‘The Guru of Local Politics’ : Oxnard Consultant Donald Gunn Helps Leaders and Developers by Keeping Finger on City Pulse

For two decades, since he was just a kid, Oxnard political consultant Donald A. Gunn has been a strategist in major city campaigns and a mover behind the scenes at City Hall.

Bright, self-taught and well-informed, Gunn has sold his time and volunteered it. Dozens of candidates and developers have sought him out to gauge Oxnard’s pulse and to move projects through the city bureaucracy.

He has helped elect City Council members, judges, a county supervisor and trustees to the board of education. In 1973, he campaigned successfully for a directly elected mayor. In 1992, he gathered support for the giant Wal Mart shopping center.

“Around Oxnard, I don’t think there’s anyone else who has a finger on the pulse as does Don Gunn,” said Assemblyman Nao Takasugi, a former Oxnard mayor. “I refer to him kiddingly as the guru of local politics.”

Yet, for all his savvy, the 38-year-old Gunn remained largely unknown to the general public until two weeks ago, when Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury shed a bright light on Gunn’s role in the campaign to bring a card casino to Oxnard.

Addressing an overflow City Council audience, Bradbury condemned card clubs as corrupters of local government. And in a written report, the prosecutor cited the felony convictions of two casino promoters and Gunn’s role in the promoters’ Oxnard campaign as a “glimpse of the reality” of such clubs.

Bradbury said he had evidence that Gunn--while managing the fall campaigns of council members Michael Plisky and Geraldine Furr--had directed about $7,000 in contributions from the two promoters into several city campaigns.

After the November election, Gunn signed a card club contract that gave him not only a paycheck but a six-figure bonus if a casino was built and a lifetime 2% interest in casino revenues, Bradbury reported.

In addition, a second casino group seeking a local consultant had been referred to Gunn by Councilman Plisky, the district attorney said.

Bradbury then announced that he had begun a criminal investigation into possible money laundering by card club promoters into City Council campaigns.

Though alleging no illegality by Gunn and saying evidence so far indicated laundering by promoters other than Gunn, the Bradbury report raised questions about the propriety of Gunn’s dual role in Oxnard politics--as campaign manager for council members and lobbyist for companies seeking the votes of those members.

In forcing Gunn’s behind-the-scene activities into a public forum, the Bradbury report also placed the intensely private Gunn in a place he never wanted to be--the public spotlight.

“I’ve got to tell you I don’t like to discuss clients, and my personal life is my personal life. So I don’t really see where I’d be a lot of help to you,” Gunn said last week in declining an interview.

While Gunn is not interested in discussing his career, people who have known him for many years--politicians, business leaders and competitors--describe him as a man who followed his teen-age fascination with politics and found a way to make a living at it--though for years he supplemented his income by caring for the elderly in his large north Oxnard home.

“Don is very much a political animal. He’s a political junkie,” said Gerard Kapuscik, who was a member of a political club with Gunn in 1972, when both were still teen-agers. “He finds the process of politics and campaigns and political relationships fascinating and addictive. He’s involved in it all the time.”

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Gunn is commonly described as an information broker, who serves as a kind of weather vane for out-of-town developers who know little about local history, politics and attitudes and for local candidates seeking insights into the Oxnard political landscape.

“A lot of what Don does is give advice,” said Dana Weber Young, an economic development consultant who has sought his counsel. “You work through your strategy, then he tells you ‘yea or nay’ and points out your pitfalls. He tells you who you need to see and who you need to speak with.”

Admirers--many of whom are pro-development Republicans who have been leaders in the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce--say Gunn may be a one-of-a-kind citizen.

“He has given himself completely to the democratic process,” said longtime friend Chuck Johnson, a former chamber president. “If I had to name someone who has really and truthfully tried to do what he could for the community I would say that’s him.”

But there are others, including some Democrats who have opposed Gunn’s candidates, who say his efforts are self-serving--that he has dropped the names of his City Hall contacts when cutting deals with developers.

