O.C.’s Anti-Tax Generals Weigh Their Next Move

Carrying their freshly hewn political cudgels, the opponents of Measure R are trying to figure out whether to walk softly or brandish their election win throughout the recast landscape of Orange County.

Since last Tuesday’s thumping defeat of the half-cent bankruptcy recovery sales tax, its opponents have pushed their bailout alternatives, and some have told county leaders they will pay a political price if they don’t get behind the people’s mandate to solve the financial crisis with existing resources.

“So many of our leaders have painted themselves into a corner by endorsing Measure R, and now after the election they can say, ‘Yes, the people have spoken,’ ” said Bruce Whitaker, an anti-tax leader. “If they can’t make that reversal of field, they should resign.”

While Whitaker, mainstream business people and Republican Party activists are not talking recall, others are. The Committees of Correspondence--a loose-knit coalition of groups from around the county that formed the backbone of the tax opposition--will hold its monthly meeting Wednesday night in Orange and that issue is expected to be center stage.

Some in the coalition find recall or retribution fitting for those in county government they consider culpable in the bankruptcy or its aftermath. At the top of their hit list is County Chief Executive Officer William J. Popejoy, said Tom Rogers, the key strategist for the No on R committee that was organized by the Committees of Correspondence.

Beyond Popejoy, though, the “thinking is split” among the leadership of the Committees of Correspondence about who should pay the price for a wrong-headed approach to governance. Rogers said the most likely targets for recall are Sheriff Brad Gates, who led the group that supported Measure R, Supervisor Marian Bergeson, who supported the tax increase, and perhaps Auditor-Controller Steve E. Lewis.

Surprisingly, the Committees of Correspondence is not taking aim at Supervisor Roger L. Stanton, who was in office when the county investment pool collapsed. Instead, Stanton has become one of tax opponents’ favorites because he came out against Measure R late in the campaign.

“Roger has kind of emerged as a folk hero out of this,” said Rogers, who once served as county GOP chairman. “I don’t think anyone is going to take it out on Roger Stanton. The only thing they are going to do is vote for him.”

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Though Popejoy survived an evaluation by the Board of Supervisors on Thursday, getting rid of him remains a priority for the Committees of Correspondence.

“That is the one thing we are united on,” Rogers said.

The group says Popejoy, Bergeson and Gates ignored the people who warned that the tax couldn’t win.

“We told them they are putting themselves in an untenable position” by wasting time with a plan favored by the county’s big developers, such as the Irvine Co.’s Gary Hunt.

“We told them: ‘You are going to make it worse with the [bond] rating companies,’ ” he said. Early in the bankruptcy, the committees membership considered the recall of the three veteran supervisors who were on the board when bankruptcy was declared Dec. 6. But the group rejected the idea of going after Gaddi H. Vasquez, William G. Steiner and Stanton, fearing that sweeping them out would make passage of a tax more likely.

Also targeted by some tax opponents are the 45 or so elected officials on school boards and city councils who borrowed money to invest in the county pool, only to see a nearly a quarter of it evaporate when the pool lost $1.7 billion.

“They hope this will quiet down and they can run for reelection,” said Bill White, who is treasurer of the Committees of Correspondence. “We need to get the spotlight on them, naming the 30 to 50 who we think are responsible.”

Whitaker, who worries that recall and retribution talk is premature, says the supervisors should be evaluated in a kind of “recall baseball,” using three criteria: Whether they were in office when the bankruptcy occurred, where they stood on the tax, and what they are doing now.

Using that system, Whitaker accords Supervisor Jim Silva no strikes, Vasquez and Steiner two each, and Stanton and Bergeson one apiece.

“Absolutely defying the will of the people” from here on, he said, “would be a large enough offense so you could get two strikes doing that.”

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Bill Ward, a leader in the No on R campaign run by the Committees of Correspondence, is torn between pragmatism and the belief that some in county government “clearly do not represent the wishes of the people.” He puts Bergeson in that category, though he respects her “for putting her career on the line” by backing the tax.

“Maybe it is time to pay her political debts,” he said. “She was listening to Gary Hunt when she should have been listening to [anti-tax activist] Carole Walters.”

But Bergeson makes “no apology for doing what I thought was right. Upon taking office after the bankruptcy, I didn’t back away and I won’t back away now. I expect to lead the county into recovery and accountability. I think it is something we should all work together on if we want to be able to be in control of our own destiny.”

