‘Crusader for the People’ : Clay Bryant’s Intellect Applauded, Style Decried

Sometimes bombastic, at other times benevolent, City Councilman C. L. (Clay) Bryant is a man who defies both his critics and simple political pigeonholing.

At one instant, the crusty councilman appears to be the staunchest of fiscal conservatives, upbraiding his colleagues for taxing and spending policies he views as reckless and accusing City Hall bureaucrats of mismanagement and malingering.

Almost in the same breath, Bryant, 68, can seem to be a radical advocate of social reform. In the past he has accused the city’s Police Department of racially motivated brutality. He is now calling for council members to be elected by district rather than at large, a move he believes will increase representation of minority groups.

The common link between these two views, Bryant supporters say, is the councilman’s concern for those Pomona residents who lack wealth and influence.

“I think Clay Bryant is the people’s city councilman,” said Willie White, outreach director for the YMCA of Pomona Valley, who fell 71 votes short of becoming the city’s first black councilman in 1983. “His point of view is more in line with those who are in need, the underprivileged and the minorities.”

Over the past 20 years, Bryant has been elected to the City Council three times, voted off the council once and has waged four unsuccessful campaigns for mayor. All the while, he has pursued his unique brand of Populism with a pugnacious zeal that has made him less than popular with many at City Hall.

“If you define ‘Populist’ to mean that you’re more interested in the people’s business than your own or the city’s, then yes, I’m a Populist,” Bryant said. “I think the people who are footing the bill should be the first concern.”

Most of Bryant’s current and former council colleagues say they are impressed with his intellect and his intense devotion to public service, but many say they are often aggravated by his attitude.

‘Confrontationalist’

“Clay’s a classic confrontationalist,” said Councilman E. J. (Jay) Gaulding. “If you let him, he’ll run all over you.”

Councilman Mark Nymeyer said he is not bothered by Bryant’s bellicose style, although it did take him awhile to get used to it.

“Clay works best in a charged atmosphere,” Nymeyer said. “He creates an advantage for himself by putting the rest of us on the defensive or (making us) surprised. I just decided I wasn’t going to be surprised or put on the defensive any more.”

Bryant has earned much of his reputation for contentiousness through his self-proclaimed role as ombudsman for residents who believe they have been mistreated by police officers or ignored by the city bureaucracy.

“He is to some degree a crusader for the little people . . . those whose voices are not usually heard,” said former Mayor G. Stanton Selby, who faced Bryant in three mayoral races.

Retired Engineer

A retired engineer, Bryant spends several hours each week day in his City Hall office, fielding complaints from residents and bringing those matters to the attention of the appropriate city official. “You can hear him hollering all the way down to my office,” said Gaulding, who works on the opposite side of City Hall from Bryant.

If pounding on a few desks does not resolve a resident’s problem, Bryant is not afraid to take officials to task at council meetings, pointing a prosecutorial finger at the offending department head.

“Sometimes I think Clay assumes that the government official, the bureaucrat, whatever you want to call him, is guilty until he proves himself innocent of a citizen’s allegation,” Nymeyer said.

In his efforts to ferret out fiscal waste and mismanagement, Bryant is almost inquisitional in his scrutiny of staff reports and purchase orders. When he gleans what he believes to be a questionable expenditure from the fine print, he has been known to berate staff members for betraying the public’s trust.

‘A Fault-Finder’

“I’m a looker and a fault-finder,” Bryant acknowledges. “Looking at details is inherent in my training. Even if a word’s not spelled right, I tell them. Unfortunately, these (staff members) are not trained in doing completed staff work and I’m the only one on the council who demands it.”

Bryant notes that his rigorous examination of expenditures recently saved the city $17,000 on a bid to recarpet City Hall. He cites with pride the fact that he consistently opposed as impractical an unsuccessful proposal to build a 12-story World Trade Center project in downtown Pomona.

“I guess I’m acting as (the council members’) conscience, really,” Bryant said. “They would never approach those difficult subjects. They would do what they’ve always done, which is to allow the staff to control the agenda and that’s how they got into this whole World Trade Center debacle.”

Bryant’s critics contend that his concern about details often goes beyond the legitimate purview of a councilman.

“To a great degree I think the elected officers should keep their noses out of things,” Selby said. “I don’t think it’s the council’s job to get in and see how many paper clips each department’s using.”

But Nell Soto, Bryant’s closest ally on the council, said she sees nothing wrong with quizzing staff members in detail about their reports and purchase requests.

“He brings up a lot of things that might be overlooked by someone who doesn’t scrutinize as much,” Soto said. “It’s better to ask a lot of questions and to scrutinize rather than just rubber-stamp everything the staff presents.”

Navy Years

Bryant, raised in rural Pennsylvania and educated at a technical college in Philadelphia, arrived in Southern California while in the Navy during World War II, en route to combat in the South Pacific. Seeking to move to this area after the war, Bryant became a Navy recruiter and was given a choice of several communities in which to work. He chose Pomona.

“In the Navy, I’d been in a hell of a lot of the world and there’s no place I liked as much as this little town,” Bryant said.

After retiring from the Navy in 1961, Bryant worked as a trouble-shooter with various government agencies, including the Navy, the Air Force and the Atomic Energy Commission. His longest stint was 10 years with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, during the heyday of the space program.

In 1967, Bryant decided to apply his problem-solving experience to Pomona city politics. He campaigned to fill an unexpired term on the City Council but placed a distant third. Within two years, however, he won a seat on the council and began establishing his tough-talking reputation.

During his rancorous campaign for reelection in 1973, Bryant won the primary but was defeated in the runoff. After an unsuccessful bid for mayor in 1977, he was elected to the council again in 1981. He ran for mayor again in 1983 and 1985, finishing second to Selby both times.