“People would make facial grimaces when you mentioned his name, and what they meant is. . . watch him,” said county Supervisor John K. Flynn, who represents Oxnard. “These are people who are active in politics and who are mainly Democrats.”

On a personal level, Gunn, who lives with his sister and works out of his home, is portrayed alternately as unassuming and likable, or eccentric.

“You see a guy who looks like your weird Uncle George,” said Santa Barbara political consultant John Davies, who ran Takasugi’s 1988 mayoral campaign against Plisky. “Then he talks and you say, ‘This guy is pretty bright.’ And he’s personable.”

Political consultant Al Limon, longtime aide to former Congressman Robert Lagomarsino, said Gunn kids Limon about his suit and tie, while referring to himself as a casually dressed “country bumpkin.”

Regardless of idiosyncrasies, Gunn has built a reputation in Oxnard as a consultant who knows his business because of decades of hard work.

As a 15-year-old Oxnard High School student, he worked in Oxnard’s Sister Cities program. At 17, he cut his political teeth by canvassing for county Supervisor Thomas Laubacher in a 1972 loss to Flynn.

Over the next four years, he campaigned for a directly elected mayor, helped his mother--restaurant owner Frances Gunn--in her failed bid for City Council, worked in Laubacher’s 1976 win over Flynn and even ran for city clerk himself, though he was just barely old enough to vote. His 21st birthday was celebrated, Johnson recalled, “by taking him out to register to vote.”

In those early days, Gunn also worked in the first City Council campaigns of Takasugi and current Mayor Manuel Lopez, in Dorill Wright’s 1980 run against Flynn, and in the 1977-78 campaign to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in Oxnard.

He also joined Johnson as a member of the Oxnard Advisory Committee, a group that made recommendations to the City Council.

Former Councilwoman Ann Johs, chamber president in 1980, befriended Gunn during those years and remembers him sitting in the back of the room at city meetings listening quietly.

“I don’t recall him ever coming before the City Council (to speak),” said Johs, whom Gunn talked into running for City Council in a 1985 special election. He also directed her reelection campaigns in 1986 and 1990.

During the mid-1980s, Gunn worked a year for Woodland Hills developer Aaron Raznick, who built more than a dozen projects in Oxnard.

“When I first met Don, he was managing a lot of political campaigns for supervisor and council,” Raznick said. “He was highly regarded in the community. I was very impressed. And we needed someone who could meet with planners and determine what was required for projects.”

Gunn was laid off on good terms as Raznick’s projects slowed, the developer said.

At about the same time, Gunn first teamed with Plisky, a two-term president of the Chamber of Commerce.

According to Dick Laubacher, Plisky’s campaign treasurer, Gunn ran Plisky’s first race for City Council in 1984. Filing statements show that Gunn was a paid consultant during four more Plisky runs for council or mayor over the next eight years, though Gunn’s role was minimal in 1988 because of family illness.

While Gunn handled other candidates, and weighed in against the controversial city utility tax in 1990, he also became known for his relationship with Plisky.

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In addition to campaign manager, Gunn has been Plisky’s friend and adviser, Flynn said. The extent of Gunn’s role was shown about three years ago, Flynn said, when the supervisor tried to gain Plisky’s support for closing the Bailard Landfill near Oxnard.

“Plisky told me, ‘Don Gunn and I are working together on this,’ ” Flynn said. “So I knew that Gunn was significant in that issue.

“He’s a confidant-type person,” Flynn said. “He’s a guy you go to with your biggest problems and say, ‘Hey, what should I do?’ Kind of a father-confessor type.”

Political consultant Davies also noted the relationship between Plisky and Gunn.

“In every controversial project, Don Gunn seems to pop up to see if he can play a role as a consultant,” Davies said. “And it seems that when someone comes to town and doesn’t know Oxnard very well, Mike Plisky always tells them that the first person they should meet with is Don Gunn.”

Plisky, who first met Gunn at chamber meetings in the mid-1970s, said he is a friend of Gunn’s, “but I don’t take him fishing or anything like that. Mostly my involvement was campaign-related.”

When discussing issues, Plisky said he is no closer to Gunn than to many other people around Oxnard. And he said he didn’t remember seeking Gunn’s advice on landfill closure, which he said he has always favored.

