Oil Spill Is Star Vehicle for Mayor : Politics: Huntington Beach’s Thomas J. Mays is hailed as a rising GOP prospect after he efficiently ‘took care of business’ during the city’s shoreline crisis.

The boyish-looking mayor was blushing.

Only 13 days before, lanky and soft-spoken Thomas J. Mays was in the third month of his one-year term, serving in a largely ceremonial and sometimes obscure post. But a week ago Tuesday, an overflow audience in the City Council chambers was on its feet delivering thunderous applause in honor of Mays’ leadership since the Feb. 7 oil spill.

“He took care of business and avoided some of the political grandstanding that some other state and federal politicians embarked on after the oil spill,” said Councilman John Erskine, who led the applause. “I think he’s shown a tremendous growth and maturity.”

Ever since the giant tanker American Trader gashed its hull on its own anchor and spilled 394,000 gallons of its oily cargo into the waters off Huntington Beach, Mays has gone from being just another local politician to being a frequent face on the network news. And Mays, a Republican, is now talking of riding the crest of his new-found prominence to a seat in Congress.

The tribute in the council chambers was only another sign that the 36-year-old rookie mayor of Huntington Beach has become--practically overnight--a rising personality in Orange County politics.

“I think that Tom is an undiscovered gem who has long worked in the trenches of the party,” said Orange County Republican Party Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes. “But as fate may have it, the occurrence of an oil spill has afforded him, finally, a proper public exposure.”

County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, herself a former Huntington Beach mayor, said the spill “was Tom’s first test” as a new mayor and that, in her judgment, “he demonstrated leadership.”

“His youthful looks have probably worked against him,” she noted. “It’s difficult to get credibility when one is so young-looking. So the oil spill incident was a situation for him to show that his actions belie his young looks.”

If the spill created a national forum for the many politicians who raced onto the city’s beach to bask in the publicity, it was Mays who much of the time was on center stage. But unlike the out-of-towners--one of whom brought his own podium and microphone to set up on the sand--Mays was never accused of exploiting the opportunity.

On Thursday, when other politicians had long since moved on to fresher issues, Mays was again down on the beach, officially reopening stretches that had been closed to the public since the spill.

“You can’t get any better-looking waves than this,” said the former surfer, now dressed in his customary dark suit, starched white shirt and red silk tie.

During the past few weeks, television viewers sometimes woke up to Mays’ image on the “Today Show” and “CBS This Morning,” and he was quoted in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and dozens of other major newspapers from Alaska to Florida. Last Sunday, he taped a “Phil Donahue Show” that aired Thursday.

He was often up before dawn, boarding a helicopter to fly over and assess the spill’s damage. He held frequent strategy sessions with representatives of the Coast Guard and other agencies involved in cleaning up the oil that was lapping at the city’s shore.

Mays even made news when he criticized Gov. George Deukmejian’s refusal to declare the spill a “disaster” that qualified for emergency state assistance.

“If he took a tour down here and saw how bad it was,” Mays said at the time, “he would change his mind. If you can call it an emergency by having two Medflies down here. . . . I think their priorities may be a little mixed up.”

By taking a jab at the state’s ranking Republican, Mays caused some political observers to raise their eyebrows.

“He has spoken rather harshly . . . and that’s a risky thing to do for someone who wants a career in politics,” said Huntington Beach Mayor Pro Tem Peter M. Green. “I was very surprised that he was that outspoken.”

But Mays’ handling of the spill was widely praised, even by members of the other party. Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, the top Democrat in state government, said he was “impressed with Mayor Mays’ response and management of the crisis.”

Mays has already announced his intention to seek a second four-year term on the council in November’s election. But during a recent interview, he also said he is considering a run for Congress if the 1990 Census justifies the formation of a new district in west Orange County, which is currently shared by Reps. C. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita).

Said veteran political consultant Harvey Englander: “If a new congressional seat is formed, then certainly (Mays) would be a formidable candidate. He has done a good job in Huntington Beach and he’s well liked as mayor and he showed a pretty cool head in his handling of the oil spill.”

Political observers say the free publicity Mays has received from the spill should prove invaluable to him. Erskine notes that when supporters of the Measure M half-cent sales tax proposal conducted a survey last year to see which county politicians were best known to voters, Mays emerged as one of the least known.

“I’d be very surprised if a survey were done now and people couldn’t name Tom more frequently this year than in 1988,” Erskine said.

And others say the time may be ripe for Mays to make a bid for higher office.

“Now all those things come together: experience, a conservative Republican philosophy and the high energy of a very vital young public officeholder, (and) that makes him an attractive potential candidate,” said county GOP Chairman Fuentes.

