Rocking Role Model : Leaders: Between punk rock gigs, mechanical engineering and beer guzzling, Burgie Benz is mayor of Hermosa Beach. As an outspoken politician, his only flip-flops are on his feet.

Ask most politicians if they plan to run for reelection and you probably will not get a straight answer. Ask Hermosa Beach Mayor Robert (Burgie) Benz and he will tell you straight out: “I will if the rock group thing doesn’t work out.”

Benz is one mayor who marches--and slam dances--to a different drummer.

The wisecracking, 36-year-old mechanical engineer frequently strolls into City Council meetings wearing a T-shirt and flip-flops. He sponsors an annual Fourth of July beer-chugging and vomiting festival, and he is probably the only mayor in America who freely admits to smoking marijuana.

Between beers, Benz will tell you he is a Jeffersonian constitutionalist. Between belches, he’ll invoke William F. Buckley and rail against government regulations.

Now the man who once sang “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” in a Hermosa Beach jail cell after he was arrested for throwing an unruly Christmas party has set his sights on rock stardom: Benz is recording a punk-rock album and plans to tour college campuses next spring.

“It’ll be really cool,” says Benz as he breaks into laughter. “I’ll lecture to political science classes during the day and play in my band at night.”

Benz’s face slapped across an album cover would be only one of a number of wacky twists for the boyish mayor who scorns the notion of political correctness.

Since he was elected to the City Council in 1991, Benz has blasted the local school district’s anti-drug policy, guzzled beer on the beach in violation of city laws and told Christians advocating a City Council prayer that their idea was stupid.

Some residents would rather see Benz behind bars. Many say he is a poor role model for Hermosa’s children, and some have tried unsuccessfully to oust him from office through two recall campaigns. “He has a harmful effect on children, and he’s detrimental to the people of Hermosa,” complains activist Parker Herriott.

Benz, a self-proclaimed “intellectual punk,” snickers at the criticism. “If people think role models should be toeing a politically correct line, then I’m no role model,” he says. “A true role model questions authority.”

If he likes to cut loose and throw parties occasionally, Benz says, that’s his business. Besides, he sometimes works 70 hours a week on his mechanical engineering business and he needs an escape. “You gotta do it or you get stale,” he says.

Residents should not be surprised by Benz’s antics.

Benz, who moved to Hermosa Beach after he graduated from Oregon State University in 1980, gained fame as host of “Burgie Live,” an offbeat, cable call-in show styled after “Saturday Night Live.”

The show’s off-the-wall science experiments and goofball skits attracted a loyal following. Benz, wearing dark sunglasses, took calls from smart-aleck teens and often belted out the “Burgie Rap,” a song about surfing down a mammoth wave. He frequently broke out laughing in a characteristic, high-speed nasal chortle. The show ended each week with a rendition of “Partytime Is Anytime.”

But like Benz, the show had more than slapstick antics and a rollicking party atmosphere. One skit satirizing police crackdowns on local bars was designed to depict Benz’s belief that too much government regulation inhibits business.

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And a bumper sticker on Benz’s desk that stated “Save Hermosa, drown a meter maid,” reflected Benz’s belief that the city’s reputation for overzealously enforcing parking meter regulations drives customers away and hurts the economy.

“Burgie’s really sharp, really bright,” says former station manager and “Burgie Live” producer Doug Nielsen. “But his real talent is that he presents himself in a manner where people don’t take him too seriously, and he has a way of letting people know he’s kindhearted.”

Benz, a libertarian, says his interest in government and love for Hermosa Beach led him to seek office. He lost a campaign for a council seat in 1989, but won a seat two years later when he argued that the city’s budget was more important to residents than his party-animal image. If there is one town where that line would work, it is Hermosa Beach, which has attracted a far larger proportion of freewheeling hippies, surfers and bikers than the more conservative beach cities that surround it.