He has, on occasion, referred out-of-town developers to Gunn, he said.

“I have a couple of times,” Plisky said. “That’s my middle name. I believe in referring to people in Oxnard any business that I can. . . . So if anybody asks me who knows the lay of the land relative to a planning issue or political issue then I might tell them, ‘see Don Gunn.’ ”

Lopez, who defeated Plisky for mayor last fall, said Plisky’s relationship with Gunn coupled with Gunn’s partnership interest in the casino proposal created a situation that crossed an ethical line.

“Many things that occur in the city are not illegal, but let’s say they’re unsavory,” said Lopez, who opposed the card clubs. “The appearance so far is that this is (unsavory).

“You can have a very close relationship with people who are making decisions, and even if there’s no money changing hands, you still have an influence, and that would be my concern,” Lopez said. “There’s a feeling of quasi-obligation.”

Even before the card club hearing June 22, former Councilwoman Dorothy Maron in an interview made the same point and called for Plisky to abstain from the vote. After an emotional, four-hour hearing, the entire council voted to kill proposals for big-time gambling.

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Plisky said then that Bradbury’s comments about casino-related crime and the public’s rejection of the proposals persuaded him to vote against card clubs.

He said Friday that he had no conflict of interest even if he had voted to continue to study casino proposals, because he has no financial ties to Gunn and no problem considering a Gunn-supported project objectively.

“If it were my wife or my brother I might,” he said, “but he’s just another guy in town.”

Plisky said he is not concerned what Lopez and Maron think. He said they have had their own close relationships with people around town and still voted on issues affecting them. “You can stretch this stuff so far that nobody can ever vote on anything,” he said. “What comes into play here is integrity, and that’s up to the voters to decide, not Dorothy and Manny.”

Plisky has criticized Bradbury’s report for repeating claims by casino promoters who said they negotiated with Gunn for consulting services in 1992 at the behest of Plisky.

“That’s not accurate,” Plisky said. “They asked me for some help--if I knew somebody locally who knew the neighborhood.” Plisky said he recommended Gunn because “he was somebody who fit their qualifications.”

That Gunn was named in Bradbury’s scathing report on card clubs has angered some of the consultant’s friends, who insist he has been unfairly tainted.

Former Councilwoman Johs said several assertions in the Bradbury report are not true, but she would not discuss them. “I’m not going to get into a contest with Mike Bradbury,” she said.

Johs added: “I’ve never seen (Gunn) do anything unethical.”

Consultant Young, former president of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., said she considers Gunn a victim of a Bradbury “smear campaign” aimed at defeating the card club.

“I’ve always respected Don Gunn, and my respect for him as an individual and as an astute political consultant hasn’t changed one bit because of the garbage that was printed by Mike Bradbury,” Young said. “ . . . We’re now on a nice witch hunt about Don Gunn, but he’s the same guy this week as he was before.”

In response, Bradbury’s special assistant, Donald Coleman, said Friday that the district attorney simply laid out Gunn’s activities factually without offering an opinion about them. None of those facts have been refuted, he said.

“If a taint is there, it’s because of the activity he was involved in,” Coleman said. “He wasn’t in the limelight because of the D.A.’s report. He was in the limelight because of the activity going on behind the scenes in Oxnard that we felt was important for the people of Oxnard to know.”

But Young said she suspects Gunn will never be charged with anything, and that he will have suffered great harm unfairly.

“Now he’s afraid to leave his house, and he’s very much afraid about whether he’ll be able to continue to have a livelihood,” she said.

Several political consultants said, however, that Gunn violated a basic rule of their business--never to put yourself in a compromising position.

“Any consultant worth their salt does not want to get in a situation like this,” said Nels Henderson, who assisted Maron and Lopez in their campaigns last fall. “You don’t even want to have an appearance of conflict. It doesn’t make for a very good reputation.

“It’s kind of like pushing a big boulder up a hill and trying to balance it on the top,” Henderson said. “Don Gunn may have pushed the boulder a little too hard.”