Mugu Lobbyist a Veteran of Base Battles

Lynn Jacquez, her salary partly funded by Ventura County taxpayers, did not slip out of her office last week for a midday shopping trip.

She did hop on the subway to suburban Rossyln, Va., leaving her colleagues behind at work. And she did enter a shopping mall. But Jacquez, striding past the stores, was hard at work.

A lobbyist originally hired by Ventura County civic leaders to save the two local Navy bases, Jacquez was en route to a place she has been many times--the offices of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which happen to be above a mall.

With Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station now on the commission’s hit list, Jacquez’s job has increased in urgency and she has become a regular at the commission’s offices, searching for intelligence to boost Mugu’s case.

Saving bases is an unpredictable line of work. Four of the five bases Jacquez has represented have ended up folding. But none of them have closed without a pitched fight, Jacquez says.

One of many lobbyists making treks to the commission’s offices, Jacquez is part of the cottage industry of professional base advocates responding to the post-Cold War dismantlement of military installations.

Some high-powered firms juggle more than a dozen bases at a time and employ former commission staff members to beef up their expertise. Jacquez, an attorney and former congressional aide, is part of a small partnership that now has Point Mugu as its only endangered base.

Jacquez was thrust into the base closure process while representing the governments in Merced and Alameda counties in 1991 when their bases unexpectedly became endangered. Castle Air Force Base in Merced County was closed that year, despite Jacquez’s efforts. A handful of other bases endured.

Then, two years later, came another round of closures. And this time, the base closure commission decided to shut the Alameda Naval Air Station, Oak Knoll Naval Hospital and the Naval Aviation Depot. The Oakland Army Base was spared.

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Jacquez is upfront about her limitations.

“I clearly am not a military expert,” she says, although her words are laced with the acronyms of defense-speak and she has more than a few contacts in the Pentagon. “I’m still not completely familiar with weapons systems, but I’m learning.”

And she makes no guarantees.

“Can I save military bases that have been slated for closure? I’d be crazy to guarantee that,” Jacquez said. “Can I help structure your message and make sure that your case is heard? Absolutely.”

Despite the past closures, Jacquez wins high praise from Merced and Alameda counties. Officials there call her plugged in with Washington decision-makers, knowledgeable about the complicated base-closure process and capable of fighting aggressively to save a base.

“Lynn really helped our group learn the Washington maze,” said Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson. “She constantly kept us informed and gave us valuable tips.”

Recommendations like that helped the firm edge out several competitors last fall when the county’s BRAC ’95 Task Force was searching for help in keeping the Point Mugu and Port Hueneme bases alive.

“Washington, D.C., for us at the local level is a complicated maze,” said Ventura County Supervisor John K. Flynn, who is pleased with the performance of the firm. “It was foreign for most of us. We needed someone to tell us who to see and help us see them. . . . I think Lynn knows the pathways and the routes and the corridors she has to go down.”

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It is that access that keeps lobbyists on the job.

“I don’t think my clients hire me because I know 1,000 people,” she said. “They hire me because I know the process and I know how to get to know 1,000 different people.”

Jacquez is married to the chief of staff to Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-La Puente) and is a former associate counsel on the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, refugees and international law. Her firm--Copeland, Lowery & Jacquez--has ties to both sides of the political aisle, which local officials view as a plus.

Partner James Copeland is former President Carter’s deputy assistant for congressional relations and a past aide to Rep. Pete Stark (D-Hayward).

Bill Lowery, the latest addition to the firm, spent 12 years as a Republican congressman from San Diego, serving on the military construction subcommittee that oversaw the base closure process. He retired in the middle of a tough reelection fight in 1992 when opponents raised questions about his 300 overdrafts at the House of Representatives bank.

As a congressman, Lowery experienced the closure process firsthand in 1991 when two San Diego bases faced closure. Both bases were spared during that round, but the San Diego Naval Training Center was later shut in 1993.

“It’s gut-wrenching,” Lowery said of the process. “I’ve been there. When you have facilities that have grown up with the community . . . it’s almost like a death in the family to see them close.”

Tapping into political connections, however, is not cheap. And for every community with a Washington lobbyist, there are others fighting the battle without such clout.

Already, the Ventura County BRAC task force, using donations from local governments and businesses, has spent $90,000 on lobbying since last fall.

Local officials cut the $15,000-a-month contract in half in March, buoyed by the news that the bases at Port Hueneme and Point Mugu were spared from Defense Secretary William J. Perry’s recommended closures.

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But the full lobbying campaign was quickly restored when the base closure commission decided to take another look at Point Mugu.

In all, the county has set a $128,000 limit on the lobbying contract--for which they seek entree to policy-makers, hand-holding through the process and as much insider data as they can get.

It was Jacquez, for instance, who shuttled the local officials around Washington when they arrived for a lobbying trip in December and arranged key meetings with Pentagon, White House and congressional leaders--including a few minutes with White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta.

“If someone started from scratch in Ventura and tried to set up those meetings, there’s no way they could do it,” said Bill Simmons, the task force’s administrative director.

Another Jacquez contribution came last month when she learned more than a week before the official announcement that Point Mugu was going to be added to the list of threatened bases.

“I had a very good source who was telling me we were in trouble,” she said. “But it was tough getting people to believe me. It was like I was a wacko crying, ‘The sky is falling! The sky is falling!’ ”

When her tip firmed up a bit, Jacquez helped launch a preemptive strike to try to spare Point Mugu. Under her direction, local congressmen made telephone calls and signed a joint letter urging commissioners to reconsider.

Still, Point Mugu made the list.

Since then, Jacquez helped coordinate the testimony at the recent regional hearing in San Francisco, giving tips to the speakers and making sure none of the remarks overlapped. She will do the same when lawmakers have a chance to address the base closing panel next week.

She has also been busy polishing the task force’s official rebuttal to the controversial Pentagon inspector general’s report that predicted large cost savings if most of Point Mugu’s facilities are mothballed and the operations transferred to the China Lake base.

Occasionally, her job has strayed far from public policy. Jacquez, for instance, organized the cocktail reception for base closure commissioners in San Francisco last month as a last-ditch attempt at goodwill before the panelists make their July 1 recommendations to President Clinton.

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Jacquez acknowledges that she had never heard of Point Mugu or the community surrounding it before she was hired to take on the fight. But just as with past bases she has fought for, Jacquez says she gets emotionally involved in her campaigns.

“I was extremely nervous, tense and stressed prior to the Alameda vote,” she recalled of the marathon session in 1993 in which her bases’ fates were being decided. “I sat there during the deliberations thinking, ‘Maybe we can pull this off.’ . . . When they finally voted to close the bases, I had to leave the room.”

Despite the blow, Jacquez said she immediately began working with local officials on the next step--fighting for federal funds to convert the now-closed facilities to other uses.

“If Mugu were to close. . .,” Jacques said, pausing and then abandoning the very notion. “I don’t even want to think about that.”