A Milestone for Laguna Democrats : Politics: On the 50th anniversary of local liberal club, memories are kinder than current realities.

Joyce Dusenberry can remember Laguna Beach Democratic Club members packing a picnic lunch for Adlai Stevenson the day he came to town.

And then there’s the time they delivered carrot and pineapple gelatin salads to a political fund-raiser in Santa Ana attended by another Democratic superstar.

“Young John Kennedy stood in the doorway looking rather uninterested in the menu, shall we say,” said Dusenberry, 87. “I was one of those who was there with my salad and a coterie of people from our club.”

In fact, this city’s first group for Democrats was populated exclusively by women, members of the Laguna Beach Woman’s Club who in 1945 formed the Democratic Women’s Study Group. Men began joining in the late 1950s when the Laguna Beach Democratic Club was officially formed.

This month, as the organization celebrates what members consider its 50-year anniversary, some of the city’s earliest activists are feasting on memories.

Indeed, memories may be more satisfying than the current reality for city liberals, whose political soul mates--all Democratic Club members--were replaced by a more conservative council majority in the last election. The council members had helped define Laguna Beach as an island of liberalism in conservative Orange County for more than a decade.

“The tide has, for the time being, changed and gone against us,” said Dick Frank, the club’s president. “Now the other crowd has taken control.”

On the other hand, members say their organization is still a force to be reckoned with, something they hope to prove in the next election.

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“I think [the club is] as vital now as it’s ever been,” Frank said, “and I think we have a renewed commitment to precinct work.”

The group, which started with about 40 women, now has about 300 members. At least 150 people showed up for the group’s anniversary celebration Sunday, an event also attended by state Democratic Party Chairman Bill Press--and a live donkey.

Like the city it dwells in, the Laguna Beach Democratic Club has always been willing to buck political trends, members of the organization say.

In March, 1945, two months after the Democratic Women’s Study Group was formed, all 39 members endorsed a resolution urging the abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

If the move had little practical effect, members say it demonstrated the women’s courage and their willingness to be boldly out of step with the politically conservative times.

“The men in Laguna were not anxious to be identified as Democrats,” during the group’s formative years, said Dusenberry, who has been club president several times. “Forest Avenue [in the downtown business district] had a lot of John Birch signs on it in those days.”

By the time Dick Frank signed on in 1966, the club had a male president but the female pioneers still guided the organization.

“At that time, the moving spirit was still, I would say, a circle of about seven ladies from the old days,” he said. “There were a few men members, but certainly the elder statesmen of the club were the founding ladies.”

Like all things political, the group has run through many cycles.

While they initially focused on federal and state issues, members say, their attention was riveted on Laguna Beach in 1972 when developers wanted to build a 10-story hotel on Main Beach.

“I can remember talking to someone who said, ‘Oh that beach would make a great parking lot,” Dusenberry said. “He was serious. . . . That’s what we were fighting.”

The Democratic Club stayed together and created an offshoot organization, Village Laguna, to help in the fight.

“There was a strong pull in the early ‘60s and it became even stronger in the early 1970s when the environmental movement really began to come of age in Laguna Beach,” said Charlton Boyd, a former mayor who joined the club in 1968.

Also in the early 1970s, the group was scrambling to help elect George McGovern as President, but Richard Nixon took an easy victory in 1972.

“We recruited a lot of people,” Dusenberry recalled. “And in Laguna we probably thought that we were going to elect him.”

The members of the Democratic Club and Village Laguna also lobbied successfully for the city to buy Main Beach and convert it into a city park and to pass laws limiting hillside development.

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But Frank Ricchiazzi, who helped form the Laguna Beach Republicans in 1990, said the Democrats must share credit for such environmental victories with their political counterparts.

“As far as their taking credit for [the lack of] development on Main Beach and on the hillsides, I would have to say that when you’re dealing with Republicans on the coast we probably have as much sensitivity to the environment as the Democrats,” he said. “So I don’t think it’s fair for them to say this is 100% a Democratic doing.”

Certainly, the 1994 City Council election was a blow for the Democratic Club, although one candidate the group supported, Paul Freeman, was elected.

But members insist that they are not downhearted. They say the group has already made a lasting imprint on the city. And Dusenberry added that this city’s liberals are not in retreat.

“It was a very enthusiastic crowd” at the anniversary celebration, she said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of work done in the precincts before the next election.”