Swing Vote Could Keep Frogue on as President

Steven J. Frogue is expected to survive an effort to oust him as president of the South Orange County Community College District, with a fellow trustee who represents a possible swing vote saying Wednesday that he intends to support Frogue.

“Has Steve made any illegal, unethical or immoral decisions? No,” said John Williams, the board’s vice president. “Has he done something illegal, unethical or immoral? No. Has he done something unpopular or brought forth unpopular ideas?”

Williams paused, then answered his own question.

“Apparently so, but that’s hardly grounds to remove him from leading the board,” said Williams, who, along with Frogue, Dorothy Fortune and Teddi Lorch, make up a four-member majority that frequently votes as a bloc.

Rival board member Marcia Milchiker has requested an agenda item at the board’s next meeting Oct. 20, when she plans to ask trustees to remove Frogue as president because of what she called growing concerns about “his ability to govern.”

“Now that Steve has dragged us through the mud, why would any rational person vote to support him?” said Milchiker, who noted that Frogue’s endorsement of a controversial course on the John F. Kennedy assassination has subjected the district to national ridicule.

Protesters targeted Frogue at the board’s meeting Monday night, when most of the speakers at the nearly 4 1/2-hour meeting spoke out against him, with many demanding his resignation or saying they supported a budding effort to have him recalled from office.

Frogue, 55, who did not attend the meeting, has been under fire for advocating and then casting the tiebreaking vote for a community education course advertised as an examination of various conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination.

One of four guest speakers the board voted to fly in by allocating $5,000 in student fees contends the Holocaust is exaggerated and that agents for the Israeli government killed Kennedy. In addition to voting on the course, Frogue also planned to teach it.

After a local outcry, the board rescinded the course, which Frogue still plans to offer on a private basis, off campus.

“I have never denied the Holocaust,” Frogue said in a statement released by the board earlier this week. “It is one of the great human atrocities of all ages. I have stated that before repeatedly. I have never defamed nor shown disrespect for the Jewish faith or people and never will.”

Frogue’s stint as president expires Dec. 8, Williams said, and unless he resigns, Frogue’s term as a sitting member of the board lasts until 2000, when he is eligible to run for reelection in November of that year.