Roger the Survivor Graduates to TV : After 3 Years on Radio, Hedgecock the Politician Can Hardly Be Seen

This is not deposed mayor and convicted felon Roger Hedgecock sitting in the bar. It’s Roger Hedgecock the radio celebrity and soon-to-be TV talk show host. Dressed in noveau chic radio wear--a sport coat, jeans and tennis shoes--he’s relaxed, exchanging pleasantries with the smattering of customers and employees. He doesn’t look or act like a man whose public life was supposed to have died three years ago.

His own resurrection is a source of wonderment to his critics, and to Hedgecock himself. Three years ago, his political career ended when he was forced from office by felony convictions on charges of perjury and conspiracy. Today, he’s a media star, making more money--and perhaps even wielding more influence with the public than before.

“To me, it’s simply a miracle,” Hedgecock said as he lounged in the bar, sipping a diet soft drink. “I feel like I’ve been on the part of the roller coaster with high highs and low lows.”

Hedgecock did not slink off into the sunset after his conviction, as some other disgraced public figure might. He maintained his innocence and vowed to appeal the verdict. A week after Hedgecock’s resignation as mayor in December, 1985, KSDO-AM general manager Jim Price hired him to host the station’s weekday morning talk show. A month later, he was on the air. He never missed a beat, switching effortlessly from Roger the Dodger, shrewd politician, to Roger the Talk Radio Star.

With Hedgecock as the opinionated ringmaster of his own phone-in program, challenging guests and stirring debate, KSDO has consistently improved its morning ratings each of the past three years. It ranks first among morning listeners 12 and older in the most recent Arbitron rating report.

Last month, Hedgecock took another step in his media career when he gathered the local press in the KSDO studio to announce his deal with KGTV (Channel 10). Hedgecock signed to host a new talk show, which both he and the station hope to take weekly. The first show--due to be taped Thursday, after a first effort last week was shelved--is scheduled to air at 6 p.m. Feb. 5.

Relaxing in the bar, Hedgecock saw no irony or significance in the timing of his new show, set to debut just a month before the scheduled start of the long-delayed trial of Nancy Hoover Hunter. Hedgecock said his legal troubles are in no way connected to the vast number of fraud charges brought against Hunter for her role in the J. David & Co. scheme, which bilked millions of dollars from investors. He hasn’t even been called to testify or to give a deposition.

Yet it was money from Hunter, who served on the Del Mar City Council in the 1970s when Hedgecock was the city attorney there, that led to his political downfall.

“That trial has nothing to with me,” he said. “I don’t care in the least that she is going on trial. I haven’t

talked to her since months before this broke in 1984, and I don’t intend to talk to her. What (the trial) may do is remind (the public) I’m here and they’ll tune me in.”

Hedgecock’s own case, which now focuses on charges of jury tampering, as well as the original convictions, is still under appeal. He was sentenced to a year in jail, a fact that casts a striped shadow over his media career.

“If I get a call, I get a call,” Hedgecock said. “You can’t let it bother you. It’s in the hands of the lawyers. I can’t really do anything about it at this point.”

Hedgecock said he had been talking to local TV stations for two years, most seriously with KNSD-TV (Channel 39). His first post-mayoral TV work was as an Election-Night commentator for Channel 39 last November.

“Television stations are very careful, very bureaucratic, very political,” Hedgecock said.

A year ago, Channel 10 included questions about Hedgecock in a research study. The results, general manager Ed Quinn said, were “mixed,” with positive responses only slightly outnumbering the negative. Still relatively new in town, Quinn did not feel confident enough to hire Hedgecock.

“It scared me,” said Quinn, who took over the station in 1986. “I wasn’t ready to take on the task.”

The continued success of Hedgecock’s radio show and another year of experience in San Diego finally persuaded him.

“You can look at the research, but when it comes down to it, it is the feeling I have about Roger,” Quinn said. “I just feel he’s right for this show and for the city. I feel I have enough under my belt now that I can take a shot at it.”

Three years earlier, KSDO’s Price went through the same thought process. He had actually contacted Hedgecock before he left office.

“I looked at it from the point of view of his grace under pressure when I watched him go through the trial,” Price said. “In terms of the felony conviction, it’s just something you have to deal with.”

Price was among Hedgecock’s political supporters who felt too much was made of his conviction.

“Some broadcaster friends of mine from Chicago came in and they said, ‘What is wrong with (what Hedgecock did)?’ That’s how things are done in Chicago,” Price said. “In politics, so many things go on. It’s a murky business at best.”

When Hedgecock first went on the air, at least one advertiser took his business away from KSDO and there was a host of negative calls. News organizations as diverse as People magazine and the New York Times covered Hedgecock’s first day on the air.

“He has a right to have a job,” Price said. “Some say he shouldn’t have a cushy job. Well, what is an appropriate job for him? He’s not a ditch digger, he’s a talker.”

As a talk radio host, Hedgecock has shown the same ability to win over the public that he had while running for political office. As he loves to point out, he never lost an election. He was even reelected mayor in 1984, despite a grand jury indictment hanging over his head. The only vote that ever went against him came from the jurors in his two trials. (The first jury was hung, 11-1, for conviction.)

