Steiner May Parlay Prestige Into Board Post

Ten years ago, William G. Steiner made a dream come true. After two decades working with groups that help children, he had tapped private contributors for the money to build Orangewood, an $8-million, county-run emergency shelter for abused, abandoned and neglected children.

That same year, Steiner stuck his toe in the political waters. A vacancy came up on the Orange Unified School Board and someone suggested that he apply. He did, got appointed, and thereupon launched his political career.

Now, after winning election to the school board and then to the Orange City Council, Steiner may be closing in on his latest dream: a seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

When he spearheaded the campaign for Orangewood, Steiner was director of the old children’s shelter, the Albert Sitton Home. Conditions there were so bad that children sometimes had to sleep on mattresses on the floor, and occasionally the hot water ran cold.

Although it was the county’s job to care for abused children, officials said they didn’t have the money to build a new facility. Then Steiner turned to individuals and corporations for funds, and got big names in the development community such as William Lyon and Kathryn G. Thompson to help. The result was a shelter, opened in 1984, that was hailed as a triumph of public-private cooperation and received citations from Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

“I’ve been one heck of a good fund-raiser, politically and professionally,” Steiner said this week. For the last seven years, raising money has been a major part of his job as executive director of the Orangewood Children’s Foundation. It’s a private, nonprofit operation that supports the Orangewood shelter with money and equipment and works for other children’s programs such as foster care and child abuse prevention.

For the last week, Steiner’s name has come up repeatedly in political as well as professional circles, heard often when people speculate on whom Gov. Pete Wilson will appoint to fill the 4th District supervisorial seat from which Don R. Roth is resigning today.

Although Roth has nearly two years left in his term, he said he is stepping down because a 10-month criminal investigation into allegations of influence peddling against him has eroded his ability to serve the county.

Former U.S. Sen. John Seymour, himself a onetime Wilson appointee to high office, said after Roth’s resignation announcement that “the strongest name I’ve heard is Bill Steiner,” but others cautioned that Wilson could appoint anyone. County Clerk Gary L. Granville said he would like the job. Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly and Wilson’s deputy appointments secretary, Ravinder Mehta, have also been mentioned as possibilities.

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) noted that no politician had Thomas F. Riley’s name on the list of potential appointees to fill a supervisorial vacancy in 1974, but Riley was Gov. Ronald Reagan’s choice.

“I can only tell you again how surprised we were when . . . Riley was selected,” Ferguson said. “He wasn’t on anybody’s short list except the governor’s.”

Politicians of every stripe call Steiner, 55, a nice guy who works wonders for kids. But there are those who wonder if that’s enough of a qualification for office these days; and at least one sees Steiner’s fund-raising ability--so prized by politicians--as a liability.

“I like Bill, we’ve been friends for a long time,” said Gary Granville, a former newspaperman and onetime aide to then-Supervisor Ralph B. Clark. “I respect the work that Bill’s done as a children’s advocate.”

But “I don’t think that being a good guy” is enough to hold office, Granville said. “Some of the great doers are not necessarily good guys in that sense. I think it takes more than that, more than being non-noxious. We’re in tough times.”

Shirley L. Grindle is another person who stressed “I’m friends with Steiner” and said she has “nothing personal” against him. Yet she said that she would prefer to see Granville become supervisor.

Grindle, a former county planning commissioner and author of a measure approved by county voters that forces supervisors to abstain from voting on matters affecting major campaign contributors, said Steiner’s ability to raise so much money from developers to build Orangewood bothered her.

“I’m sick and tired of seeing the only people who get appointed to office in this county are backed by the development industry, and owe (their positions) to them,” she said.

But Steiner noted that money for Orangewood came from many people in the county, “retail businesses, computer firms, from foundations--we got a million dollars from one foundation--and from schoolchildren.” Donations from 5,000 individuals and corporations “ranged from pennies to a million dollars,” he said.

In addition, he said, “I don’t think it’s ever been said that (a political contribution) gives anyone any extra privileges with me as an elected official. I look at the merits of an issue.”

Even Steiner’s fund-raising ability, and his endorsements by all supervisors and backing by Gov. Wilson, weren’t enough in 1991 to help him defeat fellow Republican Mickey Conroy (R-Santa Ana) in a special election to fill a vacated Assembly seat.

Steiner reported spending more than $246,000 in the race, compared to Conroy’s $113,368. Among Steiner’s contributors were developers George Argyros and Kathryn Thompson, who gave $1,000 each; Argyros’ company, which gave another $1,000; William Lyon, who together with his wife gave $970; and the Irvine Co. and Mission Viejo Co., which each gave $1,000. Lyon is chairman and Thompson is vice chairman of the Orangewood Children’s Home, which Steiner directs. Lyon also gave $1 million to help build Orangewood and with Thompson helped raise millions more for the facility. Many of Conroy’s contributions came from veterans groups and gun clubs.

Although opinion polls shortly before the election showed Steiner ahead, a low turnout on election day helped Conroy win the first round of balloting, 12,426 to 10,555, and easily coast to victory in a later battle with a Democrat.

Conroy, a conservative, was backed by an army of volunteers mobilized from gun clubs and anti-abortion groups. Steiner, more moderate and a pro-choice Republican, said his opponent’s workers did “an incredible job of grass-roots organization.”

