District seat, which runs from La Habra south through El Toro to Mission Viejo and east to the Riverside County line, must file between Feb. 15 and March 15.

Nestande, for whom Vasquez worked as an aide for four years and who is now a vice president of the Arnel Development Co., says Vasquez “has done a very good job” so far “and has covered the district very well and put endless energy into it.”

“Unless you make yourself vulnerable, you just don’t (have an opponent) raise that kind of money to be challenged as an incumbent, and that’s true in all nonpartisan elections.”

Last year, Beam and then-Anaheim Mayor Don R. Roth spent nearly $1.4 million between them battling for a vacant seat for supervisor, a county record. Roth narrowly won. Both men were incumbent mayors, well known in the district and bearers of lists of people who had contributed to them over the years. No one like that has yet expressed interest publicly in challenging Vasquez.

Nor has Vasquez made any political blunders that would give an opponent campaign material, according to Nestande, county officials and political consultants.

He voted against putting a new, 6,000-inmate jail in his district, in Gypsum and Coal canyons, but wound up on the losing end of a 3-2 vote on the issue.

He has pushed for child care centers in new industrial developments in the district and for a study aimed at coordinating assistance to child-abuse victims.

Contact With Governor

“When the county has had major issues pending before the governor, I have been the person asked to contact the governor’s office,” Vasquez said. He has lobbied his old colleagues in the governor’s office to let the county institute toll roads and to approve mental-health legislation of benefit to Orange County.

When asked to recall one controversy that has cost him support or one vote that may have angered his constituents, Vasquez says, “I have yet to have a vote like that.”

One county bureaucrat who has worked with the newest supervisor says he “takes himself far too seriously. He really thinks he’s a combination of Richard Nixon and Abraham Lincoln.”

But even the bureaucrat, who requested anonymity, said Vasquez is young, has not won an election on his own yet and may still be finding his away around in office, adding, “he has great potential.”

And an aide to another supervisor, also asking for anonymity, said: “What’s wrong with taking yourself seriously? Gaddi is not a fluff person.”

Higher Office

When political pros talk about Vasquez, they keep talking about higher office some day, maybe governor or U.S. senator.

Vasquez, a clean-liver who doesn’t smoke or drink, the beneficiary of a $10,000 campaign contribution from the Republican volunteer group known as the Lincoln Club, and the Hispanic representative of an overwhelmingly Anglo constituency, was called one of seven “politicians on the rise” on the cover of the November issue of the California Journal.

The incumbency, the credentials and the money appear to have scared away serious opposition next year. That’s fine with Vasquez, who when asked if there is anything about the job he does not like, answered, “Uh-uh.”

“It may sound unusual,” he said, “but I enjoy the challenges of this job, because every challenge is really an opportunity.”