O.C. Sheriff Trains Sights on Bankruptcy

Until he blew out a knee days before his college season opener, all Brad Gates ever wanted to be was a professional basketball player. In the decades since, Gates’ single goal has been the job of Orange County sheriff.

Never did Gates, 56, consider a career in bankruptcy law, investment banking or waste management.

But these days, those are the areas on which he focuses most.

The cowboy-turned-cop leaped into an unprecedented leadership role last December, when the county of his birth became the largest U.S. government ever to go bankrupt.

During the seven months since, Gates has rarely returned to the Sheriff’s Department. Instead, he spends his time lobbying legislators in Sacramento, running county budget-slashing sessions and conferring with consultants about court battles. Most recently, he served as head cheerleader for a failed sales-tax hike intended to refill the county’s empty wallet, stumping in a campaign that had nothing to do with law enforcement.

Now he’s in charge of the county’s key revenue-raising plan: Turning trash into cash by filling landfills with garbage trucked from out of town.

Is the sheriff running the county? Is this the wild, wild West?

“Crisis--that’s really my world,” Gates said in an interview last week. “This one just happens to be financial.”

While recent polls show Gates remains popular with the public, his new activism has converted some former supporters to critics.

“The sheriff’s role as part of crisis management was understood, but the ongoing presence of Brad as a de facto czar of the county troubles a lot of people,” said local Republican Party Chairman Tom Fuentes. “It’s time for the people that are elected to do the job to do it, and for him to return to his beat.”

If anything, the towering redhead is more active in the county’s recovery from bankruptcy than ever before, attending key meetings and serving as perhaps the closest comrade of Chief Executive Officer William J. Popejoy. Popejoy’s arrival in February threatened to diminish the power Gates had built up since the bankruptcy, but instead only expanded Gates’ influence through a close bond that transcends their working relationship.

“He’s a hell of a lot bigger than me, and you always get along with bigger people if you’re smart,” Popejoy joked in a recent interview.

While at the Hall of Administration, Gates has expanded his huge power base and fiercely protected the empire he built during two decades as top cop.

Gates’ department recently swiped control of the county’s emergency communications center, which would be used during a natural disaster or other crisis, from the General Services Agency, and is jockeying to take over security in county courthouses--a consolidation of departments that has been studied before and deemed inefficient, but which Gates has managed to revive.

Gates squelched suggestions by activists and county officials to privatize his beloved jails. He pushed through a pricey police radio system at a time when the county was seeking to save, not spend.

His budget, like everyone else’s, has been cut. But not by much.

Indeed, the Sheriff’s Department was among the last to take a hit, prompting a melodramatic speech from Gates, complete with video of a jail food fight. Several sources inside the county say Gates’ presentation was staged solely to rebut growing criticism that CEO William J. Popejoy had been soft on the sheriff.

“Because there seems to be a power vacuum, an ambitious person is going to flourish,” said Tom Rogers, a San Juan Capistrano neighbor of Gates who once chaired the local GOP and now helps lead the anti-tax Committees of Correspondence.

“I don’t think he’s fearful of anybody encroaching on his little fiefdom,” Rogers added. “I think he has grander plans.”

But Gates shrugs off the criticism, noting that the supervisors begged for his help when the crisis began in December, and nobody has since asked him to leave. Popejoy and his team of consultants say Gates’ understanding of local government and Orange County politics is irreplaceable, and that his iron-willed style has translated easily from fighting crime to managing money.

“There were real pieces of talent that Brad Gates has . . . that helped tough decisions to be made without people getting mad at each other,” Gates said of himself.

“I’m a member of a family trying to get a problem behind us,” he added. “I am a member of the community, as well as a leader of the community, as well as a sheriff.”

*

Growing up in San Juan Capistrano when it was a ranch town of 700 residents, Brad Gates learned to shoot a gun in a farmer’s orange grove and got his first taste of street patrol as a member of the Junior Mounted Posse, a force of teen-age law enforcement volunteers on horseback.

As a kid he juggled jobs delivering the local paper on a dozen-mile rural route, scrubbing the floors of Mr. Smith’s drugstore and busing tables for 63 cents an hour at the only all-night diner between Santa Ana and Oceanside. It was there, at the Walnut Grove Cafe, that Gates first met cops, who stopped for coffee during overnight patrols.

After doctors dashed his basketball dreams, Gates in 1961 started taking police science classes at Orange Coast College and later joined the Sheriff’s Department, pulling midnight shifts at the old, crowded Sycamore Street jail.

“I still get tears in my eyes when it comes to the cop and robber, the good guy and the bad guy, the outlaw and the sheriff,” he said. “I want the good guy to win.”

By 1970, Gates had collected bachelor’s and master’s degrees in criminology from Cal State Long Beach and sped through stints as a patrolman and narcotics investigator, triggering long-lasting criticism that he is more politician than cop, having spent little time on the street. Four years later, he was elected sheriff, dispatching half a dozen opponents in the primary, where he garnered a whopping 70% of the vote.

Gates jokes about the opponents he’s had since. He recalls one who mysteriously disappeared during a campaign, then points out that his title is sheriff- coroner .

Last year, no one ran against him.

*

When the sales tax they hated went down in flames last month, some anti-tax activists whispered about recalling Gates, but have since dropped the idea as unrealistic.

Earlier this spring, when Gates threatened to cut special overtime pay for officers to meet Popejoy’s budget goals, there were rumblings in the ranks about a no-confidence vote. But the meeting never materialized and the department found something else to cut.

Employees at the Sheriff’s Academy are still irked that Gates skipped graduation ceremonies this spring because he was in Sacramento with the bankruptcy recovery team.

