ZIP Code Points Way to Power in Orange County

If you live in Orange County and you are an appointee in Gov. George Deukmejian’s Administration, odds are your home address ends in 92660.

That’s the ZIP code for Newport Beach, the swanky coastal community and bastion of Orange County conservatism.

According to a recent computer analysis, it is one of the most blessed ZIP codes in California when it comes time for the Republican governor to pass around the political plums by choosing friends, acquaintances and supporters to fill the nearly 3,000 positions on state boards, commissions, task forces and agencies.

The Newport Beach ZIP code area is home to 17 gubernatorial appointees serving on panels ranging from the little-known Fairview Development Center Advisory Board to the prestigious California State University Board of Trustees, charged with overseeing a 20-campus empire. Outside Sacramento, only three other ZIP codes in California can boast more gubernatorial appointees than the coastal Orange County mailing route of 92660, the computer analysis shows.

“The community of coastal Orange County has clout,” deduced Tom Fuentes, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party.

Of course, the governor doesn’t go by a person’s ZIP code when making appointments. But the cluster in the Newport Beach ZIP says a lot about the kind of person--well-heeled and aggressively Republican--that Deukmejian often turns to for jobs large and small in his Administration.

Kenneth L. Khachigian, Orange County attorney and Republican speech writer, said that Newport Beach’s Republicans were active in raising campaign contributions and winning votes for Deukmejian. It is only natural, then, that the governor would think of them when naming people to jobs in his administration.

“When one achieves a very important position and one has an opportunity to appoint individuals to help him accomplish a goal, he tends to turn to those he knows best and is comfortable with,” explained Khachigian, whose wife, Meredith, is a gubernatorial appointee.

“And in politics, if you overlook somebody who has supported you, you’d be the worst ingrate ever,” he said.

But one expert on state boards and commissions said the cluster of gubernatorial appointments in such power ZIP codes as Newport Beach is a disturbing sign of “institutional corruption.”

“The fact is that people are being appointed because they give money,” said Robert Fellmeth, a University of San Diego law professor. “Our government is up for purchase.”

And, he added, not always with good results. “There are a number of appointments, particularly the spouses of major contributors, who have IQs in the single digits, and I’m not exaggerating,” he said.

Deukmejian must choose hundreds of Californians to serve on what is commonly referred to as the “fourth branch” of government--more than 350 boards, commissions and councils that help shape government policy, interpret laws, promulgate administrative rules and regulate myriad professions.

Many panels are relatively obscure and narrow in scope, such as the state Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers, which pays its members $100 a meeting plus expenses to regulate morticians. Others are high profile, high paying and high powered--such as the Public Utilities Commission, which pays $83,868 a year.

Although Deukmejian tries to balance his choices among geographic areas, the appointment process is an “imperfect world,” and some areas can come out ahead, said Terrance W. Flanigan, the governor’s appointments secretary.

“If you had a governor from the Central Valley or from somewhere in Northern California . . . it probably would surprise no one if a large number of appointments were from that area,” he said, adding that Deukmejian does not consider an applicant’s ZIP code when making a choice.

A computer analysis of Deukmejian’s 2,923 current board and commission appointees, requested by The Times, showed that no place in California has a greater share of Deukmejian appointees that the state capital, where many people named to full-time positions must move to be close to the workings of state government. One Sacramento ZIP code, for instance, has 78 appointees.

Outside Sacramento, however, there are only three other ZIP codes richer in gubernatorial appointments than Newport Beach. One is in Deukmejian’s Long Beach neighborhood, where he has given appointments to his minister, his barber, the neighbor across the street and one businessman whose daughter used to baby-sit the governor’s children.

The other two were in political strongholds for Deukmejian--Fresno and Bakersfield--where the governor has long enjoyed ethnic and political allegiance from the Armenian and agricultural community.

Orange County, also a stronghold, appears to be slightly under-represented as a whole in Deukmejian’s Administration, though. The county has 8% of the state’s population, yet only 5.8%--or 169--of the current appointments.

But the governor has been mindful of several Orange County loyalists, many of whom he has known since he represented Long Beach as an assemblyman and state senator during the 1960s and 1970s. These Orange County residents supported Deukmejian during his 1982 underdog battles to wrest the Republican nomination from party favorite Lt. Gov. Mike Curb and eke out a narrow victory over the Democratic candidate, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

Now they hold coveted positions in the Deukmejian Administration. And, as it happens, some of their home ZIP codes can be considered among California’s elite in terms of how many gubernatorial appointees are living there.

Developer Bruce Nestande, who lives in the 92705 Santa Ana ZIP code, served in the Legislature with Deukmejian in the 1970s. As an Orange County supervisor, Nestande defied party chieftains and supported Deukmejian in the 1982 primary.

Since then, Deukmejian has reappointed Nestande to the California Transportation Commission, which decides how to spend public money for highway projects, such as the widening of Interstate 5.

In addition, Nestande’s ZIP code has become one of the state’s hot spots for appointments. Deukmejian has chosen 10 other people from the Santa Ana mailing route, including former Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks, now a superior court judge, for state posts. Some of them are on boards overseeing the certification of teachers, watching over operation of the Orange County Fair and regulating land surveyors.

