ORANGE : Countywide : Visit by Governor’s Wife Boosts Steiner

Councilman William G. Steiner’s bid to succeed Don R. Roth as an Orange County supervisor received a clear but unofficial boost Monday in the form of a visit from Gov. Pete Wilson’s wife, Gayle, to Orangewood, the county shelter for abused and neglected children that Steiner helped build.

Wilson will appoint a successor to Roth, who stepped down Monday with two years left in his term. Roth said his ability to serve had been eroded by a 10-month criminal investigation into allegations of influence peddling.

Gayle Wilson and Steiner lunched with more than a dozen Orange County officials active in children’s issues. They ranged from Francisco P. Briseno, the presiding judge of Juvenile Court, to Mike McKenzie, an Orangewood counselor who formerly lived at the shelter.

Steiner said the governor’s office called him last Thursday, two days after Roth announced that he would resign, to ask if he could arrange a lunch for Mrs. Wilson, who was scheduled to be in the county for an engagement at UC Irvine.

Steiner refused on Monday to characterize his chances of receiving the appointment, noting that he was in the running for a different supervisorial seat several years ago, only to have then-Gov. George Deukmejian select Gaddi H. Vasquez.

He said the front-runner position was “a dangerous place to be” because it makes him the target for everyone else. He added that, if appointed, he would resign as executive director of the Orangewood Children’s Foundation because being a county supervisor is “a full-time job.”

Steiner is a former member of the Orange Unified School Board and currently mayor pro tem of this city. His name has been the one most frequently mentioned as Roth’s replacement since Roth announced that he was stepping down.

Others mentioned include County Clerk Gary Granville, Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly and Wilson’s deputy appointments secretary, Ravinder Mehta.

Steiner was director of the Albert Sitton Home, predecessor to Orangewood, when he led the fund-raising effort to build the new shelter. The campaign, which opened in 1984, raised 80% of the $8 million cost from individuals and corporations--much of it from developers. The rest came from county government.

Two years later, Steiner became executive director of Orangewood Children’s Foundation, the private, nonprofit organization that supports the facility and other children’s programs.

Although Gayle Wilson’s visit provided an opportunity for Steiner to get his picture on television and his name in the newspapers and to be photographed with the governor’s wife, Mrs. Wilson steered clear of linking her visit to Steiner’s political future.

Reminded at a news conference after the lunch that her visit coincided with talk of Steiner’s possible appointment, she said, “I’m not going to comment on it because, frankly, I don’t know anything about it.”

Wilson backed Steiner, though without an official endorsement, when the Orange councilman ran in 1991 for state Assembly. Steiner lost the primary to a more conservative Republican, Mickey Conroy of Santa Ana, who went on to an easy victory.

Steiner said he hadn’t discussed the appointment with Mrs. Wilson.

“We are here to talk about abused and neglected children and public policy issues,” he said. But he added that he might bring up the subject next Monday in Sacramento, when he meets with the governor as California receives an award for its work with children.

Earlier Monday, Gayle Wilson joined several hundred students at the Beckman Center at UCI for a live broadcast from the Jason Project’s expedition off Baja California.

Wilson, who majored in biology in college, told the students: “Science isn’t dull. Science is fun. Science is everyday stuff.”