Despite his bold campaign for a proposal voters despised and his growing reputation as a brash power-grabber, Gates seems unscathed by his starring role in the harsh spotlight of the bankruptcy. In a Times poll last month, voters applauded loudest for Gates, with 51% rating his performance excellent or good. Even among those who opposed Measure R, 46% gave him high marks.

Poll respondents and political observers say Gates’ popularity stems from his success as a crime-fighter in a county where law and order is top priority.

“He’s not somebody who’s associated with the problem of the bankruptcy,” explained Mark Baldassare, the UC Irvine professor who conducted the poll.

“I think that people separated Brad Gates in terms of his role as sheriff from his role as a supporter for the tax measure,” Baldassare said. “I don’t think people have been focusing on where Brad Gates is spending his hours. He’s viewed as somebody who puts people in uniform on the streets to protect Orange County residents and somebody who takes care of the jails.”

But some citizen-activists and members of the Republican Establishment wish Gates would go back to doing just that, rather than mucking around with the landfill system.

“He’s not been in his office for months,” mused Carole Walters, president of the Orange Taxpayers’ Assn. “We could get rid of his job and save money.”

“It’s an obvious question,” agreed developer Buck Johns, who last year touted Gates as a candidate for lieutenant governor but opposed the tax and has suggested the sheriff move on. “How can he be doing a great job running the Sheriff’s Department when he’s not there?”

Gates said he remains in close touch with his assistants and that over the past two decades he has built an administrative team that does not require his hands-on involvement in day-to-day matters. Besides, he said, the bankruptcy recovery is where he is needed most.

“It’s not like I just divorced myself,” Gates said. “I’m not physically there very much . . . but we talk every day.”

*

These days, Gates stops by his old haunts only once every couple of weeks. Most of the time, he can be found at the Hall of Administration, where he parks his county-owned Lincoln Town Car beneath the building, leaving it askew by the elevator rather than pulling into a marked spot. He is, after all, still the sheriff.

Between meetings, Gates folds his 6-foot-4 frame into a government-issue chair in the corner of a third-floor office inhabited by retired Assistant Sheriff Walter Fath, whom Gates convinced in January to return to the CEO’s office.

“When you see Brad put himself into something--whether it be an issue, a friend, a charitable thing--he just puts himself into it totally and completely,” said Undersheriff Raul Ramos, a colleague and friend for two decades. “When something needs fixing, and when somebody asks him to fix it, he just jumps in.”

Sometimes Gates’ assistants come over to visit. But mostly, the law enforcement work plods along without him.

“Gates has never run day-to-day operations of the Sheriff’s Department anyway, so it doesn’t matter that he’s over there,” sniped one longtime department employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The guy’s a politician. He’s not looked at as being a cop.”

While outside observers often wonder why Gates would be a key player in the bankruptcy, members of the recovery team say he has adapted quickly to the new role, and often breaks through tense negotiations with a combination of toughness and sensitivity to individual concerns.

“In crises, a lot of people equate action with risk and inaction with no risk. They don’t realize that not acting is a risk in itself,” said financial adviser Christopher Varelas of Salomon Bros. “It’s great to have the sheriff, who is not afraid to act and take risks.”

Perhaps no one appreciates Gates more than Popejoy, an outsider to county government who has relied on Gates’ understanding of its inner workings. The San Juan Capistrano cowboy and the banking tycoon who retired to Newport Beach have divergent backgrounds, but striking similarities: Birthdays one day apart, a love of tennis--they have $100 riding on their first challenge across the net--and an addiction to novelist Louis L’Amour.

“When I first got this job, more and more people said, ‘Watch out for the sheriff.’ They said, ‘The sheriff is going to want to control everything, he’s going to want to be the boss.’ And I found out something: They’re right,” Popejoy said only half-seriously to a crowd of Measure R supporters on election night as the tax-hike was being crushed.

“Brad’s very strong-willed. If we have something that requires less than a shy person to do, Brad does it,” Popejoy said in an interview. “I respect the guy. I like him. . . . He’s probably the most important person I work with in the operations here.”

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Brad Gates in Profile

* Full name: Bradley Lorison Gates

* Birthday: March 27, 1939

* Hometown: San Juan Capistrano

* Residence: San Juan Capistrano

* Early family: Third of four children

* Current family: Married since 1961 to Dee Dee; 30-year-old son and 28-year-old daughter.

* Education: Graduated from Capistrano Union High School, Orange Coast College, Cal State Long Beach (bachelor’s and master’s degrees in criminology); extensive doctoral work in public administration at Claremont Graduate School.

* Career: After teen-age jobs delivering newspapers, scrubbing drugstore floors, busing tables at an all-night diner and driving a truck, went to work at the Sheriff’s Department in 1961 and never left. Elected sheriff in 1974--and reelected five times.

* Extra interest: Since county bankruptcy filing in December, has taken leadership role in administrative office, working on all aspects of the crisis.

* Attitude: “I still get tears in my eyes when it comes to the cop and robber, the good guy and the bad guy, the outlaw and the sheriff. I want the good guy to win.”

Source: Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Brad Gates

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Gates Rates High

Sheriff Brad Gates continues to enjoy high marks from county residents. Half of those questioned by The Times Orange County Poll said Gates is doing an “excellent” or “good” job--a much higher rating than respondents gave county supervisors. Percentage of voters saying overall job performance is excellent or good: Sheriff Brad Gates: 51% Supervisor Marian Bergeson: 19% Supervisor William G. Steiner: 11% Supervisor Jim Silva: 11% Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez: 11% Supervisor Roger R. Stanton: 9% Source: Times Orange County Poll, June 2-5