As a councilman, Benz has tried to keep his zany antics outside City Hall. He has yet to light a marijuana joint or break into a verse of the “Burgie Rap” during a meeting. He even wore long pants to the council meeting in August when he took over the mayor’s seat, a largely ceremonial position that is rotated among council members every nine months. And he has consistently argued for change.

Benz has called for easing restrictions on alcohol sales, and has hounded the council to reduce government regulations.

He coined an expression that he calls “Burgie’s Law.” Says Benz: “Show me a regulation that was drafted to address a problem, and I’ll show you how it caused more problems.”

Though Benz sometimes sounds surly, he has a charisma that rubs off on some of his toughest critics, says Councilman Sam Y. Edgerton. Benz and Edgerton sometimes play golf together. Benz plays barefooted.

“One thing about politics is it attracts big stuffed shirts,” Edgerton says. “Here you have a guy whose only fault is that his flip-flops might look a little worn. He represents the common man who, in Hermosa Beach, is an ex-surfer sitting on the sea wall watching the sunset.”

Sometimes Benz the politician and Benz the beer guzzler meet. When Benz bought beers for several city officials at a local bar after a recent council meeting, he flopped down on a bar stool and engaged a boisterous man sitting a few stools away in a political debate.

When the man argued that “bureaucracy was good,” Benz took a swig of beer, grinned and fired back: “I am bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is evil.” The man was not convinced, but the charismatic Benz still won him over. The man later told Benz: “I like you. I’d vote for you.”

Benz may have picked up a little charisma and iconoclasm from his mother, Dolores. Burgie Benz recalls a stormy morning in Portland when his mother had a run-in with the local police. Dolores Benz, who was driving young Burgie, his sister and three brothers to church in the family’s ’62 Chevrolet station wagon, ran a stop sign as she chugged up a hill in a blizzard because she was afraid the car might stall. She had seen a police officer in her rear view mirror and hoped he would not pull her over. But he did.

“She said, ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, you damn jerk, I saw you behind me,’ ” Benz recalls. “In the end, not only did she not get a ticket, but she got the cop to push the car up the hill.”

It is a memory he takes with him to the council meetings and his mechanical engineering business.

Benz sits in his El Segundo office among scattered papers, empty soda cans and stacks of newspapers. He does much of his thinking there, surrounded by books with titles such as “Managerial Economics,” “Dynamics of Propulsion” and “Titanium.”

Benz, whose father also is an engineer, has been putting in extra hours lately. He recently developed a device that reduces pollutants emitted from boilers, and he has been installing the device for companies throughout the country.

On a trip to a carpet mill to inspect his work, Benz pulls up to the factory, scrubs his teeth with a toothbrush he keeps on his dashboard and spits toothpaste onto the asphalt. As a security guard eyes the foaming mess and grimaces, Benz replaces his flip-flops with a pair of sneakers and heads into the factory.

Once inside, Benz high-fives a worker, then turns serious. He quietly taps on a computer keyboard and tinkers with the mathematical equations flowing across the computer screen. Moments later, satisfied that he has solved the problem with a boiler, Benz heads back to the office.

As Benz motors back, his face lights up as he considers his forthcoming punk-rock album. “The only bummer is all the engineering work I have,” he says.

A record producer hopes Benz can put some time aside for a college tour. “Burgie could really catch on with the college audience,” says Mark Cutsforth, president of Absolutely Free Recordings and an old friend of Benz. “I see Burgie as a cross between Pee Wee Herman, Albert Einstein and (punk-rock star) Henry Rollins, and he’s got great stage presence.”

At a plush Southland recording studio, Benz screams into a microphone as an engineer tinkers with buttons on a soundboard. When the song ends, Benz takes a swig of tequila, belches into the microphone and complains that his voice sounds too raspy.

Cutsforth laughs. “We just love that Burgie’s the mayor of Hermosa,” he says.

Cutsforth hopes to release the album to record stores in February. Soon after, Benz plans to tour college campuses, discuss politics and perform songs. Right now, Benz calls the recording an experiment.

Later, he might have to decide whether to run for reelection or pursue more punk albums.