The Issues Are Finally in Sync With Antonovich

The speaker, one of the most powerful Republicans in Southern California, charmed his audience despite his lackluster delivery.

“The county’s current situation,” he began, addressing a gathering of business people, “reminds me of when the Mafia had a budgetary problem in Chicago. It was so severe, they had to lay off 2,000 judges.”

With the ice broken by the laughter, Mike Antonovich was free to discuss his signature issues: fiscal responsibility (good), taxes (bad) and illegal immigration (very bad).

By all rights, this should be Antonovich’s time. At 55, he is bolstered by a power base stemming from four terms on the Board of Supervisors, the conservative sweep in last November’s elections and an anti-illegal immigration movement that seems to have finally meshed with views he has espoused for 20 years.

He was a tax hater before Proposition 13. He was an illegal immigrant basher decades before Proposition 187. He had contempt for affirmative action long before the “California civil rights initiative.” But until the past few years, few outside his solidly conservative constituency took him seriously.

Today, Antonovich is having private meetings with House Speaker Newt Gingrich and is avidly courted to run for Congress. He officially declined a congressional bid last week, announcing instead that he will seek a fifth term as county supervisor next year and consider a future run for the U.S. Senate.

“Is it better to be in the mainstream?” he asked during a recent interview. “Yes. I just wished more people had listened before.”

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But coming up for Antonovich are daunting tests whose results could dampen his political aspirations.

Helping to solve the county’s $1.2-billion budget crisis could mean closing at least one hospital in his sprawling north county district, over the objections of many constituents.

And next month, Antonovich will face appeal of a lawsuit in which he was found liable for conspiring to influence a judge on behalf of a campaign contributor. If he loses again, the county--and taxpayers--will be left to pay a $1.2-million fine on his behalf.

Perhaps Antonovich’s most pressing concern is how he will explain his role on the board while county debt spiraled. During his 15 years in office, the board mortgaged valuable county assets such as Marina del Rey property and its Downtown Los Angeles headquarters, the Hall of Administration, and approved lucrative pension packages for senior county officials, including themselves.

Antonovich not only voted in favor of the generous pensions, but later resisted efforts by Supervisor Gloria Molina to scale them back.

He and fellow conservative Deane Dana are the only holdovers from the time when the board approved many of the plans, including the pensions, which alone will cost the county about $500 million. But because Dana already has announced his retirement next year, Antonovich will be the only remaining member from the board’s more liberal spending days to face voters.

Whether blame will follow him is an open question.

“He makes it sound like he hasn’t been a part of creating this crisis,” said state Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), a frequent Antonovich critic. “You had Antonovich and Dana running this thing for a long time.”

But Victoria Herrington, a spokeswoman for the California Republican Party, maintains that Antonovich will weather the fiscal storm: “He has been an outstanding conservative.”

Indeed, many Republican analysts agreed that had Antonovich wanted the Republican nod for the 27th Congressional District seat where he lives in Glendale, it was his for the taking.

Also, as the former state Republican Party chairman and a three-time assemblyman, Antonovich is locally and nationally connected. He has not had a strong challenger since 1988, in part because he consistently raises at least $1 million for campaigns. But he also makes it a point to regularly meet with citizen groups.

A tireless worker, Antonovich reads all his mail and, staff members say, instructs them to answer every piece of it.

A former high school social studies teacher, Antonovich got his start in politics in 1969 as a member of the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees.

Elected to the state Assembly in 1972, he quickly garnered a reputation as a quick-tempered and deeply conservative man who spoke out loudly against taxes, school busing and abortion, and favored gun ownership and the death penalty. Never married, he espoused family values before the term became a conservative buzzword. He ran for lieutenant governor in 1978 and lost. Two years later, he was elected to the board, upsetting two-term incumbent Baxter Ward.

Part of Antonovich’s strength is that he has changed little since the early ‘70s. While he holds the same political beliefs, however, he expresses them more quietly. The biggest difference, of course, is that many of the views that were once on the margins are now popular.

On his desk, Antonovich has a plaque that he translates from Latin as: “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

He defends his record, blaming the current fiscal crisis on the long-term financial drain of tolerating illegal immigrants and running vast health and welfare services that the state and federal governments required but did not fully fund. Making matters worse, he said, is that the state has kept about $1 billion of county property taxes in recent years to balance its own budget.

Two years ago, when the Legislature asserted its right to keep a larger share of county property taxes, Antonovich sponsored an ordinance that sought to protect those funds. But the state Supreme Court found in favor of the state.

Currently, he said, he has the support of every Republican in the Legislature to support a ban on so-called unfunded mandates, but has not been able to round up enough help from Democrats. His favorite cause, though, has been to tighten the reins on illegal immigration.

As far back as the mid-1970s, Antonovich was sponsoring anti-immigration bills that won little support, and giving speeches that were derided as alarmist. Now, he said, there clearly is reason for alarm. “Los Angeles County,” he said slowly, “can’t be the health maintenance organization to the world. The schools can’t be the schools for the world.”

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Since the passage of Proposition 187, which would deny access to public schools and most health care to illegal residents, Antonovich has submitted a plan to President Clinton on ways to stem illegal immigration--including building an obstetrical facility near the border in Mexico to prevent pregnant women from delivering children here.

While the issue has generally won him points, some have questioned his motives.

“He’s pandering to the mainstream in a troubled economic time.” said Pasadena Mayor William Paparian, who ran against Antonovich in 1992. But Paparian noted that Antonovich is not malicious and always has tried to provide “good basic government services.”