Fall From Power : Some Call Schaefer Victim of Pride, Temper

When friends held a goodby party for county Supervisor Madge Schaefer this month, billionaire David Murdock was there. So were actors Robert Wagner and Jill St. John. But longtime aide Doug Johnson was not.

The camera-shy Murdock, at whose Bel Air residence Schaefer had met two U.S. presidents,watched quietly from the back of the crowd as a tearful Schaefer accepted awards for her service.

Wagner and St. John, who had toasted their marriage with champagne in Schaefer’s Thousand Oaks office last spring, hugged her and expressed their admiration.

Johnson, a Schaefer protege, stayed home. Schaefer had ordered him out of her office in a box-throwing fury two weeks earlier after she discovered that he would soon go to work for her successor, Maria VanderKolk.

Johnson’s absence and the attendance of Murdock, Wagner and St. John reflected the same problems that had led to the supervisor’s first defeat in June after two decades in community, city and county politics.

As even some friends acknowledge, the powerful chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors will be leaving office Jan. 8 as a victim of her own volatile temper, her coziness with real-estate developers and a hubris that allowed her to take constituents for granted while reveling in friendships with the rich and famous.

Schaefer, a college-educated homemaker, had been a lawmaker so smart, tough and effective that she seemed a sure bet for higher office. She had been an irresistible force in county government. Then she lost by 79 votes in the biggest upset in a county race in at least 70 years.

Both Schaefer’s fiery personality and her support from development interests were cited as reasons for her loss to VanderKolk, 25, a slow-growth advocate. So was her refusal to seriously campaign against the novice politician.

Schaefer’s messy dismissal of Johnson last month put the lame-duck supervisor back in the news. Her intention to reenter politics, perhaps as an appointee of Gov.-elect Pete Wilson, has also prompted new interest.

“Don’t say goodby to Madge, never say goodby,” she said in an interview. “I am no dumb bunny. . . . I’m not going to skulk off into the sunset with my tail between my legs.”

A second look at Schaefer, 48, reveals not only a personality strong enough to move a bureaucracy but also a public official who in recent years increasingly has made her own rules--upbraiding even close friends and sometimes allegedly misusing county equipment and campaign funds.

During her four-year term, Schaefer also became so involved with all three major building projects considered by the county--at Lake Sherwood and the Ahmanson and Jordan ranches--that her top advisers warned her repeatedly that her relationships were political suicide.

Functioning as the county’s chief representative on Murdock’s exclusive Sherwood Country Club project near Thousand Oaks, Schaefer had extraordinary access to the billionaire.

Schaefer made toll calls to Murdock and his employees at least 150 times over a 14-month period ending in October, county records show. She repeatedly phoned not only Murdock officials at Lake Sherwood and the developer’s Los Angeles office but called his two California residences and his New York office and apartment.

A recipient of small gifts and campaign contributions from Murdock, Schaefer also dined with celebrities such as Wagner and actor Tom Selleck at Murdock’s country club and accepted invitations to fund-raisers for Ronald Reagan and George Bush at his Bel Air residence.

Murdock hosted a 1988 Schaefer fund-raiser at his 1,100-acre weekend estate, Ventura Farms, in Hidden Valley near Thousand Oaks and donated a pony auctioned for $4,000.

Just last month, Schaefer called Murdock to see if he would attend a breakfast for President Bush at Cal Lutheran University, then accepted his offer to arrange for her to go to the $500-a-plate fund-raiser for free, she acknowledged.

“She was in the big leagues now, and she relished that more than anything,” a close associate said.

“She loved it, and she got seduced by it,” said a friend, who along with many others requested anonymity.

The relationship between Schaefer and Murdock was investigated by the county grand jury last spring, and sources said the supervisor and Murdock employees briefed each other on the grand jury’s private sessions. Records show Schaefer called the Los Angeles offices of Murdock and his attorney for Lake Sherwood at least 24 times in April and May during the peak of the inquiry.

Schaefer acknowledged conversations with a Murdock attorney about what she describes as confusion by the grand jury about what Murdock had promised the county.

Despite a contrary opinion by the district attorney’s office, the county counsel has said Schaefer legally could discuss her grand jury testimony.

