Leaders Left Baker Campaign After Forcing Him to Quit Post

Gary H. Hunt of the Irvine Co. and Timothy L. Strader of Legacy Cos. quietly resigned from C. David Baker’s congressional campaign three days before the June 7 primary, sources said Tuesday, after they had forced Baker to resign as executive director of a nonprofit foundation.

Baker admitted writing himself a $48,000 check on an Irvine Health Foundation account when his campaign was pressed for cash in the week before the election, according to Superior Court Judge David G. Sills, chairman of the foundation. Sills said Baker also told him that he had signed the judge’s name to the check, which required the signatures of two board members as a safeguard.

Baker put a stop-payment order on the check shortly after it was written and before it was discovered by the foundation, said Paul S. Meyer, Baker’s attorney. Meyer said Baker is cooperating fully with an investigation by the Orange County district attorney’s office.

A 35-year-old Irvine City Council member, Baker has been in seclusion since shortly after losing his bid for the Republican nomination in the 40th Congressional District to C. Christopher Cox. He did not attend the regular Irvine council meeting Tuesday.

Assistant City Manager Paul Brady Jr. said that since Sunday he has personally visited Baker’s Irvine home six times and called at least four times in hopes of locating the councilman. Brady said he needed Baker’s approval to change the starting time of a closed-door session for the council on Tuesday to discuss several legal matters involving the city.

“We have tried to find Mr. Baker and have not been successful,” Brady said during a break in Tuesday’s council meeting. “We will keep attempting to make contact. It is important that we reach him.”

Baker, who was elected to the Irvine council in 1984, opted to run for Congress rather than seek reelection. His final council meeting is June 28.

The council made no public comment about Baker’s absence at Tuesday’s meeting.

At the time Baker wrote the $48,000 check, he had refinanced his house in the Woodbridge section of Irvine and apparently was waiting for the money to come through, campaign aides said. A single deed of trust covering the $308,000 Baker now owes on the property was recorded at the county recorder’s office June 3.

Baker eventually wrote personal checks totaling more than $100,000 for campaign expenses, including some last-minute pamphlets mailed to voters in the district.

No money was actually transferred out of the foundation’s account as a result of the $48,000 check, and no money appears to be missing from any of the foundation’s accounts, according to Meyer and foundation officials.

Sources have said Baker at one point transferred $75,000 from the foundation’s interest-bearing investment account to its checking account and took a second, blank foundation check, which was returned unused. A foundation secretary discovered the $75,000 transfer and reported it to Sills on June 2, the sources said.

Health, Research Grants

At the time, five days before the election, Strader was chairman of Baker’s campaign and Hunt was on the finance committee. Both are members of the board of the $16-million foundation, which makes grants to health and research organizations.

With Sills, Strader and Hunt asked Baker to resign as executive director and as a board member on Friday evening, June 3.

The next day, Strader and Hunt resigned from Baker’s campaign, sources close to the campaign said.

Hunt would not discuss whether he had urged Baker to withdraw from the congressional race, and Strader did not return phone calls to his office Tuesday. Sills said that, as a judge, he was not connected with the campaign and did not discuss politics with the candidate.

The same day Strader and Hunt resigned from Baker’s campaign, Sills went to the district attorney’s office with information about the $48,000 check.

Baker went on to hire a lawyer and to continue his congressional campaign in the last few days before the election, although he missed at least one campaign event over that last weekend.

The foundation has hired an accounting firm to scrutinize its books and recommend any additional safeguards the accountants consider to be necessary.

Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi said Tuesday that the investigation being conducted by his office could take a minimum of two weeks.

Three other members of the seven-member board of the Irvine Health Foundation were out of town the night Sills, Hunt and Strader forced Baker to resign.

Strader later called John R. Miltner, a UC Irvine vice chancellor, to confirm the firing Miltner said.

Baker also told some close campaign aides and political consultants on the Saturday before the election that he had resigned from the foundation in connection with some “improprieties.”

Those aides and consultants have refused to comment.

During a break in Tuesday’s Irvine council meeting, Mayor Larry Agran said he has not tried to reach Baker.

“I have not heard from Dave,” said Agran, a longtime political enemy of Baker, “and I trust that at some point we will hear from him.”

Baker’s campaign manager, John Nakaoka, said Baker had planned “long ago” to take his wife, Patty, and their two young sons on a vacation after his congressional campaign. But Nakaoka said that he was never told the destination and that he never asked Baker were he was going.

“Win or lose, Dave wanted to get away to sort things out,” Nakaoka said. “He figured he could always find us but didn’t want us to know how to find him.”

Baker--who had been expected to win the GOP nomination in the 40th District at the outset of the race--lost to Newport Beach lawyer Cox by fewer than 1,200 votes.

Strader, a lawyer and chairman of Legacy Cos., is a socially prominent Irvine developer and former president of the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Hunt is senior vice president of the Irvine Co., the county’s largest private landowner.

Other members of the board are Dr. Gerald B. Sinykin, a Newport Beach physician, and Carol A. Hoffman, senior director of resource entitlement at the Irvine Co.

The board members have cited the advice of the foundation’s attorney in refusing to comment.

The Irvine Health Foundation grew out of a deal under which the Beverly Hills-based American Medical International received authority to operate the Irvine Medical Center, now under construction and scheduled for completion by next year.

As part of the deal, AMI agreed to establish the nonprofit medical foundation in 1985. Baker, who had led one side of a divisive fight in Irvine over the location of the hospital, became executive director of the new foundation.

He ran the foundation--originally called the Irvine Community Foundation--from his law office. He was paid $18,600 for the half-time job in fiscal 1985-86, according to a federal Internal Revenue Service filing.

Last year the foundation paid him $37,200, and so far this year Baker has been paid $20,000, according to his federal campaign disclosure statements.

Times staff writer George Frank contributed to this report.