In style, Hedgecock is somewhere between Morton Downey Jr. and Phil Donahue. Like Downey, he is more than willing to tell unfriendly callers where to install their opinions. However, his background undoubtedly gives him a depth of knowledge unusual for a radio host. From firsthand experience, he can tell people who to call about their sewer problems or how to deal with their elected officials.

“Even glitzy (talk shows) give people a chance to vent ideas and directions and conclusions that they have about these things,” Hedgecock said, describing talk shows as the modern equivalent of a town hall meeting. “I think it is a critical part of democracy.”

In the current movie “Talk Radio,” the host of a radio phone-in show goes too far, goading his audience while trying to change the world. Hedgecock, who is unafraid of expressing his opinions and attacking callers, said there is a line that hosts must draw for themselves.

“I would not be comfortable picking up on a passion or prejudice and hyping that to generate emotional heat just for the sake of illustrating divisiveness. It might get ratings, but it is the opposite of what should be done,” he said.

“There is enough emotion and enough natural controversy in these things without getting a Metzger and a big black guy to duke it out,” he said, referring to an incident that occurred on Geraldo Rivera’s TV talk show. “If the end result is to simply expose emotions, and especially those that can be expressed through hatred, if that’s the goal, I think it is the equivalent of mud wrestling.”

To the surprise of some of his past followers, Roger the Talk Radio Host often sounds nothing like Roger the Politician, who was aligned with the liberal side of many issues, particularly local land use. On the air, he consistently takes right-wing stands on foreign policy, particularly regarding the Soviet Union, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. Members of San Diego senior citizen and gay groups, once part of Hedgecock’s political power base, have bitterly labeled him a traitor for some of his comments.

“It’s been a relief to shed the vocabulary of the bureaucracy,” he said. “I strongly disagree that someone has the right to pass along AIDS without reporting it or warning people or, if need be, to sequester people. I don’t think it is their constitutional right to spread the disease. . . . People in public office never say anything about Social Security, and I think that’s a tragedy, because the system is not working. Baby-Boomers may never see the benefit they’re paying for now.

“The ability to speak out is something I’ve learned to treasure more and more.”

Even Hedgecock’s critics cannot deny his success. His salary is reportedly in the $150,000-a-year range since he signed a new three-year contract last summer. Serious interest from a rival station, XTRA-AM (690), helped boost Hedgecock’s price. Twice a year, he leads travel junkets organized by the station.

Hedgecock said he still operates a consulting business to advise business and development clients, but he said “95%” of his energy is focused on his radio and TV shows. Regardless of the outcome of his legal odyssey, he said he has no desire to attempt to resurrect his political career.

“In this job, I get to do many of the same things as mayor,” Hedgecock said. “It’s highly visible, I talk about issues, I have to stay up on the community. But you get to go home--I don’t have to attend a thousand and one functions. I get to spend time with my family. It’s a better salary. There are a lot of pluses to it.

“I’m less worried than I used to be about what people think of me, much more relaxed.”

To Hedgecock, television seemed a logical next step. In the minds of media executives, Roger the Talk Radio Host long ago supplanted Roger the Politician. A felony conviction doesn’t rule someone out if they can attract ratings.

“Just because someone has been convicted of something doesn’t mean he’s continually irresponsible,” said Harry Fuller, news director of KGO-TV in San Francisco. “It doesn’t mean he should never appear in public.”

Calls to several people in the industry drew similar responses. Former Channel 39 news director Ron Miller, currently news director of KATU-TV in Portland, said that, if the public didn’t accept Hedgecock, he would soon be off the air.

“Certainly, if I thought he could bring something to the station I would not dismiss him because of his past actions,” Miller said.

Hedgecock’s TV show, which has already had problems, will fit the now-common Phil Donahue-Oprah Winfrey mold, with a live audience. The first episode was supposed to be an examination of the problems along the U.S.-Mexico border. It was taped last week, but the next day, Hedgecock, executive producer Mel Buxbaum and Channel 10 agreed to tape another “first” show, this one focusing on the controversy surrounding the naming of San Diego’s new convention center after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Also after the first taping, there was a complete staff overhaul. Buxbaum, who served as Hedgecock’s press secretary during the waning days as mayor, as well as a very brief stint as his radio producer, is still in charge of the actual production of the show. This week three of the show’s technical staffers under Buxbaum were either fired or quit.

Channel 10 is simply supplying the studio and the crew. Skeptical of Buxbaum’s ability to produce the show, Channel 10 agreed to do only one program, although Quinn said he definitely wants to take the show weekly.

Ultimately, the success of the show will rest on Hedgecock’s shoulders. He has been a hit on the radio, but it remains to be seen whether San Diego is ready to accept him on television.

“We can’t make him a star,” Quinn said. “He has to do it himself, and he has to make people like him.”

Channel 10 asked Hedgecock to meet with a clothes consultant, but he refused.

“People know who I am,” he said. “I can’t show up being a different Roger Hedgecock. I have to just continue to be me.”