Steiner said he was left with a $30,000 debt from the campaign, which he has since reduced to $10,000. Ironically, on the day Roth announced his resignation, political consultants Dan Wooldridge and Harvey Englander held a luncheon on Steiner’s behalf with people who might help him pay off the rest of the debt.

Wooldridge said he and Englander invited “a bunch of friends” to meet Steiner. “Both Harvey and I go back with Bill many, many years and have known him and been active with him at Orangewood,” said Wooldridge, who like Steiner lives in Orange. Englander’s ex-wife served on the school board with Steiner.

Englander said in December that he testified before the grand jury investigating Roth. The consultant, who ran four Roth campaigns for both supervisor and mayor of Anaheim since 1982, declined to characterize his testimony but said he was told he was not a target of the investigation.

Last year The Times reported that Roth failed to disclose in state filings that Englander had given him a 2% stake in a fledgling sunscreen company. Last month, local prosecutors filed an affidavit alleging the same failure to make the report.

Wooldridge was a longtime aide to Roth before going to work for Englander last year. Wooldridge also produced campaign brochures and did consulting work for Englander’s firm on local city council and Assembly races while still employed by Roth. He disclosed payments of between $1,000 and $10,000 a year from Englander’s firm in recent years, but said he studiously avoided any potential conflicts of interest.

He said he steered clear of Englander’s clients, who include waste haulers, cable operators and mobile-home park owners, when their projects came before the county.

In an interview, Steiner said he “did not use any paid political consultants” when he ran for school board and the City Council. “I used grass-roots supporters and my son’s computer,” he laughed. “The only time I used consultants was for the Assembly race--and I lost.”

Steiner said his political start at the school board was a natural extension of his involvement in parent-teacher groups as a father of five children in the public schools.

Born in Iowa, he came to California with his family when his father took a World War II job in purchasing for a steel company. The family settled in Bell in Los Angeles County, and Steiner graduated from the UC Berkeley with a degree in criminology. He received a master’s degree in social work from USC.

To earn money in high school and college, he delivered newspapers, was a movie extra at 20th Century Fox, delivered mail in the summer and on Christmas holidays, and worked as a meat cutter (“Between the ages of 16 and 18, I could break down a side of beef,” he says).

After graduation, he worked in adoptions and with delinquent and mentally ill children. For 11 years he was director of the statewide Good Samaritan Centers, a Lutheran children’s agency. In 1978, he became director of the Albert Sitton Home.

Soon after he joined Albert Sitton, Steiner came within a whisker of going to jail for contempt, when he refused a judge’s order to return a child to a home where Steiner felt the child would be unsafe. After another hearing, the judge changed his mind.

Byron McMillan, a retired Superior Court judge who presided over Juvenile Court in the days of bad conditions at Albert Sitton, called Steiner “a wonderful, compassionate human being who’s a wonderful administrator and a damned good politician. And if it weren’t for him, Orangewood never would have occurred.”

McMillan said Steiner’s political skills are in “bringing people together.” He conceded that because it’s tough to attack someone who works for children, Steiner often is portrayed as “Santa Claus.” But he said Steiner “truly cares” about children.

Russ Barrios, who served on the school board with Steiner, is an aide to Roth and could wind up working for Steiner if he takes Roth’s seat. Barrios said: “Bill’s just a great, all-around balanced guy.

“He works hard for the community on things he believes in. Politics just happens to be a way to get those things done. He’s not a politician first. Bill’s extremely bright. He knows issues and he studies issues, which is very important. He’s not the type to shoot from the hip.”

Assemblyman Ferguson, who was Conroy’s key backer in the 1991 Assembly race, said in the heat of the campaign that Steiner was “a fraud” who was “thumbing his nose at the (campaign disclosure) law” because of what Ferguson said was concealment of nearly $25,000 in Steiner campaign funds.

But on Thursday, Ferguson laughingly said that at the time those remarks were made, “we were running against Bill Steiner; so that Bill Steiner is one that’s partially made up by the political campaign. I don’t have any objection at all to Bill Steiner the man because he’s had an exemplary life at Orangewood and he’s shown that he’s public-spirited. And he’s a good fund-raiser. I don’t have any objection to Steiner.”

Orangewood opened in 1984 with 166 beds, and an expansion has pushed the total to 235. The Albert Sitton Home it replaced was built in 1959 to house 35 children, and at times held three times that many. With its attractive layout and cottages looking not at all institutional, Orangewood draws visits from social workers from across the country.

Steiner has three daughters and two sons, ranging in age from 29 to 17, plus three grandchildren. Now divorced, he lives with his 19-year-old son.

In 1986, Steiner moved over to the Orangewood Children’s Foundation, also in Orange and close to the Orangewood shelter.

Gov. George Deukmejian appointed Steiner to a statewide advisory committee on child-care programs, and he is a policy adviser to Maureen DiMarco, Wilson’s education secretary. He’s also vice chairman of the national Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

After working with children for three decades, Steiner said he’s found that as a politician “I’ve been able to do more for children, certainly on a statewide basis, as an advocate, and with my political connections, than I have with my professional credentials. Maybe that’s the way the world goes round.”

He said he was disappointed at losing the Assembly race, and “maybe (becoming) supervisor won’t happen. I hope it does.” But if not, “I’m happy as (Orange) mayor pro tem and director of the Orangewood Children’s Foundation. When one opportunity closes, another one opens up.”