The grand jury, although recommending an ethics code for county officials, found no wrongdoing by Schaefer.

Schaefer said she has called Murdock executives hundreds of times since the Lake Sherwood project was approved in 1987 to iron out problems. But she said she rarely telephoned Murdock directly except to return his calls.

Of Murdock, she said: “It’s a professional relationship . . .,” adding that it “has changed somewhat in the last few months because Murdock feels very badly about what happened to me.”

“The bottom line is the community is better off” because of her work with Murdock, she said. Because of it, about 170 nearby property owners outside the boundaries of the country club have received new sewer and water lines and a restored lake at no cost.

Before her June defeat, Schaefer also consulted with developers of the massive Ahmanson and Jordan ranch projects--both of which still need county approval--so frequently that staff members said they told her she was acting as an unofficial manager of the projects.

“We warned her over and over about Ahmanson and Jordan,” Johnson, the former aide, said. “The polling information told her point blank, ‘Ties to development in this district are the kiss of death.’ ”

Indeed, opposition to the Jordan Ranch development was the centerpiece of VanderKolk’s successful campaign. Schaefer favored a land swap that made the project possible.

At one point, sources said, Schaefer called her staff together to critique a slide show prepared by Ahmanson Land Co. to make sure it was effective when presented to environmental and community groups. “She wanted to silence Save Open Space,” the environmental group that recruited VanderKolk to run against her, one source said.

Schaefer said, however, she reviewed the Ahmanson slides because she wanted her staff to be able to answer constituents’ questions about the project. Donald Brackenbush, president of Ahmanson Land Co., said he showed the slides to Schaefer and her staff for information only. No changes were made in the presentation, he said.

Schaefer also kept in touch with Ahmanson through regular meetings or conversations with top company officials, she acknowledged.

Lines of communication with Ahmanson were also strong because the company was represented by Thousand Oaks attorney Allen Camp, Schaefer’s longtime personal friend. County records show that during a 14-month period she made at least 68 toll calls to Camp’s law office.

Schaefer felt close enough to Ahmanson executive Brackenbush to have a staff member ask him to put up pro-Schaefer signs in the final days of the spring campaign, when she grew concerned about the elaborate hand-painted signs VanderKolk volunteers were producing. An Ahmanson employee helped put up Schaefer signs for a few hours, Brackenbush said.

The supervisor, through an aide, also asked Brackenbush for help last summer in getting Schaefer named Woman of the Year by the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce. Her staff asked Brackenbush to encourage a chamber member to nominate the supervisor. “I think I said I’d consider it,” but never followed through, Brackenbush recalled. She did not win the award.

A top Jordan Ranch executive, Peter Kyros of Potomac Investment Associates, also made regular trips to Schaefer’s office to brief her on the many changes in his project over the past three years. He estimates that he met or spoke with the supervisor about once a month.

“Look, an applicant calls up and says, ‘I’d like to see you. I’d like to show you something.’ . . . I’m not afraid of that,” Schaefer said.

When Kyros arrived in Ventura County in 1987, Schaefer invited him to dinner at her house and arranged for another unmarried person, a county employee, to also attend the three-couple dinner party, Kyros and Schaefer confirmed. “I don’t have any trouble differentiating business from pleasure,” she said.

Kyros said he appreciated Schaefer’s friendly gesture but has operated at arm’s length ever since, never meeting her again socially except at large gatherings. “She always asked to be kept apprised of the details of our proposal, and I made a point to do that,” Kyros said.

Johnson and others said Schaefer strongly supported both the Ahmanson and Jordan projects, at least in a scaled-down form. But the supervisor said she was neutral on both.

Both Brackenbush and Kyros said she never told them she favored their projects or indicated that she did.

“Our involvement with all five supervisors has been unusually limited,” Brackenbush said. Because growth issues are so sensitive in Ventura County, “we have consciously made an effort . . . not to lobby anybody.”

Schaefer clearly thought the Lake Sherwood, Ahmanson and Jordan projects were all good for Ventura County, Johnson said. And she decided what was proper conduct in relation to them, he said.

“Madge Schaefer ruled the 2nd District as if it were a personal fiefdom where she could make and break her own rules,” Johnson said.