Rogers points out it would be hard to recall Bergeson because the Committees of Correspondence has limited strength in her coastal and South County district. A countywide challenge to Gates has problems too, he said, because state law only permits someone with law enforcement experience to run in a recall against him.

Some find the entire approach out of step.

In a June Times Orange County poll, Gates received a strong performance rating from more than half the electorate. Bergeson’s approval ratings were twice those of her board colleagues.

In addition, traditional political participants--and even some among the Committees--say a recall would be difficult to accomplish.

“It takes quite a bit of signatures to recall a supervisor and a lot of money,” said Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange), who is running to fill the seat Vasquez will give up next year. “You’ve heard a lot of comments, but we never seem to get a recall going.”

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Others feel it is inappropriate to apply a recall to elected officials, such as Gates and Bergeson, who were expressing sincerely held beliefs by campaigning for the tax.

Dale Dykema--a co-chair of Citizens Against the Tax, the business and Republican Party campaign committee and vice president of the influential Lincoln Club, said that “in my circles, I have not heard anyone suggest recall of these people.”

“I think the focus in my circles is, if there is going to be a recall, it would target the people who caused the problem in the first place, rather than getting back at the people who supported Measure R,” Dykema said.

Dykema has also written to Popejoy to volunteer as a conciliator in the hope of in moving the county forward in the post-election period.

The county’s traditional political leadership--Republican or Democratic Party heads and mainstream business people who are frequent political donors--believe that political retribution should be exacted during the natural election cycle.

Stanton, they say, will face his moment of truth in the March supervisorial primary, when he is scheduled to be the first county elected official to face reelection. Vasquez, who would have faced reelection at the same time, has said he will not run for another four-year term.

Though he says he will not announce until later this year whether he will seek reelection to his second district seat, Stanton is well-positioned for political survival. He has $180,000 in campaign funds, has been embraced by many in the Committees of Correspondence and is courting other tax opponents.

“It is not that I haven’t decided,” Stanton said. “I choose not to discuss the issue publicly until filing time, which is sometime in late fall.”

In addition to opposing Measure R and championing alternatives, “Stanton is accessible and he is not as aloof as the others on the board,” said Wayne King of the Committees. “If I called Roger, he would call me back. If I called Gaddi, maybe one of his aides would call me back. And Gaddi is my supervisor.”

Stanton was the last of the supervisors to announce a position on Measure R during the election campaign. Prior to the supervisors’ unanimous March 28 vote to place Measure R on the June 27 ballot, Stanton had consistently said he opposed a tax-based solution.

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But once the campaign began, Stanton did not take a position on Measure R until two weeks before the election, when he offered his own alternatives to the county-drawn recovery plan.

Stanton also gained political advantage and distanced himself from tax advocates in county government when Popejoy attacked him during the last week of the election. The supervisor, who has been in office 14 years, also made highly visible election night pilgrimages to all three celebrations held by the victorious coalition.

Stanton is the target of a failed recall drive launched in February. The petition expired Monday with just 1,500 signatures of the 15,000 needed to force a recall election, said Felix Rocha, who ran the effort.

Conroy, a staunch conservative who opposed the tax, said he believes “Stanton is going to be a formidable candidate, even though he was a party to the bankruptcy. . . . At least he gave some indication he was fed up with Popejoy and the business as usual crowd.”

Despite Stanton’s political adroitness, some are skeptical about his late opposition to Measure R.

“It is easy to climb on the winning horse when it is close to the finish line,” said Dykema. “I am not putting him down. I think it is positive he did support it. Hero, however, is not the term I would use.”

But others who believe the county still must come up with new revenue to cover its $2-billion debt, want new faces on the board. On Friday, Harvey Englander announced that his political consulting firm would donate its services to the campaigns of qualified candidates who would challenge Stanton or contest Conroy for the Vasquez seat.

That is “our contribution to reshaping and restructuring county government,” he said.

Tom Umberg, the former Democrat assemblyman who said he has spurned overtures to challenge Stanton, believes the supervisor has to win outright in the March primary, or face defeat in a November runoff. That’s because people who don’t vote for Stanton the first time are unlikely to switch to him in November, he said.

Umberg believes the county is headed for a financial day of reckoning and time is not on Stanton’s side.

“The longer this goes on the more difficult the circumstances will be in Orange County,” he said. “The impacts will be seen in schools, in police protection, in prosecutions, everywhere.”