Former Ram Says There’s More to His Candidacy Than X’s and O’s : Politics: Name recognition won’t hurt, but Mel Owens is talking about the issues in his bid for Laguna Beach city council.

Mel Owens knows that most of the people in the town where he lives have heard of him, watched him play football, celebrated his team’s victories.

He was a Ram, which counts for something here.

But in his new, post-football life, that’s only the first, simple step on a long road. A little more than a year after his 10-year career as a Ram linebacker ended, Owens is after more than applause and respect from his neighbors.

He wants their votes, and those are usually gained by an art a little less brutal than (but perhaps just as exhausting as) tackling and head-slapping.

In a year shaping up as a season for outsiders challenging entrenched politicos--with a career as an outside linebacker in the NFL being about as far outside the American political process as can be imagined--Owens says that come November, he has a chance to gain what he is seeking: one of the two Laguna Beach City Council seats being contested.

Short of money but long on name recognition, Owens is running an insurgent, anti-city establishment, term-limitations campaign, a registered Independent with some famous friends.

Owens said he plans to address one issue per month leading up to the election for a four-year term. Last month, he addressed the council.

“The very first thing I brought up was the Design Review Board in Laguna Beach,” Owens says. “Unless you live here, you might not know, but it’s something capricious where if you want to make changes on your house, you have to go before a board, (they tell you) it’s too big, too small, what color to paint your house . . . “

Other issues Owens will address include increased attention to how the local government can further improve the education process and his support for the reservoir currently being planned to prevent an Oakland fire-type of situation in Laguna Beach.

“They want to put this one in because of the threat of the urban forest fire like they had in Oakland. The terrain, (and) topography is very similar in Laguna Beach,” Owens says.

In the town’s most recent news-making issue, the council voted 5-0 to pass an ordinance that gives partnership rights to gay couples. Owens says he would have no trouble working with the town’s large homosexual community.

“I had the choice to live where I wanted to live,” Owens says. “I lived in Balboa, which is beautiful, rented a home there on the ocean. But when I chose to buy, I moved right down to Laguna Beach. I knew all the particulars. I knew about the artists’ colony, I knew about the offshore drilling, I knew about the Design Review Board, and I knew about the alternative lifestyles down there. Doesn’t bother me.

“There’s a group down here, and it’s a faction that should have rights. If this is something they want and they need and they think it’s good for them, I’m all for it. I can’t enforce my will on somebody. They’re a group just like any other group.”

The incumbents in the two expiring seats are Martha Collison and Neil Fitzpatrick, but it’s possible that neither will seek re-election.

Other prospective candidates include: two-time candidate Wayne Peterson; planning commissioner Norm Grossman; Jeff Powers, vice president of the Village Laguna Group, a local political organization, and Kathleen Blackburn, chairman of the planning commission.

Owens said he hopes and expects current Ram players such as Jim Everett and Buford McGee to appear at fund-raisers, bolstering his cash level and further establishing what his campaign consultant, Duane Baughman, calls “star quality.”

“I don’t want to say he’s the Sonny Bono, I’ll say he’s the Clint Eastwood in the Laguna Beach race,” Baughman says. “He’s the one with star quality, and he’s the one who’s going to knock on every single door.”

Owens, a political science major at the University of Michigan, points to the success of former football players Reggie Williams (a city council member in Cincinnati) and Jack Kemp (the Bush Administration’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development) as showing him the way.

Owens’ football career, he says, has helped to introduce him to the town electorate. The rest is up to what he says, and how he says it, and how often he says it, and how many people hear him.

If his two decades in football have prepared him at all mentally for this, Owens says, it is in the intensity of the action and the passion for results.

“What I think is transferable is the dedication and the commitment and discipline,” Owens says. “And that’s what I have.

“I have the energy. I’ve been doing this now for three months, this particular campaign, organizing and getting after it, and those are the things I think are transferring into the political arena.

“People say ‘Oh, he played for the Los Angeles Rams, and he’s going to use his name and have nothing to say.’ On the contrary, I’m talking about issues that are from just these surface issues. I’m not afraid to take a stand.

“Name recognition helps. But hopefully I have more substance than just the name.”

Owens, 33, dates his political life back more than 20 years, when he was a 10-year-old growing up in Michigan, collecting campaign posters to line his bedroom walls.

He went on to Michigan, then to the Rams as a first-round draft choice in 1981, and started 90 games in his 10 seasons.

The whole time he was playing pro football, however, he says he kept part of his mind on politics. He moved to Laguna Beach in 1987 and says he has been preparing for this race almost ever since.

Because of a back problem and various other medical question marks acquired through the years, Owens retired in 1990 and now works as a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch in Newport Beach.

“No, I don’t miss football,” Owens says. “I played 10 years, and that was my job, but when you get out of it, you realize, ‘God, that was tough.’

“Not only is it physically demanding, it’s mentally demanding. To go through it for such a long time, it’s brutal. You’ve got big, fast guys hitting each other.

“Ten years is enough. (Former San Francisco 49er defensive end) Cedric Hardman, who used to be the football coach at Laguna Beach, I met him about three years ago, and he used to tell me, ‘Eight’s enough, eight’s enough, don’t play any more.’

“He played, like, 14 years. He kept telling me eight’s enough. Finally, I said yeah, it’s enough.

“But going through it, having ‘survived’ it . . . I had a good career, I enjoyed every minute of it, it was fun, but that part is over. When I retired I was 32, so I have another 50 years ahead of me.

“Football was only a small part of it.”

And Owens, who once ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, says politics is not taking the place of football in his competitive mind, that this campaign is his way of playing that next game.

“I’m not going into it to keep the competitive spirit alive,” Owens says. “I’ve been competing for 10 years professionally, before that in college. Now at Merrill Lynch, I’m competing in the business world. I don’t have that problem of finding something to stimulate me.”

Baughman, political director of the San Francisco-based Initiative Group, and a man who wrote speeches for Joe Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign, says just watching Owens prepare for and get involved in this race has been fun for him.

“He was enthusiastic about the things he wanted to do and the reasons he wanted to do it,” Baughman says. “It’s funny because local politics is really heartening because that’s where you really weed out the bull, and you can find out the people who want to make a difference for the sake of making a difference and the people who want to make a difference for the sake of themselves.

“He wasn’t smooth enough to B.S. I think that’s the key to sincerity, whether or not you’re you or you’re a B.S.er.

“As a campaigner, he’s been great. Fantastic. We started off kind of slow only because he didn’t really know what the hell he was doing. And I found that just as refreshing as anything else.

“If he can get (attention) in sports, and if he can get (attention) in the public-policy area, all the better for people who are looking for something a little bit offbeat or a little different than what they’re used to.”