The Suburban Guerrilla Leading El Toro War

In romantic literature, guerrilla movements operated out of thatched huts and under cover of darkness. You dressed in camouflage and had to know the password to get inside.

Here, rebels bivouac in the cool digs of suburbia--a nice place with a pool out back. Maybe on a tucked-away street in an otherwise sleepy town like Laguna Hills.

In other words, a place like Bill Kogerman’s house.

You don’t need a password to enter, but a sensory device in the form of a croaking mechanical frog alerts Kogerman to anyone coming up the front walk. There’s been at least one bomb threat, he says, by way of explaining the frog-as-sentry.

To Orange Countians wanting a commercial airport at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, Kogerman is the enemy. And, by his own admission, an angry one. It’s hard to tell what Kogerman disdains more, the county’s handling of the El Toro conversion, or the actions of Newport Beach millionaire businessman George Argyros, who Kogerman says is the driving force behind the airport.

“If George Argyros dies tomorrow, this airport dies the next day,” Kogerman says.

On a recent morning at the Kogerman home, the unofficial headquarters of Taxpayers for Responsible Planning, three people in the living room are preparing 700 mailers. In a back room, Kogerman’s wife, D. Ann, monitors the fax machine, computer and telephones.

Meanwhile, at the dining room table, Kogerman is explaining how life is going on the front lines of the anti-airport movement. He says his group has a database with 15,000 names and has raised about $1.3 million since the first countywide airport-related vote in 1994.

“If the opposition ever bugged this room, they’d have everything,” he says, referring to the shop talk in which he and others engage at the table.

Like all the main players in the El Toro debate, Kogerman defers to no one in his professed knowledge of the issues. Indeed, that’s why the airport debate has become so intractable and fractious: each side claims to have a stranglehold both on technical expertise and the rightness of its position.

Kogerman says he’d support an airport if convinced it would yield the greatest economic benefit without significant negative impact. However, he says, the non-aviation plan recently proposed by a citizens panel far surpasses any potential benefit of an airport.

That debate will go round and round, perhaps into the next century. Which is why Kogerman’s group sports a roster of three people at the top, a 22-member advisory board and a flotilla of seven attorneys--the modern-day insurgents’ equivalent of sentries at the gate. “You’ve got to have them,” Kogerman says of the lawyers.

Noting that another countywide vote probably would be needed to reverse the current momentum for El Toro airport, Kogerman says public opinion is shifting. That, in itself, is enough to keep his home’s communications network blinking like NORAD’s.

“The phones start ringing at 6 in the morning, and we’re still getting calls at 10, 11 at night,” he says. “It’s not all the time, but usually when a major piece hits the paper. They’ll say, ‘My God, did you see what Lorenza [Munoz, a Times reporter] said about [county Supervisor Todd] Spitzer?’ I told them, ‘Don’t worry about Spitzer, he’ll be fine. He’s got to do what he’s got to do, but he’s adamantly opposed to an airport.’ ”

If “war” is a sometimes over-used cliche applied to political battles, it’s more than appropriate for the El Toro issue. Picture conflicting “war rooms” of county officials and Kogerman’s home. Picture opposing generals. Picture strategies and propaganda campaigns.

It’s a scenario that Kogerman understands. While former Irvine mayor Larry Agran projects a buttoned-down cerebral approach to his group’s anti-airport position, Kogerman is a little rougher around the edges. While he’ll debate point-for-point on the merits, Kogerman looks and talks like the type who could also punch your lights out. And while he respects many of his debate opponents, he’s just as apt to refer to one as “an idiot” and another as “a complete jerk.” After one debate, he said of his foe: “I felt like I picked on a little teenager.”

“I find Bill to be a real bulldog,” says Lake Forest Councilman Richard Dixon, an airport opponent and member of a group that soothed tensions between the Kogerman and Agran camps. “All I can say is I’m glad he’s on our side of this issue, but also find that even though he’s a real bulldog, the man does his homework and has all his facts in hand.”

Kogerman concedes he and Agran’s group butted heads (“There was a time or two when we yelled at each other”), partly because they were going after the same constituency for time and money. Dixon says Kogerman’s bluntness hasn’t hurt the effort: “In every issue, you need to have the bulldogs and the diplomats. Sometimes that comes in the same person, sometimes it doesn’t. I think Bill’s quite capable of being the diplomat, but clearly he’s more known for his bull-doggedness, if that’s a word.”

As if there’s any chance that Kogerman, who recently turned 60, will change his approach: “It permeates every fiber of my body,” he says of the airport fight. “It permeates everything I do.”

Besides, he says, “When you have people who keep telling you they’re counting on you, you can’t back off.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com