Growing Apart: Familiar Foes, Enduring Issues

They battled on the Huntington Beach City Council. Now, Jim Silva and Dave Sullivan are squaring off again, this time for a seat on the county Board of Supervisors and the crucial vote on plans for a commercial airport at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. The airport proposal has been the defining issue throughout the county, moved along by the board mainly on 3-2 votes. A win for the incumbent, Silva, would ensure that airport plans progress. A victory for Sullivan, the challenger, could be the death knell for the project. Here is a look at the two men, who are poles apart on major issues.

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Elected to the Board of Supervisors in the midst of the county’s historic bankruptcy, Jim Silva has helped guide the county through its toughest four years of belt-tightening.

Now that the county has emerged from the bankruptcy quickly without a tax hike and with less-than-expected impact on residents, it would seem that Silva could coast into reelection.

Instead, the 54-year-old incumbent finds himself in a tough campaign against a familiar political foe from his days on the Huntington Beach City Council in the early 1990s--Councilman Dave Sullivan. Though Silva is far ahead in name recognition, the campaign has not been a walk in the park.

“Dave Sullivan is a great campaigner. He has fire in his belly,” said Dave Garofalo, a city councilman and Silva backer.

Silva barely missed the 51% majority in the June primary to win the election outright, coming in at 46% with Sullivan at 26% in a field of four candidates. Silva won every city in the district with the exception of Huntington Beach, which Sullivan took.

With solid support from major real estate developers such as George Argyros and William Lyon, Silva has raised more than $187,000 for his campaign, with about $120,000 coming since the end of June. More is on the way: Lyon is hosting a Silva fund-raiser this week in South County.

Born and reared in the district he now represents, Silva says he is proud of his record on the county board. He has established himself as a fiscal conservative who thinks of himself as a county spending watchdog.

He led colleagues to implement audit and treasurer oversight committees to ensure the county doesn’t again make the kind of risky investments that led to fiscal collapse four years ago. He also was the first supervisor to insist that all bankruptcy-related lawsuit settlements be earmarked to pay off the county’s remaining debt.

“I put these measures in place to guarantee that the people of Orange County will never have to suffer another bankruptcy,” he said.

Silva’s focus on paying off the bankruptcy debt also has earned him the backing of Treasurer John M.W. Moorlach, who had warned of then-Treasurer Robert L. Citron’s risky investments more than six months before the bankruptcy hit.

“I just think that Jim has proven himself,” Moorlach said about Silva’s work during the bankruptcy. “It was a very trying time. He was willing to deal with issues and talk finances.”

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But Silva also is viewed by some, particularly in Huntington Beach, as a developer’s candidate.

“Whether you like it or not, Silva has gotten his marching orders from the developers,” said Mark Porter, a director of Huntington Beach Tomorrow, a government watchdog group.

Some critics, such as former Costa Mesa Mayor Sandra Genis, an also-ran in the June primary for his seat, believe his pro-development stance could hurt him. A recent Times Poll, for instance, found that 66% of Orange County residents would approve of laws to limit development in their communities.

Silva was part of an early 1990s Huntington Beach council majority that supported development of the city’s downtown and construction of a golf course in Huntington Central Park. His support of the El Toro airport has mobilized South County airport foes against him and spurred a major fund-raising effort for Sullivan.

“Silva is one of those politicians who was suckered into believing the hype and backing the plan before he understood what the economic consequences are,” said Steven Myers, founder of an Irvine aerospace engineering firm and leader of the fund-raising effort for Sullivan.

“Dave Sullivan is a fiscally responsible Republican conservative who is going to keep the county from continuing down this slippery slope and buying into this pig in a poke,” Myers said.

With a bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s in education, Silva began teaching economics at Los Amigos High School in Fountain Valley in 1969. He and his wife, Connie, moved from Fountain Valley in 1979 to Huntington Beach, where they raised their children, Chad, 23, and Donna, 20.

A soft-spoken man who shies away from confrontation and prefers negotiation, Silva nevertheless decided to run for City Council in 1986 because he supported development of the downtown area at a time when some were trying to keep it a sleepy beach town with old buildings and few tenants.

Though he lost that bid, he ran again in 1988 on the same pro-development platform and won, forming a council majority that initiated a series of projects.

One of the first was tearing down the old downtown structures and revitalizing the area into what is now a successful tourist destination with a strip of restaurants and stores.

“The downtown area was full of drug addicts and old buildings,” he said. “I didn’t want to save something that was ruining Huntington Beach.” He was reelected in 1992 despite his opposition to Measure C, a 1990 ballot initiative that won 70% of the vote and forced the City Council to abandon plans to develop the golf course in Huntington Central Park.

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In 1994, he defeated Huntington Beach Councilwoman Linda Moulton Patterson in a bid for Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder’s seat on the county board. Little did he know that his victory would cause him such grief over the next few years: One month before he was sworn in, the bankruptcy hit.

During his first months in office, he sat through eternal closed-door meetings at which county officials tried desperately to plug up fiscal holes. It was a test by fire for Silva. Even with his economics background, he admits he was overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the fiscal calamity.

“I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I had bricks on my chest thinking about the 2,000 employees we would have to lay off,” he said.

Silva was the only supervisor invited to meet in 1996 with a delegation of Wall Street representatives in New York. At the meeting, he was grilled by financial executives about the overwhelming defeat by county voters of Measure R, which would have increased the sales tax by half a cent. Silva was one of two supervisors who did not endorse Measure R.

“I felt like the entire county was on my shoulders,” he said. “But I explained that the people of Orange County were not saying they would not fulfill their payment obligations. There were other ways to get out of the bankruptcy.”

Indeed, the county emerged from bankruptcy two years after the debacle occurred. Now Silva and the rest of the board have voted to begin some long delayed projects, such as expanding the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange and hiring more sheriff’s deputies.

“I think he has done a fine job. He works very, very hard and represents his community very well,” said Bruce Nestande, a former supervisor who heads Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, a pro-airport group funded in part by Argyros.

“I haven’t found any issue where you can say he’s out of step with his community,” Nestande said. “If it wasn’t for the airport issue, I’m not sure he’d be challenged right now.”

But his three opponents in the June primary say it was his pro-development record, not just his stand on the airport, that prompted them to mount election campaigns against him.

Lately, Silva has softened his support of the airport by saying that he will not back the plan if the environmental concerns cannot be alleviated. But his critics assert he is not listening to the will of the voters, who now say they want to reduce growth in Orange County and enjoy a better quality of life.