Campaign Threats

During the 1985 campaign, Bryant had threatened to withdraw from public life in Pomona if he lost to Selby. Because he ran for mayor instead of reelection to his council seat, Bryant was replaced on the council by Donna Smith, whom he had earlier appointed to the Parks and Recreation Commission.

But instead of bowing out of local politics, Bryant tried again to unseat Selby in 1987, though this time he also had to compete against a fellow council member. Shortly before the filing deadline, Smith entered the race, offering voters a second alternative to Selby, whose popularity had suffered after the council raised the city’s utility tax to 11%.

Bryant finished a close second to Smith in the primary, forcing Selby from office. In his campaign against Smith, Bryant said he would leave the city if she won. Although by far the more experienced candidate, Bryant lost the runoff by more than 1,500 votes.

‘The people of this town said, ‘We’ll take a lady who’s inexperienced instead of Clay Bryant,’ ” Nymeyer said.

Bryant didn’t leave town, however, and six months later he was running in a special election to fill Smith’s unexpired council term. Although he campaigned aggressively against the utility tax and waste in city administration, Bryant carefully avoided personal attacks, which many said had hurt him in the 1973 council race.

“Nobody likes a negative policy,” Bryant said. “That’s why the last time I ran, I did everything positive. And I got elected.”

But once back on the council, Bryant quickly established that he was as scrappy as ever. He proposed a series of controversial measures, including:

* A call to cut the utility tax by 30%, effective July 1. Smith, Gaulding and Nymeyer denounced the idea as fiscally irresponsible. Bryant argued that the city bureaucracy should have to make do with the available funds, much like a family would have to do if one of its wage earners were laid off. Soto supported him, but the measure failed, 3 to 2.

* A referendum asking voters whether they wanted to replace the utility tax with a 1% payroll tax on all workers in the city. Bryant and Soto said the people should be allowed to decide the issue, but Smith and Gaulding said that placing an item on the ballot would be too costly and that a payroll tax would be unfair to workers. The council deadlocked, 2 to 2, and the motion failed.

* A suggestion that the city bulldoze two parks that had been built to divert young people from gang activity but which Bryant said had instead become gang hangouts. The council referred the matter to the Parks and Recreation Commission, where residents have denounced the idea in public hearings.

“I think he’s worse now than he ever was,” Gaulding said of Bryant’s first six months back on the council. “He’s very vindictive, like for instance when he said bulldoze Sharkey Park and Cherrieville (Park). That’s his approach to things, ‘Just blast it all away.’ The problem is he never wins. With all the ability he has, he never wins. But he still likes to raise Cain.”

However, some of Bryant’s initiatives have been successful, such as his request for a city employee fitness program to reduce workman’s compensation claims, the institution of more stringent accounting procedures and closer council review of planning commission decisions.

Soto is quick to defend Bryant’s policies and style.

“Clay is a good legislator,” she said. “He does have a lot of ideas and he has a very specific way that he presents them. Sometimes it might seem a little harsh, but he gets things done.”

‘Never Lose My Temper’

Bryant admits that he may appear a bit hotheaded in trying to carry out the mandate he believes voters have given him, but he insists that such appearances are deceptive.

“A lot of people say, ‘Clay, you always lose your temper’ because I look emotional and I may raise my voice. I never lose my temper,” Bryant said. “If there’s something I feel strongly about, I will try to provoke something. I try to provoke a lot of thought and conversation on items. . . . I’m never reluctant to rattle someone’s cage if it’s for a purpose.”

During his first months back on the council, the cage that Bryant rattled most often was Smith’s.

Shouting matches between the two at council meetings were common. At one point, Bryant blamed Smith for prolonging meetings well after midnight and announced: “If she continues her prattle, at 11 o’clock I’m leaving.” At one meeting, he did just that.

Keep Egos in Check

Hostilities peaked at a community forum in March, when Bryant called Smith a “dictator” and she accused him of provoking confrontations for political advantage.

The two reached an uneasy accord after that meeting. Council members attribute the cease-fire to complaints from residents about their belligerent conduct. Despite her altercations with Bryant, Smith refrained from criticizing her colleague in an interview.

“I just think Mr. Bryant coming to the council brings a different perspective to the problems with which we’re all concerned,” Smith said. “At times our personalities may pop up or break through, but we’ve got to keep that from happening. We’ve got to work together as a team. Personalities and egos have to be left out of it.”

Bryant was also complimentary toward Smith in an interview, though he referred to her more as a protege than as the leader of the city.

“The approach may be different, but we have the same ideals,” Bryant said. “I don’t let egos get in the way, but Donna’s young and she’s still learning. I have confidence in her or I wouldn’t have appointed her to the Parks and Recreation Commission. I’ll help her any way I can. When she’s wrong, I’ll tell her, but when she’s right, I’ll commend her.”

Yet some speculate that Bryant will become more critical of Smith as next spring’s mayoral election approaches.

“The only reason he’s on the council is he’s running for mayor--I’d bet my bottom dollar on it,” Selby said. “He wants to be mayor in the worst possible way and he thinks this is his best chance to win. God, I hope not.”

Bryant responds that he hasn’t decided whether he’ll run for reelection next year and that he sees little advantage in being mayor.

“I could probably do a heck of a lot more as a councilman than I could as a mayor because when you become mayor, you lose touch with the people,” Bryant said.

But to Nymeyer, the issue of whether Bryant will run for mayor is moot. He believes that although voters may value Bryant as a watchdog councilman, they do not want him to lead their city.

“People perceive him as an element that we need to have on the council so we can all feel comfortable that City Hall is not taking us to the cleaners,” Nymeyer said. “(But) leaders are people who can show us where we’re going and Clay’s not like that. He can tell us that where we’re going is wrong, but he can’t show us where to go.”