Conroy Finds There’s Life After Politics

If this is political purgatory, it suits Mickey Conroy just fine.

After three bustling terms in the state Assembly and a disastrous run last fall for Orange County supervisor, Conroy has settled into the sort of easy life that befits his 69 years.

He’s busy piddling around on small projects in the house. He’s frequented a local greasy spoon for breakfast. He’s got time to hit the park with the grandchildren. And he’s pretty much avoided politics like the plague.

“Hey, I couldn’t be better!” chirped a characteristically upbeat Conroy the other day. “When you get into politics, people want to use and abuse you. No matter what you do, enough is never enough. But now I get to enjoy the fruits of my lifetime of labors.”

What a difference a year makes. Last time we tuned in, Conroy was getting national attention for a pair of Assembly bills promoting paddling of teenage taggers and errant California schoolchildren.

But he was also earning nasty headlines and fighting for his political life, battling sexual harassment charges leveled by a former employee and jousting with his opponent for the 3rd District supervisor’s seat, former Deputy Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer.

It was during the election battle that Conroy experienced his nadir as a lawmaker. Irked by Spitzer’s focus on the sexual harassment case, Conroy flipped off his opponent at the conclusion of a political event--not the sort of behavior one expects from a darling of the county’s grass-roots conservative Christians.

All that is behind him now, but the civil court case remains the one potential blot on Conroy’s tranquil retirement plans.

On this, the gray-haired former Marine Corps major is resolute: He fully expects to beat the charges when the case comes up again April 18 (it was delayed from last year because of a lack of court space). Case concluded, he’ll go right back to the good life with his wife of 41 years, Ann, in their cozy east Santa Ana home.

“The lawsuit doesn’t bother me,” Conroy said. “I would just hope that we get a courtroom and get it on. It’s all nonsense. I’m not losing sleep over it.”

But even his best friends speculate that the looming trial must be eating at Conroy.

“That sort of thing sits in your belly like a poison pill,” said Gil Ferguson, a former Assemblyman and one of Conroy’s best friends in the Legislature. “If Mickey weren’t such an honorable man, it wouldn’t bother him so badly. When his opponents in the supervisor’s race hammered him on it every day, I think frustration got the better of him. And he did something that’s totally unlike Mickey Conroy, that I’m sure he wishes a thousand times he hadn’t done.”

Indeed, the episode with Spitzer wasn’t quintessential Conroy. A short, barrel-chested man, Conroy typically displays the hearty laugh and good cheer of his Irish forefathers. Civil cases and campaign politics aside, most people find it hard to dislike the man.

In the Capitol, Conroy was a friend to just about everyone, from elevator operators to members of the opposing party. “He knew everyone’s name in the Capitol after his first two months up there,” Ferguson recalled. “I was there 10 years and didn’t know half the people he did.”

One foe Conroy doesn’t miss is state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles).

Even before Conroy came to Sacramento after a 1991 special election victory, he made a name for himself in the Capitol by pushing--along with then-Assemblyman Ferguson--to get Hayden thrown out of office for his record as an antiwar protester during Vietnam.

Conroy continued the campaign after he was elected to office, but to no avail.

During the more than five years they worked in the same building, Conroy never once started a conversation with Hayden.

“I would walk by him in the building, get into an elevator with him, and I’d say nothing,” Conroy recalled. “The only time I said anything to him was the day he got on a plane to John Wayne Airport. I yelled, ‘You sure you’re on the right plane?’ He ran out, looked at his ticket, realized it was the right one because he was going to Orange County for something, then got back on and sat right in front of Ferguson.”

Today, Conroy says his greatest regret in leaving Sacramento is that Hayden, who is running now for mayor of Los Angeles, survived.

So what is Conroy doing to keep busy now?

The longtime veterans advocate has been encouraged by other military retirees to return to the helm of Orange County Veterans Charities, the group he ran until his election to the statehouse. For now, Conroy is resisting such entreaties.

Instead, he is making up for lost time at home.

He is flexing his Mister Fix-it skills, finding it a challenge to repair the irreparable. Since his election defeat, Conroy has already changed all the doorknobs, the sink faucets and assorted other odds and ends on the tidy tract home he has shared with his wife for the last quarter-century.

A train buff since his childhood in Pennsylvania, Conroy is busy with a model railroad setup out on the back porch. Plans are to expand the thing (it already includes more than 14 locomotives and a gaggle of cars and cabooses) into a model cityscape mounted on pulleys so it can be lowered from the garage ceiling.

Conroy also is into making model planes. He recently completed several warplanes purchased years ago during a tour in Japan. His collection includes plastic models of all 17 planes he flew during his career as a Marine pilot.

Such totems are great fun for Conroy’s three grandchildren, especially the two older boys, ages 10 and 8. Most Saturdays, he and the kids hit Earl’s in Tustin for breakfast, then go to the park to play ball.

Conroy is serious about this grandpa stuff. He talks with pride of how he weaned the grandchildren from Nintendo by getting them interested in “real computers” with a sound system so they could scroll through a video encyclopedia and “hear all the national anthems and things like that.”

“That is my whole output right now, is to get these kids prepared for life,” Conroy said. “I’m having a ball. I hope I live to 100 so I can enjoy this.”