Tollway Has Him Playing Politics : Recall: Robert P. King, a political novice, has helped launch a campaign to unseat council members he says have failed San Juan Capistrano.

As recently as five months ago, Robert P. King was relatively unknown in the South County outside of his tiny neighborhood on Spotted Bull Way.

Although he has lived in San Juan Capistrano nearly 20 years, until January he had attended “maybe five” City Council meetings.

But in these past few months, King has emerged as the leader of an 11th-hour attempt to halt the 15-mile, $680-million San Joaquin Hills toll road, a highway that will link Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano with the Corona del Mar Freeway in Newport Beach. Under his leadership, about 500 people, considered the largest public hearing ever assembled in South County, packed a junior high school gym in January to demand that the council fight against the tollway.

Now King has taken on a new opponent: the San Juan Capistrano council leadership. Contending that they have failed the city by not fighting the toll road, King has helped launch a recall movement against two of the longest-seated council members in the South County: Gary L. Hausdorfer and Mayor Kenneth E. Friess.

“If I were to list 1,000 things I wanted to do, getting involved in a recall would not be one of them,” King said with a drawl from his native Alabama. “But I firmly believe the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, as it is now proposed, will destroy our city, will destroy its culture and destroy its historical nature. I just don’t understand how this council can say they are so concerned about the city and yet don’t join our fight against the corridor.”

King, 53, who is married and the father of two, says he was a onetime corridor supporter who changed his mind when he discovered the effect the toll road would have on South County.

“When studies for the corridor started 14 years ago, I was in favor of it. But I defy anybody to read the (environmental impact report) today and be for that tollway,” he said.

King, a private management-training consultant and a former engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, says he is determined.

“If I give someone my word, I am going to do what I say,” King said. “If I tell someone I’m going to do something, I may be late, but I do it.”

Even his detractors admit that King comes across as a man of conviction.

“He’s eloquent, no doubt about that,” said Lawrence F. Buchheim, another longtime San Juan Capistrano councilman. “He presents himself very well. It’s just that sometimes the issues he brings you are a little vague.”

What King wants to do now is fight a corridor that is supported by some of the largest business concerns in the county. He claims that the corridor, which he calls “another Grapevine,” is the work of development companies that, he contends, disregards the interests of the rest of the county residents.

“Believe me, I know what we’re up against,” King said. “Donald Bren (chairman of the Irvine Co.) can pick up the phone and call George Bush. And Bush can pick up the phone and call the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. . . . To me, this toll road is the classic example of power politics played at the expense of the environment and the citizens.”

This kind of talk comes from a man who lists former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater’s “Conscience of a Conservative” as one of the books that most influenced him.

“I’m extremely conservative when it comes to fiscal issues, but when it comes to social issues, I’m a liberal or a far-out moderate,” he said.

King decided to join the effort to recall the two San Juan Capistrano council members because “they totally ignored the wishes of the people of San Juan Capistrano,” and they are united against the toll road, he said. King is convinced that the city could have won concessions from the Transportation Corridor Agencies with a city-backed lawsuit.

“Ken Friess once told me his pet peeve was people who didn’t work the process. Well, we worked the process from A to Y,” King said. “And the last step, if the council refuses to be servants to the people, was Z, a recall.”

Friess, San Juan Capistrano’s representative on the corridor’s board of directors, voted against certifying its environmental impact report. But he was a minority in a 10-1 vote of the representatives from 11 cities.

Friess and Hausdorfer are the only two council members targeted because they have been the most involved in the corridor process, King said. Councilmen Jeff Vasquez and Gil Jones are in their first year on the council, and the fifth member, Buchheim, has abstained from voting on all corridor-related issues because he owns property in the corridor route.

Friess and Hausdorfer label King’s efforts a political smoke screen and an effort to win seats for anti-corridor candidates in next year’s City Council elections. They contend that they did “work the process” and won concessions for the city.

“I’m fully aware of the impacts of the corridor on our city, and we got a vote of the (Transportation Corridor Agencies) board to meet every mitigation measure we have asked for,” Friess said. “It will cost them millions. I really don’t know what we could have gotten out of them that we didn’t.”

The recall attempt is only meant as another way to push King’s agenda on the corridor into the public’s view, both Friess and Hausdorfer contend.

“It’s garbage,” Friess said. “It’s a ridiculous waste of time and energy. It’s been disruptive to the city and my family.”

Hausdorfer agrees, claiming that the disruptions have hurt him and his family. The attacks are “innuendoes and lies,” he said.

“This is politics,” Hausdorfer said, and vowed at a recent council meeting to fight his recall and other attacks on the council “with all the energy I have.”

King, however, maintains that the recall was dictated by the council, which “caved in” when the city and the South County most needed it.

“We’re deadly serious about this recall attempt,” King said. “I would have loved for this issue to be resolved without any politics, but they didn’t listen.”