Observers Say Irvine Co. Could Land Direct Line to Wilson : Politics: Some see too many personal and political ties between the company and the candidate to dismiss the significance of a Wilson gubernatorial victory.

If elected governor, Pete Wilson will have more than the usual reasons to accept telephone calls from the Newport Beach headquarters of the Irvine Co.

The caller may be his former mayoral press secretary and campaign manager: Larry Thomas, now the Irvine Co.’s vice president of corporate communications.

It may be another former campaign manager: Jack Flanigan, now the Irvine Co.’s vice president of government relations.

Or it may be his friend, Donald L. Bren, the billionaire owner of the Irvine Co. who last year hosted a Wilson fund-raiser in his home.

All three are at the top of a company that is widely considered one of the most aggressive behind-the-scenes players in state government, where the single stroke of a governor’s pen can lead to millions of dollars in benefits--or costs--to the company. And if Wilson is elected, some say, the company will have easy access to the state’s chief executive.

“They will get--I’m not sure I’d like to say preferential treatment--but they get access,” said a Republican fund-raiser, who asked not to be identified. “They will get their telephone calls to the governor returned on the first, rather than the fifth, try.”

Observed Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), who has received contributions from and butted heads with the Irvine Co.: “I’d say the Irvine Co. is a major player in California politics. I think they’re even bigger (if Wilson is elected), because there are personal relationships as well as political relationships.”

One of those relationships was underscored on Oct. 26, when the publicity-shy Bren played host and co-chairman of a $400,000 Republican Party breakfast fund-raiser at the Irvine Hyatt Hotel featuring President Bush.

“This is the county that is going to put Pete Wilson into the corner office of the Capitol in Sacramento,” Bren told the crowd.

Irvine Co. spokesman Thomas, however, argued that any close political and personal ties to Wilson will not translate into special treatment from the governor’s suite.

“I can just tell you that the whole political playing field on which Pete has played for 20 years is strewn with people who have supported his candidacy but have found him to make judgments on individual issues that have disappointed them,” said Thomas. “I’ve known Pete Wilson for years, and Pete is independent.”

Wilson, who readily acknowledges that Bren is a political supporter and “a friend,” says the company’s position on an issue won’t be his guide as governor.

“The test is: Is it coincident with or is it in opposition to the public interest? If it is in opposition, then it doesn’t go,” he said.

The Irvine Co.’s interests in Sacramento are proportionate to its size: It holds title to one-sixth of Orange County--the largest private ownership in any major American metropolitan area. As owner of about 10,000 apartments, the company worked to kill legislation this year that would require landlords to pay interest on security deposits. When its development rights were threatened by a move to list two rare plants as as endangered plant species, the company persuaded the Fish and Game Commission to overrule its own staff and deny special protection for the flora.

Records show that the Irvine Co. paid lobbyists more than $250,000 over the last two years to support or oppose 74 bills, 36 of which were signed into law.

The company also gave at least $125,000 to an initiative sponsored by Gov. George Deukmejian that increased the gasoline sales tax by 9 cents a gallon to fund transportation projects and freeways. And perhaps its biggest coup was helping to convince a reluctant Legislature that southern Orange County needed three private toll roads, 50% of which would run through Irvine Co. land.

In addition to lobbying, the company spends substantial sums on political races. Since 1987, records show, it has donated more than $2 million to a variety of local and state races. Although it is most closely aligned with the Republican Party, the firm has made a point to extend its largess to powerful Democrats such as Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

So far this year in the governor’s race, the company and its officials have given at least $19,000 to the Wilson campaign. Those giving $1,000 include the company itself, Bren, Thomas and Senior Vice President Gary H. Hunt, public records show. Flanigan and his wife, Janet, each gave $2,000.

Records also show a number of Irvine Co. board members and their spouses contributing to Wilson. They include Richard F. Alden and his wife, Marjorie; Orange County developer Donald M. Koll and his wife, Dorothy; William McFarland and his wife, Rose Marie; Raymond L. Watson; and Howard A. Marguleas and his wife, Ardith.

In addition, Bren served as intermediary in the Wilson campaign by hosting an $86,200 fund-raiser at his home late last year. And Flanigan has taken a month’s vacation to help the Republican Party get out the vote.

Two Irvine Co. board members and their families have given a total of $3,000 to the Feinstein campaign, records show.

