TUSTIN : Kelly Gears Up for 1st Reelection Bid

Councilman John Kelly, a key figure on the tumultuous City Council, says his Irish blood has served him well in local politics.

“There’s an old saying that an Irishman’s heart is not at peace unless he’s in the middle of a fight,” Kelly said. “That could be true.”

Kelly, who waged four campaigns before being elected to the City Council in 1986, now faces a fight: his first try at reelection.

Because Councilman Ronald B. Hoesterey resigned last year and Councilwoman Ursula E. Kennedy recently announced she will not seek reelection, Kelly is the only incumbent vying for one of the three seats to be filled in April. Although the filing period for those seats just opened, four people so far have taken out papers to run.

Kelly, 28, is setting up campaign headquarters in a former tobacco shop next to the tuxedo shop he now runs. Kelly’s campaigns, which included an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 1988, have been somewhat unconventional. He has driven a red, white and blue Cadillac, sung “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” to a group of senior citizens and hired an elephant to ride on El Camino Real.

His non-campaign antics have included singing during council meetings, bringing Orange County’s Pope look-alike to a meeting and staking out the home of a council member whose legal resident status he and Councilman Earl J. Prescott challenged in court.

A staunchly conservative, outspoken Republican with a penchant for good cigars, Kelly has drawn harsh criticism from some of his council colleagues and members of the Tustin Residents Action Committee, a group that plans to support several candidates in the election.

“We are going to be aggressively exposing John Kelly, and also Earl Prescott, to show the public that we feel they are using the office for political gain,” said Carl Kasalek, chairman of TRAC.

Kelly has been known to lambaste council colleagues and audience members, calling people “battle ax” or “twit” on occasion. He has been called impetuous and immature by residents, who chastise him at meetings or write letters to a local newspaper.

Prescott, who often sides with Kelly on issues that divide the council, said, “All I can say is that his heart’s in the right place and that’s what counts.”

Kelly, who left high school after his junior year to work in one of the family businesses, said he is concerned with protecting the rights of owners of small businesses.

His other goals include making sure redevelopment money is used for streets and sidewalks instead of private real estate developments, and trying to control noise from planes approaching John Wayne Airport.

“I don’t want Tustin to end up like Inglewood,” he said, suggesting that the city buy its own sound-monitoring equipment rather than rely on the county to monitor noise levels.

Kelly first threw his hat into the political arena after the family ran into obstacles with the Planning Commission when trying to renovate the family businesses clustered between El Camino Real and C Street.

“I went to the council meetings when I was 16 years old with my dad and I saw council members there that were totally unsympathetic to what he wanted to do. They were going by the prescribed bureaucratic recommendations at the state level or whatever,” Kelly said.