Positions of Clout Behind the Powers That Be : Sheriff ‘s Major-Domo Likes to See, Be Seen

In eighth grade, Dan Greenblat says, he knew exactly what he wanted to be.

“I was in junior high school and a guy came up to me and asked me,” he recalled. “I said two things. One, I want to be the power behind the elected official and two, I want to be head of an intergovernmental operation someplace.”

Today, at age 42, Greenblat is the power behind Sheriff Jim Roache. Chief spokesman. Policy-maker. A “senior partner in this $150-million company,” in his own words, and just plain “bitchin,” a term he uses often to describe all that is good.

But he is also, critics say, a man who has not the slightest idea how a major police agency runs. Some of the rank-and-file members of the Sheriff’s Department see Greenblat as an overbearing, pompous political hack who should not be entrusted with so much authority.

But Roache says his man is misunderstood.

“Everyone in the department said, ‘Who is this guy, what is his authority, and what is he going to do?’ ” Roache said. “I said his authority is he works for me. If he says the sheriff believes this, then that’s what the sheriff believes. And if he comes in and says, ‘I’m speaking for the sheriff,’ you better listen to him, because he’s speaking for the sheriff.”

Elected in November on a platform to open lines of communication to the public and the media that his predecessor John Duffy had clamped tight, Roache decided to pick someone outside of the organization as his closest adviser.

Duffy let nobody but a sworn law enforcement officer speak for the department, but Roache, when not speaking for himself, has brought in a spokesman more accustomed to talking about campaign issues than running out to shooting scenes.

Greenblat has run numerous political campaigns, some remembered as much for their nastiness as for who won and lost. Even now, Greenblat says he can walk into a restaurant in town and spot “three people who like me, two who aren’t sure how they feel, and one who hates my guts.”

Roache has given Greenblat carte blanche to the sheriff’s office. Greenblat can interrupt any meeting at any time. He is permitted to call on Roache at home, in the car, or anywhere the sheriff happens to be. He often represents Roache at meetings, not merely as a messenger, but as a decision-maker.

Greenblat is not shy about speaking for the sheriff. He has done so before the Board of Supervisors. He is quoted almost daily in some newspaper or on television representing Roache. In meetings of the department’s executive management team--the sheriff, undersheriff, assistant sheriffs and commanders--he sometimes runs the gathering.

“There is a working triumvirate in this department,” explained Greenblat, 42, his dark hair graying and his thin frame tucked into a Navy blue pin-striped suit and monogrammed shirt. “It’s kind of like the inner core. And the inner core is Jim Roache, (Undersheriff) Jay LaSuer and myself, with everyone else playing an active role.”

That he spins out press releases and schmoozes with supervisors in his $60,000-a-year job is not surprising. His work with the public relations firm of Stoorza, Ziegaus & Metzger and his handling of two supervisorial campaigns made him a natural for both jobs.

It is his role as a policy-maker that many have a hard time understanding. How, they ask, could Roache, who campaigned on a platform of openness, have chosen a man some equate with political skulduggery? And why someone with no law enforcement background who admits that he is learning on the job?

“I don’t understand how a political hack is in a major policy situation like that,” said one city official who has known Greenblat for years. “It frightens me that Jim Roache, who has been so open on issues, has put someone in there who is an expert on disinformation.”

Like those within the department who are critical of Greenblat, this city official would not allow his name or job title to be mentioned.

Within the department, some top officials noted several instances of policy decisions being made without their input, such as the use of video cameras to tape drunk drivers and the idea of a “boot camp” for first-time drug offenders.

Although Greenblat says he is one of three in the inner circle, some believe that he may have more influence than even the undersheriff, and, at times, seems to run the department.

Technically, nobody reports directly to Greenblat. But Greenblat notes that his office location, in proximity to Roache, is a “straight shot. It’s not where your parking spot is, it’s how close the office is.”

On a recent day in that office, Greenblat--suit coat off, hair just so--is working the telephone. He chats with his girlfriend, talking about October in Maui, and then he’s on with Susan Golding, who wants to know if Roache can make it to a board meeting in 10 minutes.

His secretary is in and out. So is another special assistant, asking Greenblat to sign off on something. In comes the personnel director, running a new job description past Greenblat. Then there’s a few meetings, and Greenblat takes a seat front and center. He offers opinions. Roache, whose doctor recently recommended a low-fat diet, eats radishes and offers bran muffins.

At times, Greenblat’s demeanor--his brusqueness, his smugness, his impatience--seem to overshadow what Roache says his chief special assistant does best: analyzing, cutting to the quick, providing the perspective of the “average citizen.”