Meredith Khachigian helped organize the volunteer effort in the Deukmejian campaign. She and husband Kenneth--speech writer for former President Ronald Reagan and Vice President Dan Quayle--are counted among Deukmejian’s small inner circle of political and social allies.

She is now a University of California regent, and her ZIP code of 92672 is home for seven other gubernatorial appointees.

Farther up the coast, part-time Huntington Beach residents William M. and Marianthi Lansdale have known Deukmejian since he was an assemblyman who gave a speech at Marianthi Lansdale’s Greek Orthodox Church in Long Beach.

The couple, through their Long Beach development firm, gave Deukmejian more than $100,000 in money and use of a private airplane during the 1982 campaign. Deukmejian later appointed Lansdale to the California Horse Racing Board and his wife to the California State University Board of Trustees.

Marianthi Lansdale, now chairwoman of the CSU board, recently issued a public apology after The Times revealed that she had falsely claimed a 1959 Associate of Arts degree from Long Beach City College at the time of her appointment. She actually attended classes for more than 10 years at the school but did not receive her degree.

In a recent interview with The Times, Marianthi Lansdale said she didn’t ask Deukmejian for the post and was surprised at first that he would suggest it.

“When they asked me about that, I said, ‘Hey, I didn’t even go to a university. I don’t have an M.A. or B.A.,’ ” she recalled, adding that

it would be “naive” not to think that her political work for Deukmejian led to the appointment.

“We worked diligently and hard in raising money for the governor,” she said in a recent interview. “This is his way of saying ‘You did a good job and this is a prestigious appointment and you’re going to do a good job.’ That’s just the ABCs of the political world.”

The Lansdales’ 92649 ZIP code is also home for seven other gubernatorial appointees, including Orange County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who serves on the state Air Resources Board.

But the Orange County neighborhood given the greatest role in the Deukmejian Administration is Newport Beach’s 92660 ZIP code, with 17 current appointees. The mailing route is also home to such corporate and political giants as the Irvine Co. and the William Lyon Co.

Former Congressman Robert E. Badham, one of the Newport Beach residents appointed to the state board regulating accountants, said he wasn’t aware of his ZIP code’s popularity with the governor.

“I’m frankly surprised that you do have that many people out of this ZIP code, but when you name their names, they are people who have been active in the community for a number of years,” he said.

One Deukmejian insider, who asked not to be identified, said the governor’s fondness for Newport Beach is understandable, since the coastal community delivers money and votes for Republican candidates. “When it comes down to marshaling the forces, it comes out of the Newport Beach area,” he said.

Two Newport Beach residents who received prominent appointments are friends of Deukmejian who helped him in the 1982 race--John A. Murdy III of the state Fish and Game Commission, and CSU trustee Anthony Michael Vitti.

Murdy’s father represented Orange County in the state Senate between 1953 and 1964, befriending Deukmejian when he was a rookie assemblyman.

“Years ago, my parents had the governor and his wife over to their home to have dinner,” said Murdy, a sod farmer and Orange County developer. “He knew the name Murdy because of my father and because of the time we had dinner with him.”

Murdy himself pitched in during the 1982 campaign by donating $5,000 in use of a private airplane to the would-be governor, campaign records show. An avid outdoorsman, Murdy also told Deukmejian about his interest in serving on the Fish and Game Commission, to which the governor obliged with an appointment in 1986.

Vitti served as Deukmejian’s campaign co-chairman in Orange County, helping to arrange fund-raisers. The attorney-developer, whose father-in-law made a fortune in Kal-Kan dog food, also said he sees Deukmejian socially.

“It’s not the type of thing where we see each other on the golf course, but we see each other socially,” said Vitti, who was appointed to the CSU board last year. “Certainly we became friends over the years . . . and he decided that I would be capable of filling the job.”

The list of other Deukmejian appointments from Newport Beach sounds like a Who’s Who of Orange County and Republican politics:

State Sen. Marian Bergeson, named to the governor’s Block Grant Advisory Committee; insurance executive Earl Rippee, on the state accountancy board; former Newport Beach Mayor Jackie Heather, now state food and agriculture board member; pediatrician David J. Bunnell Jr., appointed to a local medical quality review committee; former gubernatorial press secretary Larry Thomas, now an Irvine Co. executive and Orange County Fair Board appointee; attorney Larry M. Arnold, whose father was instrumental in galvanizing support from the state’s agricultural community for Deukmejian, also on the county fair board; Savings and Loan Commissioner William Crawford, who knew Deukmejian when both men had their business offices in Long Beach; former school board member Beverly K. Langston, appointed to the county fair board.

USD professor Fellmeth said the correlation between politics and gubernatorial appointments demonstrates a growing and sinister breed of “patronage.”

“To appoint people based at all on campaign contributions is a form of institutional corruption of our system,” Fellmeth said. “It is a dagger in the heart of our government, and it’s getting worse and worse and worse.”