For example, based on records and interviews, it appears that Schaefer ignored rules about personal use of phones and county equipment and partially ran her limited reelection campaign out of her county office.

She also asked her county staff to volunteer time to the campaign during lunches, evenings and on vacation time, sources close to the campaign say.

A $500 microwave oven purchased with campaign funds after the election was installed in her residence. “It still belongs to the campaign,” she said. Under state law, campaign funds can be used for personal benefit only when directly related to the duties of an official.

“The only ethics I have to worry about are my own,” Schaefer said. “I know that whatever I do there will be someone out there who will want to take a shot.”

But friends who have known Schaefer well for years say she is paying a price--politically and personally--for having done what she pleased.

“I’m not going to name all the people who came up to me and said, ‘I didn’t vote for Madge because I wanted to teach her a lesson,’ ” said Rorie Skei, a leading area environmentalist and Schaefer supporter.

“Hey, she has a short fuse, and she has left a lot of bruised and bloodied psyches along the way,” Skei said. “I think that’s the tragic flaw.”

Several county officials said she has pounded her fists on their desks when angrily demanding that they see her point.

“She would have been a much more effective manager and administrator had it not been for some unflattering personality traits, including a temper and a tendency to bully,” said Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, who has had strong public disagreements with Schaefer.

Others say Schaefer’s temper helped budge an otherwise immovable bureaucracy.

“She is a politician who did not go along to get along,” said Joan Gorner, a Thousand Oaks teacher who believes the supervisor has left a legacy of improved county services for her district.

Despite her tendency toward confrontation, her closest advisers said Schaefer could have weathered the June election if she had not taken her constituents for granted both during her campaign and over the years.

Although doggedly assisting Wagner and Selleck with problems at their Hidden Valley ranches--county permit snarls for Wagner, a low-flying helicopter for Selleck--she was more demanding when others asked for help, sources said.

Then, she hardly campaigned. She had no headquarters, no campaign phones and no volunteers to canvass for her. She left town on county business the week before the election.

Schaefer has refused to second-guess herself. In fact, in a mid-summer interview she said she considered her defeat a test of voters in the 2nd District, and they had failed to measure up.

“I’m most sorry about the message my children have picked up from this,” she said. “I’ve always said to them, ‘You do a good job and you’ll be rewarded.’ And that’s not true.”

One of her closest friends and supporters said: “She’s been terribly hurt by all this.

“She’s so talented and bright. But she just overreacts,” he added, citing the firing of aide Johnson as a recent example.

Schaefer said she fired Johnson partly because he was disloyal. Schaefer acknowledged that she also told several of her committee appointees that she would consider it an act of betrayal if they stayed on and worked for VanderKolk, as the supervisor-elect has requested.

Ken Bauer, a Westlake resident who worked in Schaefer’s 1986 campaign but switched to VanderKolk this year, said he paid a price for being seen as a traitor by Schaefer. The supervisor called his boss after VanderKolk’s election and made serious trouble for him, Bauer said.

Bauer, a manager for ARCO, would not discuss what Schaefer allegedly said to his superior, but sources said the supervisor told Bauer’s boss that he had supported an anti-oil candidate.

Schaefer acknowledged returning a call from Bauer’s superior, but she said she only told him that Bauer had testified against the Jordan Ranch project.

“This temper thing is (blown) way out of proportion,” she said.

“I demand excellence, and when I don’t get it, sometimes it’s off with your head,” she added. “When I do get it, I’ll carry you around the world on my shoulders praising you.”

Johnson, the former aide, said Schaefer was a fine mentor and had treated him like a son until she found out that he had agreed to work for her successor.

“There were so many times she’d do things, and you’d sit there and say, ‘My God, she’s a wonderful person,’ ” Johnson said. “But she almost has a siege mentality where she thinks that everybody is against her. I spent two years telling her that people care about her and she had to stop this war.”

Schaefer said it’s all history now.

“I’m not going to wallow in this,” she said. “I’m going to walk away feeling good.”

She is, in fact, planning her next job.

She recently mailed to Wilson an application for appointment to several state commissions. Two are high-profile watchdog agencies--the Little Hoover Commission, which investigates inefficiency in government, and the Fair Political Practices Commission.