“Every once in a while, I have to dress him down,” said Roache. “I tell him, ‘You’re being a little bit too abrupt with people. Give them time, they’ll catch on. Not everyone figures out things as quickly as you do.’ ”

When he was running to replace Duffy, who had retired after 20 years in office, Roache made it no secret that he would be hiring someone who was not a cop to handle media affairs. After all, Duffy had a ruptured relationship with news reporters, whom he accused of trying to sabotage his office and tarnish his career.

The press had little or no access to Duffy, who for the last few years in office rarely even visited the County Board of Supervisors because of a longstanding feud over the budget and other issues.

After taking office in January, Roache wasted little time in assembling a team that he said would be more responsive to the public than Duffy had been. He emphasized better communication with the media and county supervisors.

Roache said he begged Greenblat to take the job. Nobody else was even considered.

Greenblat was to become a one-man civilian sounding board, someone who could size up situations quickly and share with law enforcement officers, used to following orders, a new way of thinking. He was also employed to do what some say he does best--repair relations with county, state and federal officials. He was also to make the department more accessible to the media.

“I used to kid him. I said, ‘Everyone thinks you’re a political hack,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I know,’ ” Roache said. “And I told him that you’re not our internal politician. If that’s what you think you’re going to do, don’t take the job.”

Greenblat’s reputation as a political campaign fixer was well earned. He ran Bill Cleator against Maureen O’Connor for mayor in 1986. A loss. He put Kay Davis up against Ron Roberts for city council in 1987. A loss. Gloria McColl and Uvaldo Martinez versus Bob Filner and Celia Ballesteros on behalf of the San Diego Republican Party in 1983. Two victories.

In 1985, he advised Judy McCarty to run for City Council against Roache’s wife, Jeanette, even though the Roaches and Greenblat had known each other for years.

“I said, ‘Jeanette, please don’t make me beat you,’ ” he said. “She said, ‘Greenie, I’m going to run.’ I told her she was going to lose. She said ‘Greenie,’ stick it where the sun don’t shine. She got beat and didn’t speak to me for well over a year.”

He counts Bill Lowery and Susan Golding as his two greatest victories. Lowery beat Bob Wilson for Congress in 1980 and Golding beat Lynn Schenk for county supervisor in 1984. Both campaigns were characterized by mudslinging.

After Schenk lost, she filed a $5-million lawsuit against Golding, her husband Richard T. Silberman, Greenblat and Golding’s political consulting firm, accusing them of libel and slander over a last-minute campaign mailer suggesting that Schenk was being investigated by the state auditor general.

Golding’s insurance companies agreed on a $150,000 settlement in 1988, despite the supervisor’s protests that the matter be brought to trial.

To this day, Greenblat makes no apologies for the mailer, which he approved.

“At the time, we believed to the best of our ability that the information was accurate,” he said. “I have never, ever done anything in a campaign involving the dissemination of information that I didn’t know to be absolutely true.”

Greenblat was born in Tucson, Ariz., and moved to Logan Heights when his father, a Marine, was shipped off to Korea. At the age of 7, Greenblat says, he joined a multiracial street gang, where he said he beat up someone with a sawed-off pipe who was harassing his friend.

An only child, Greenblat says he has his mother’s gift for writing--she sold short stories to Cosmopolitan magazine--and his father’s aptitude for mathematics--he shot rivets at Convair, a division of General Dynamics, and became a computer scientist.

Greenblat graduated from San Diego State University with a degree in business management and is enrolled there in a master’s program in economics.

Having met Lowery in college, he went to work for the city councilman in 1977 as an administrative assistant and spent 1980 through 1986 as chief of staff in Lowery’s congressional office. During that time, he slipped back to San Diego on leaves of absence to manage various campaigns.

In 1986, within a three-month span, Greenblat’s world was shattered. His father, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer. His wife of three years, with whom he has an 8-year-old daughter, walked out on him. They officially were divorced a month ago. He decided to quit Lowery’s office and moved back to San Diego permanently.

Looking to “give something back to the community,” he helped raise $4 million for the American Cancer Society over 15 months. He went to work for Stoorza as a “strategic planner” and then joined Roache in a job he describes as “rock ‘n’ roll.”

Last week, “Greenie,” as he is called, was fretting over the department’s crime statistics, which, it turns out, were flawed.

“I’m going to put the sheriff out on the street to give speeches to whomever, and I wonder about the data,” he complained to a couple of staffers. “This blows my whole game plan. We can’t tell the Blade-Citizen that crimes against property have taken a drop, and thank God for the San Diego Sheriff’s Department.”

Nor can he use them to make a public appeal for more money by saying crime has sharply risen.

A minor hitch, he says. The stats will get corrected. In the larger scheme of things that contribute to “The Mission” of Jim Roache, the numbers are important, Greenblat says.

“In order to share in our success,” he says, “the public has to be able to buy into our pain.”