Khachigian, however, disagreed, adding that people such as his wife and other Deukmejian supporters are involved in politics because they are interested in serving their communities. The appointments are not rewards, he said, but recognition of that community spirit. The jobs, he added, are often time-consuming, unpaid tasks by qualified people that have the confidence of the governor.

“Why did Jack Kennedy appoint Bobby Kennedy as (United States) attorney general?” Khachigian asked. “Officeholders tend to turn to people they get to know in times of political combat, whose views and loyalties are tested on a political and personal basis.

“It’s an advantage,” he said of the political connections, “but I wouldn’t say it’s unfair.”

Asked if he thought his appointment meant that he and his community had clout with the governor, Murdy of Newport Beach said: “I feel like Joe Six-Pac. I don’t feel any different than if I lived in Huntington Beach or anywhere else. I don’t feel like I live in a power ZIP code, I know that.”

Times staff writer Mark Gladstone contributed to this story.

TOP-10 STATE POLITICAL APPOINTEES FROM ORANGE COUNTY

The following 10 Orange County residents hold the most prestigious appointments made by Gov. George Deukmejian to state boards and commissions. The total number of appointees from Orange County is 169.

William Denzil Campbell of Laguna Beach (92651).

A former attorney and vice president of McMahan’s furniture company, Campbell, 51, was an early backer of Deukmejian who donated money and allowed the governor’s campaign to use more than $2,000 in office furniture during the 1982 campaign, records show. He was appointed in May, 1987, to the California State University Board of Trustees, of which he is vice chairman.

Anthony Michael Vitti of Newport Beach (92660).

Vitti, a 46-year-old attorney and developer, was co-chairman of Deukmejian’s gubernatorial campaigns and was instrumental in arranging early fund-raisers for the governor. He was appointed in August to the California State University Board of Trustees, which sets policy for a 20-campus system.

Bruce K. Nestande of Santa Ana (92705).

Nestande, 51, a former state assemblyman and Orange County supervisor, befriended Deukmejian in the Legislature and was one of a handful of Republican officeholders who supported the governor early in his uphill 1982 campaign. Nestande, vice president of Arnel Development Co. in Costa Mesa, was reappointed in 1985 to the California Transportation Commission.

Robert Alexander Von Esch Jr. of Fullerton (92635).

A former Fullerton city councilman, Von Esch, 67, met Deukmejian when the two men started work the same day in 1957 at the Los Angeles County counsel’s office. He was appointed in January, 1988, to the Board of Corrections, which oversees the health of prisoners and the construction of state prisons.

Eugene Alfred Boston of Buena Park (90621).

Boston, a 61-year-old physician whose Fullerton practice specializes in family medicine, was appointed to the Air Resources Board in April, 1986. He has been active in Republican activities, serving on the California State Central Committee and the Republican National Commission.

Meredith J. Khachigian of San Clemente (92672).

Khachigian, 45, and her husband, political consultant Kenneth Khachigian, are friends and confidants of Deukmejian. She helped run the Orange County volunteer arm of the Deukmejian gubernatorial campaigns. She was appointed in July, 1987, to the Regents of the University of California, which runs the nine-campus system on a $6-billion-plus annual budget.

Harriett M. Wieder of Huntington Beach (92649).

Wieder, 69, an Orange County supervisor, was an early supporter of Deukmejian. She was appointed by the governor to the Air Resources Board, the state’s air-pollution control agency.

Marianthi K. Lansdale of Huntington Beach (92649).

Lansdale, 57, and her husband, Long Beach developer William Mangum Lansdale, contributed more than $100,000 in money and use of a corporate airplane to Deukmejian’s 1982 campaign, records show. The governor appointed her in August, 1985, to the California State University Board of Trustees, of which she is chairwoman. William Mangum Lansdale of Huntington Beach (92649).

Lansdale, 70, president of the Lansdale Co., was Deukmejian’s finance co-chairman for Southern California. He was appointed by Deukmejian to the California Horse Racing Board, which licenses pari-mutuel wagering and allocates racing dates for horse tracks in the state.

John A. Murdy III of Newport Beach (92660).

Murdy, 61, a turf grower and Orange County developer, was appointed in April, 1986, to the Fish and Game Commission. His father was a state senator from Orange County from 1953 to 1964 who befriended a young assemblyman named George Deukmejian. Murdy III donated more than $5,000 in in-kind use of an airplane during Deukmejian’s 1982 campaign.

HOT ZIP CODES

Following are Orange County ZIP codes with the greatest concentration of current gubernatorial appointments to state boards and commissions. Totals are for the different seats on boards, commissions and task forces in a given ZIP code. Thus, a person who holds two current appointments would be counted twice.

City Appointments

Newport Beach, 92660 17

Santa Ana, 92705 11

Orange, 92669 10

Huntington Beach, 92649 8

San Clemente, 92672 8

Fullerton, 92635 7

Laguna Beach, 92651 6

Anaheim, 92807 6

Irvine, 92715 6

Tustin, 92680 6

Costa Mesa, 92626 6

San Juan Capistrano, 92675 6

Source: Office of the Governor