Deane Dana: The Great Survivor

In politics, the rewards go to those who are smart enough to save their own careers while disaster is striking those around them.

Take Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana, who’s becoming the great survivor of local politics.

He’s a fascinating case study. His survival is due less to personal skill than to peculiarities of the California political system, which allows a local official to become his own power center by amassing campaign funds from businesses dependent on his votes.

The disaster in question is the U.S. Justice Department’s suit against the Board of Supervisors, charging that the boundaries of the five supervisorial districts are drawn in a manner that deprives Latinos of fair representation. Odds are strongly against the supervisors winning the suit. And now, after spending $1,245,493 to fight it, they are talking settlement. Dana, a Republican, has joined the two liberal Democrats on the board, Kenny Hahn and Ed Edelman, in supporting a settlement that would redraw the boundaries of the 1st Supervisorial District in the San Gabriel Valley. This district has a substantial Latino population, and the new lines would strengthen the possibility that a Latino would be elected.

At the same time, the new configuration would hurt the election chances of the incumbent, conservative Republican Pete Schabarum, whom many Latino political leaders oppose.

Most important for Dana, the settlement would strengthen his standing in his own 4th District, which extends from Long Beach to Malibu. This is because it would remove Malibu from his district, freeing him of an area which hates his pro-development policies.

Lately, the settlement proposal has become bogged down, and the redistricting case may go to trial after all. Even so, Dana’s alliance with the Democrats is considered a stab in the back in the tight world of Republican politics. Schabarum is furious. Mike Antonovich, the third Republican, is unhappy.

But Dana has stabbed Republican backs before and survived.

I first met Dana in 1980 when he was running for supervisor against Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. He was a telephone company executive who, with his wife, Doris, was an enthusiastic Republican volunteer.

Doris seemed more the mover and shaker, with Deane the one left to lug the coffee pot and bridge table at Republican fund-raisers. He mumbled and stumbled through speeches. He was awkward, even shy.

But he had a win-at-all-costs kind of political campaign manager, Ron Smith, who followed Dana around with a black briefing book to prevent embarrassing mistakes. More important, Smith knew how to attack in an advertising campaign, first emphasizing Burke’s liberalism and then, at the end, reminding the largely white constituency that Burke was black.

Dana’s candidacy was born among the Republican volunteer clubs of Long Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. But he quickly stumbled on the essential truth of California local politics: that it has nothing to do with political parties. The law has required nonpartisan local elections for years, and the role of parties in such elections has diminished.

Add to that the increasingly large amounts of non-party money available for supervisorial campaigns, and the net result is even less of a need to pay homage to party politics. This is particularly true in the districts represented by Dana and Antonovich.

Dana has received large contributions from land developers and related businesses, particularly those interested in Malibu and other coastal areas. Antonovich is supported by builders in the far northern San Fernando Valley and Santa Monica Mountain areas of his 5th District.

Clearly, Antonovich has the wherewithal to be as independent as Dana. But he’s long been a faithful party man--as a former GOP legislator, a candidate for lieutenant governor and also for U.S. Senator. So he stuck by Schabarum.

Dana’s another sort. He turned against the GOP in 1988 when he used his big political fund for an unsuccessful $772,000 campaign by his son, Deane III, against Republican Assemblyman Gerald L. Felando of San Pedro. Republicans still haven’t forgiven him for that.

Now Antonovich and Schabarum are demanding a trial for the redistricting case. Edelman and Hahn want a settlement. And it’s Dana who will decide. The bottom line is that he has the financial independence to base his decision on what’s best for him.