Mission Viejo Recall Brawl Nears Bitter End

Little in this city’s brief history prepared it for the venom that has accompanied the effort to recall City Councilman Robert A. Curtis.

In the community’s first two decades of development, most issues were handled quietly, shepherded by the Mission Viejo Co. and a cadre of community loyalists.

But after Mission Viejo’s incorporation in 1988, even the most routine proposals have cleaved the City Council and sparked long sessions of shrill name-calling. More often than not, the outspoken Curtis has been at the center of those battles, earning him passionate admirers and equally vocal foes.

Curtis’ opponents call him a “liar,” and he shows little restraint in blasting back. He has referred to the three-member council majority as “the three stooges” and he accuses them of toadying to the Mission Viejo Co., which built the community and is the major financial backer of the recall effort.

After months of bitter campaigning by both sides, Mission Viejo residents on Tuesday will try to settle the differences once and for all, voting on the recall and on Measure A, which would require large annexation proposals to go before city voters.

After the election, city officials say they hope they can get back to the business of governing Mission Viejo’s affairs, a chore that has largely been relegated to the back burner while the recall has claimed most of the attention.

“I’m not naive enough to think that things will go back to normal the next day,” Mayor Christian W. Keena said in an interview last week. “But I’m hoping that within a month or so, we can begin to get back to the affairs of this community.”

Tempers have flared so hotly over the recall issue that Keena has received half a dozen death threats in the closing weeks of the recall campaign, he said. He has changed his home phone number, and sheriff’s deputies have had to check his car and neighborhood for bombs.

“It’s been unbelievable,” Keena said. “It’s absolutely insane.”

As tensions have grown, much of the debate has coalesced around a single issue: whether the Mission Viejo Co. has overstepped its bounds in governing the community it created.

Curtis, a 34-year-old lawyer, vehemently attacks the company, asserting that it meddles in issues better left to residents and arguing that it has tampered with the recall process by skewing it in favor of business interests. The company and its supporters retort that it is out of concern for the community that Mission Viejo Co. takes an active interest in local affairs.

“We have some parallel interests with the Mission Viejo Co.,” said Helen Monroe, who chairs the pro-recall Alliance for Mission Viejo. “The company has an interest in this city, and so do we. We both want to see the plan for this community completed without Bob Curtis interfering with it.”

That common ground has manifested itself in enormous financial support for the recall effort, which so far has garnered $470,000 in contributions, $267,000 of which has been contributed by the Mission Viejo Co. By comparison, Curtis has raised about $39,000.

“Those strike me as very big numbers for a recall campaign, both in terms of total contributions and in terms of contributions from a single source,” said John Larsen, chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission. “I can’t think of campaigns I know of that rival it.”

Curtis, as always, is more blunt. “It’s obscene,” he said. “They’re trying to buy this city.”

Monroe said she sees no problem with accepting the huge donations or other support that the Mission Viejo Co. provides.

“They have offered us support and we have accepted it,” Monroe said. “We are not tools of the company, though, no matter what Bob Curtis says. . . . He lies about so many things it doesn’t matter what he says.”

Monroe and her recall group have used the campaign funds to hire a political consultant, telephone operators and petition circulators and to produce a series of mailers, including a tabloid-size, eight-page newspaper.

The animosity between recall proponents and Curtis is both deep and personal, dating back even before Curtis won his seat on the council in 1988. During that campaign, Curtis and William S. Craycraft, who would later become mayor, distributed a hard-hitting mailer as election day approached. The mailer attacked the community’s advisory governing body, accusing it of mismanagement of area parks and park fees. Council candidates Victoria C. Jaffe, Norman P. Murray and Keena were members of that body, and the mailer marked a break from the community’s relatively benign politics.

“It was a hit piece, nothing more,” Jaffe said later.

Although all five were elected to the council, the tension that sprung from that salvo has never really subsided. Even today, the council majority--Jaffe, Murray and Keena--repeatedly alludes to the mailer, which it and others see as evidence that Curtis and Craycraft have their eyes on higher political office and that their hearts are not really in Mission Viejo.

If that mailer laid the groundwork for the subsequent recall, it was a 1989 annexation fight that gave it life. Curtis, who had lived in a pie-shaped wedge of land bordering Mission Viejo known as Aegean Hills, championed the area’s annexation, saying it would supplement Mission Viejo’s tax base.

A series of analyses of the tax benefits did little to clarify that contention, however, with some reports suggesting that annexation would provide more than $1 million in revenue and other reports warning that it would drain city coffers. The Mission Viejo Co. strongly opposed the annexation, arguing that it would disrupt the community plan laid out for the community in the early 1960s.

Although the council first voted unanimously in favor of proceeding with the annexation, it reversed itself later, with the three-member majority voting against it, arguing that the economic picture was too uncertain to proceed. Curtis and Craycraft stood their ground, but it was Curtis, considered by critics to be the more divisive element, who became the target of the recall.

The annexation issue sparked a bitter battle between the company and Curtis, which if anything, has only become more intense.

David Celestin, Mission Viejo Co.’s vice president, said Curtis ignored the wishes of his constituents and tried to tamper with the community master plan.

“We’re committed to completing this plan,” Celestin said in an interview later. “We made a promise to the people of this community that we would do that, and we intend to.”

Curtis considers the company’s public devotion to the master plan a smoke screen, intentionally intended to divert attention from what he considers the central issue of the recall: his positions advocating controlled growth.

“The strong undercurrent of this campaign is the very real power struggle between the Mission Viejo Co. and slow-growth advocates,” he said. “My independence from the Mission Viejo Co. has led to this extremely divisive overkill.”

There again, debate ensues. Monroe and her allies say the recall is not responsible for dividing the community. Not surprisingly, they blame Curtis, who they point out is often brusque with speakers who approach the council during public meetings. Recall proponents call him rude, and say his alliance with Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), a staunch conservative and Curtis supporter, demonstrates Curtis’ willingness to bring in outsiders to tamper with Mission Viejo’s political independence.

Curtis is unapologetic. “It’s laughable that they would try to pin the outsider label on our campaign’s volunteer effort when they are hiring political consultants and bringing in paid workers from all over the state,” he said.

With just two days remaining before Mission Viejo residents go to the polls to choose between Curtis and his foes, the major uncertainty remains voter turnout. Some officials, citing the traditionally low turnout in special elections, predict that fewer than 20% of the city’s 37,889 registered voters will make it to the polls.

Low turnout would probably help the recall proponents, most observers agree, because they can be assured of a reasonably strong turnout among the core of longtime community activists who oppose Curtis. But the recall campaign’s hard attacks on the councilman in the past few weeks may have the effect of drawing people to the polls, and some of them will likely vote against the recall.

Curtis is counting on that and has scheduled a rally for today to mobilize his constituency. The event will be at the Mission Viejo Swim & Racquet Club, starting at 3 p.m.

Recall supporters are also feverishly working their phone banks and precincts to turn out their faithful.

With all the last-minute fervor, even the most optimistic observers predict it will be some time before passions cool and Mission Viejo returns to the sleepy town it once was.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, that’s for sure,” Keena said. “I, for one, am looking forward to the conclusion of this nightmare.”