LOCAL ELECTIONS YORBA LINDA CITY COUNCIL : Anti-Wedaa Mailer Aided by Builders, Records Show

They arrived in the mail Wednesday--red, white and blue political brochures that rapped City Councilman Hank Wedaa for being too cozy with developers.

“Perhaps Hank has spent so much time with his fat cat developer friends that he forgets that he was elected to represent the people, not the special interests,” the brochure reads.

But campaign finance records show that many of the companies bankrolling the anti-Wedaa mailers are among the biggest and most politically influential developers in Southern California.

The companies are the Alexander Haagen Co., a retail developer in Manhattan Beach; the Lusk Co., a large Newport Beach builder; the Dale Poe Development Co., a Los Angeles construction firm; the Presley Cos., a Newport Beach home builder; Wesley R. Lind, a Pasadena-based real estate investor and Western Waste Industries Inc. of Irvine, a large refuse hauler.

“It’s ironic,” Wedaa, a 20-year council veteran, said Wednesday. “It’s the developers that are out to get me. That’s what’s so surprising. I think the City Council has always been fair with them and they have had a good working relationship with us. It’s incongruous.”

As of June 30, the companies contributed a total of $14,200 to the brochure’s author, Maximum Voter Participation, a Los Angeles-based political action committee which bills itself as a supporter of pro-business candidates.

The committee’s treasurer, attorney Cary Davidson, could not be reached for comment. His law partner, Dana Reed, chairman of the Orange County Transportation Commission, said their practice handles finances for scores of political action committees, but does not get involved with campaign strategy or writing mailers.

Financial disclosure statements at the Los Angeles County registrar of voters office do not list any other officers for the committee. The documents show, however, that the Haagen company gave $1,000; the Lusk Co., $1,500; Dale Poe, $3,700; Presley Co. $1,500; Western Waste, $1,500 and Lind, $5,000.

Representatives of the firms could not be reached for comment Wednesday except the Lusk Co.

“We don’t support innuendo campaign tactics,” said Don D. Steffensen, executive vice president of the company. “We try to be careful about this, and this does not sound like the type of campaign material the Lusk Co. would support. We don’t do business that way.”

Steffensen said the builder contributed to the committee in May on the assurance that it would support pro-business candidates throughout Southern California. He said he has asked someone in the firm to contact Maximum Voter Participation to get an explanation of the brochure.

The Lusk Co. has occasionally sparred with Wedaa on projects, but Steffensen described the veteran councilman as a “very fair man who tries hard to get what he thinks is best for the city.”

Wedaa charged that the brochure was the brainchild of his challenger in Tuesday’s council election, John Gullixson, who has raised some of the same issues addressed in the mailer. Wedaa is contemplating a complaint to the state Fair Political Practices Commission, a watchdog agency.

“There’s no question it’s from the Gullixson campaign,” he said, “People who send out pieces like this show in print what they are like inside. . . . We have never had anything like this in Yorba Linda.”

Gullixson denied Wedaa’s charges, saying he did not know what Maximum Voter Participation was and that the mailer probably would not help his campaign anyway. He contended that it might be a dirty trick orchestrated by another campaign to make him look bad.

“I’m the only person who can beat Wedaa, so I wish to hell they would have contacted me,” he said.