Mays’ small office on the fourth floor of Huntington Beach City Hall is bright, sunny and--like the mayor--neat and orderly. One recent morning, he sat flipping through a stack of early 1900s Huntington Beach newspapers, glancing at stories about the construction of the city’s historic pier.

“I like to read these old newspapers because they give me a sense of Huntington Beach’s history,” Mays said. “I majored in political science because so much of history is formed by politics and politicians.”

Born in Huntington Park, Mays spent his childhood in La Mirada, Manhattan Beach and finally Huntington Beach, where he grew up surfing like many California beach youngsters. He still owns a long board. “Actually, I’ve been wanting to get out there and surf again. But the days recently have been pretty long.”

Mays has a bachelor’s degree from UCLA and a master’s, also in political science, from the University of Chicago. After college, he considered a career in the Foreign Service, but a job offer from McDonnell Douglas brought him back to Huntington Beach in 1978. He is a systems analyst for the giant aviation and aerospace firm.

“My mother, who lives in Huntington Harbour, introduced me to the local California Republican Assembly, and I became interested and got active in that,” Mays explained. After he worked for the election of Assemblyman Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach) in 1980, Frizzelle ended up appointing Mays as a field representative on his staff.

He made his first bid for elective office in 1984, when he ran for a Huntington Beach council seat. When he came within 1,000 votes of winning, Mays said, “people realized I had a chance. I kept my organization going, and we started making plans for 1986.”

That year, Mays campaigned as a pro-development candidate and won.

The Huntington Beach council chooses the city’s mayor every year from among its own ranks. Erskine says the council came close to selecting Mays in 1988. But “at the time, some people were of the opinion that maybe he was a little young and didn’t quite have the experience,” Erskine said.

Mays discounts that explanation and blames his failure to secure the post on politics. He said the support he had collected to be named mayor was eroded when he publicly criticized Supervisor Wieder for not paying enough attention to complaints from residents about some sewage problems.

For her part, Wieder said last week that she has had only pleasant relations with Mays, adding, “I’ve not had the chance to work with him until he became mayor.”

Mays acknowledges that a few months ago he was thinking about making a bid for Wieder’s supervisorial post. But Wieder said she has only heard rumors.

“Rumors are rampant,” she said, dismissing suggestions that she and Mays could be political rivals. “If that rumor were true, how could it be that I have his endorsement for reelection? I enjoy his support and the support of 95% of the elected officials in my district.”

In Huntington Beach, political factions often fall along a line separating those with development interests from those with environmental concerns. Mays has generally not been considered a member of the council’s “slow-growth” wing, led by council members Green and Grace Winchell. But the mayor maintains that he has been evenhanded on issues that pit development against environment.

Mays has voted in favor of measures to protect Huntington Beach’s fragile wetlands and last week was part of a unanimous vote to join the city of Los Angeles in a lawsuit to ban malathion spraying in the battle against the Mediterranean fruit fly.

Some political observers say Mays’ support for some environmental causes is part of a national trend among new Republican leaders.

“During the Reagan years, you had a big increase in the Republican rolls, and many of those new voters were yuppies living in California’s coastal areas,” said political consultant Allen Hoffenbloom. “If you’re a Republican living inland you don’t wake up every morning worrying about offshore drilling and coastal preservation. But if you live in Manhattan Beach or Hermosa Beach or Monterey, you do.”

But Debbie Cook, chairwoman of Save Our Parks, a Huntington Beach environmental group, suspects that Mays’ concern for the environment is fleeting.

“He said it (the oil spill) opened his eyes to environmental issues, but I just don’t believe it,” she said. “I don’t think he ever takes the environmental stance he should.”

In contrast to Cook, environmentalist Loretta Wolfe, president of Huntington Beach Tomorrow, praised the mayor even though she has frequently disagreed with his previous pro-development stands.

“I’m proud of him and thought he did a good job,” Wolfe said. “He was out there all the time, day and night, and to me it was showing that he was not abandoning the city to the state or the other people who were moving in,” Wolfe said.

While it remains to be seen whether Mays’ recent burst of visibility will ever translate into votes, for now, Surf City seems to be buzzing about its mayor’s political future.

A week ago, Mays was the main speaker at a Rotary Club luncheon at the Huntington Beach Inn, and almost everyone in attendance wanted to hear him talk about the oil spill.

“Today we’re very fortunate to have the man of the hour with us,” program chairman Steve Holden said as he introduced Mays. “I’m sure you’ve all seen him on television.

“Tom is a young man who is going places,” Holden continued. “Maybe next time we see Tom he’ll be Congressman Mays or Sen. Mays.”