A Rare Politician Who Wasn’t Afraid to Fight His Own Party

Tom Riley got his teeth knocked out in a college football game and was a decorated combat veteran in the Pacific during World War II.

It wasn’t likely, then, that he’d be overly fearful of what the honchos of the Orange County Republican Party could do to him when he decided to buck them in 1988.

He wasn’t.

That year, Newport Beach Councilwoman Evelyn Hart upset local GOP leadership by challenging the incumbent in a Republican Party primary for a state Assembly seat. As a matter of political protocol in Orange County Republican Party circles, that simply wasn’t done.

But Hart did, and with Riley’s blessing.

Riley, a Republican appointed in 1974 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan to fill a vacancy on the Board of Supervisors, went Hart one better. He allowed his staffers to work after-hours on her campaign--a move that would have grave political consequences for most local Republican officeholders. Indeed, stories circulated at the time that the party hierarchy wanted Riley to fire anyone who worked on Hart’s campaign.

Riley’s support of Hart was but a blip on the historical radar screen of local politics. She got clobbered by incumbent Assemblyman Gil Ferguson in the primary. But with Riley’s death Thursday at 85, it’s a story worth recalling when wondering why “the General” was so admired during his political heyday.

“Once he committed, he was a man of his word,” Hart recalled. “He never once complained to me about supporting me. I heard from other people that it was tough on him, that pressure had been put on him for supporting me. But he committed, and that’s the way he was.”

When she sought Riley out, Hart said, she was politically naive about the risks of challenging an incumbent. “I was not as aware that I might be hanging someone out. However, to run I needed support. You needed to have some names in back of you. . . . It would have been easier on him just to do nothing. He didn’t owe me anything, and I wasn’t going to bring him anything” if elected.

Christie McDaniel, Riley’s chief of staff in his final years in office, said his decision to buck the party didn’t faze the General. He was the first elected Republican, she said, to support the local AIDS walk--at a time when “it was not a real popular thing for him to do.” He was also the first Republican elected official, she said, to appear before the local chapter of the Log Cabin Club, an openly gay group of Republicans. He supported Judith Ryan in her 1992 Republican primary challenge of incumbent Rep. Bob Dornan. Then, when local Republicans supported John Moorlach to run against Democratic incumbent Robert Citron in the 1994 county treasurer’s race, Riley backed Citron.

“He was a very responsible Republican,” McDaniel said of Riley, “but he was also very independent.” Riley never liked the fact, she said, that a small group of party officials had so much say in who should or shouldn’t run for local office.

Riley’s indifference to party wishes came as no surprise to Gil Ferguson, the target of Hart’s 1988 primary challenge. Ferguson, like Riley an ex-Marine, had butted heads before with Riley when Ferguson was among those trying to spur faster growth in Riley’s sprawling South County district.

“Riley didn’t care much one way or another about partisan politics,” he said. “The difference between Riley and me is that I was a very partisan, very conservative Republican.”

It’s hard nowadays to picture South County as a “last frontier,” but that’s the scenario that greeted Riley in 1974 when Reagan appointed the political unknown to fill the vacancy in Orange County’s 5th District.

Everyone knew that South County, then home to some 200,000 people, was on the verge of a population explosion. The question was how much, how soon. Some projections had it tripling or quadrupling in size by the year 2000.

As such, only Riley and a select inner circle probably knew how much pressure was brought to bear during his 20 years as an Orange County supervisor. Ferguson said he can understand it, because, as a strong backer of property rights and free enterprise, he was one of those trying to influence Riley.

“He was independent of the influence from normal influential centers, such as the party, the Central Committee, big contributors and builders and developers,” Ferguson said. “He would make up his mind on something and it would be against one of his biggest supporters in development. He was a general. When he made up his mind, you might as well leave the room.”

Riley was much more likely to be influenced by his staff than by outside forces, Ferguson said. Party bosses meant next to nothing to him, he said. “I don’t know if he ever went to a Republican convention in his life,” Ferguson said. “I don’t think anyone ever thought of Riley as being a staunch Republican.”

In a neat irony, Ferguson would also come to be ostracized for bucking the local party establishment. “For anybody else, even those [supervisors] who sit there today, there would be a price to pay [for defying local GOP leadership], and they would know it. And they wouldn’t buck it. Well, maybe Chuck Smith would. Riley was a different kind of guy. Riley wouldn’t care if the president of the United States called up and told him to change his decision.”