“Whoever is the next governor . . . we just want to be in the position to advocate our position at the negotiating table when things are discussed,” said Jim Barich, the Irvine Co.’s senior director of government relations.

Thomas said that he and other Irvine Co. executives with past ties to Wilson are supporting the Republican for personal reasons, and not because of their affiliation with the Irvine Co.

“These are people who have known Wilson long before they knew Donald Bren,” Thomas said of himself and Flanigan in particular. “The fact that we are all here is not because we know Pete Wilson.”

“I’m an old friend of Pete’s and I’m a supporter of Pete’s and an enthusiastic one . . . but my involvement in the support of his candidacy is unrelated to the Irvine Co.” he said.

TOP IRVINE CO. OFFICIALS WITH TIES TO WILSON AND HIS CAMPAIGN ( Compiled by Times staff writer Ralph Frammolino ) Donald L. Bren, 58, owner of 93% of the Irvine Co., first joined political forces with Pete Wilson in 1975, when Wilson was running for his second term as San Diego mayor. Wilson faced bitter opposition from local developers, who were angry at his forceful moves to impose controls on suburban sprawl.

Bren dined with Wilson in San Diego one night during the campaign and offered his help, said one former Wilson aide who attended the meeting but declined to be identified.

“He was the only developer in Southern California offering help,” the former aide said. “I remember being impressed by the fact that he was stepping up and saying, ‘You (Wilson) are on the right track with your philosophy of growth, that it has to be managed.”’

Bren also was among the inner circle of supporters who helped persuade Wilson to abandon his campaign for governor in 1982 and instead focus on a successful U.S. Senate race, an Irvine Co. spokesman said. Gary H. Hunt, 41, the Irvine Co.’s senior vice president for strategic planning and corporate affairs, is a close friend of Wilson’s general campaign manager, George Gorton. Their personal relationship goes back to the early 1970s, when both were young men living in Washington. At one point, Gorton said, when he was between residences, Hunt allowed him to stay at his home for two weeks.

At the time, Gorton was working as national college director for President Richard M. Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President. Later, after Gorton was quoted in 1973 as saying he helped spy on radicals in 38 states, he was fired from his job at the Interior Department and banished from Republican politics by George Bush, then national party chairman.

A year later, Hunt played a crucial role in getting Gorton’s career back on track, giving him a favorable recommendation when Gorton was hired to be assistant finance director of the Republican State Central Committee. Gorton, credited with engineering Wilson’s come-from-behind 1982 Senate victory, is considered one of the politician’s closest advisers. Jack Flanigan, 45, the Irvine Co.’s liaison with state and federal officials, got his start in state politics with Wilson. Party insiders say Flanigan is behind Bren’s political involvement and makes fund-raising telephone calls on his behalf.

Then-Assemblyman Wilson hired Flanigan, then a San Diego college student, to be his first summer intern in Sacramento. Flanigan worked out of a small office in the top floor of the Capitol, answering phones and researching issues.

Flanigan, a self-professed “political junkie,” was serving a tour of duty in Vietnam when Wilson ran for San Diego mayor in 1971. But he had returned to California and finished law school just in time to help his former boss with the 1975 reelection campaign. He ran Wilson’s unsuccessful 1978 gubernatorial bid. Four years later, he took a six-week leave from his job at the CORO Foundation in Los Angeles to travel around the state with Wilson during the politician’s successful Senate campaign.

Flanigan’s younger brother, Terry, is Gov. George Deukmejian’s appointment secretary, responsible for overseeing judicial selections.

Larry Thomas, 43, the Irvine Co.’s vice president of corporate communications, first met Wilson while working as a political reporter for the San Diego Union. After Wilson was elected San Diego mayor in 1971, Thomas became his press secretary. He kept thepost until 1977--six years that were some of Wilson’s most dynamic at City Hall, as he pushed controls on growth, construction of a trolley and redevelopment of San Diego’s seedy downtown.

Thomas left the mayoral payroll to be press secretary for Wilson’s ill-fated 1978 gubernatorial campaign, during which he met Bren. After the campaign, Thomas left San Diego altogether for a private industry job with the Bechtel Corp. in San Francisco.

Thomas returned to politics in 1982, when Gov. Deukmejian appointed him as gubernatorial press secretary. In 1986, he left state employment to run Deukmejian’s successful reelection campaign. Then Thomas went to Washington to be press secretary for Vice President Bush. He kept that job for three months, then took his present job with the Irvine Co. in mid-1987.