No Third Strike, so Her Term Still Has Life

This much was obvious: Jan Mittermeier’s 4 1/2-year run as Orange County’s CEO was finished. After a couple brushes with political death, this time there was no escape.

Her one-vote cushion on the five-member Board of Supervisors was about to vanish. When that happened, she would be the one who disappeared.

She was spared last week only because all five board members couldn’t attend a meeting. She picked up a newspaper this week to read about her possible replacement. That can ruin a person’s breakfast.

On Tuesday, the full board finally voted. It replaced Mittermeier with. . . .

Jan Mittermeier!

I guess I can’t count to three. Last week, I had Mittermeier written off in the wake of Board Chairman Chuck Smith’s indication he’d take away his all-important third vote she needed to keep her job.

I don’t know if Mittermeier is good or just lucky, but today it doesn’t matter.

She’s kept her job.

Again.

A few more of these escapes and Mittermeier, the tight-lipped manager who has mastered the art of keeping three of her five bosses happy at any one moment, will become the stuff of local legend.

In recent years, Mittermeier has kept three votes in her hip pocket and had only to keep anti-El Toro airport Supervisors Todd Spitzer and Tom Wilson at bay. Then, Smith made it clear last week he had lost confidence in Mittermeier. On Tuesday, he followed through and voted against retaining her.

Three to two against, right?

No escape, right?

Funny, that’s what they said about Houdini when he was straitjacketed and hung upside-down from the eave of a building.

His response? Uh, just give me a few minutes.

Same with Mittermeier. With people shaking their heads in wonderment, she merely replaced former supporter Smith’s vote with that of former critic Wilson, the anti-airport supervisor who joined pro-airport supervisors Cynthia Coad and Jim Silva in voting to keep on the pro-airport Mittermeier.

Houdini of County Hall

The shifting-alliance scenario suggests more the politics of the Kremlin than Orange County. Wilson and Spitzer had been nothing short of a tag team, one beating up on her only when the other one got tired and needed a rest.

True, Spitzer was the more aggressive of the two, but as recently as 1998, Wilson was considering filing a state open-records request to get El Toro-related information out of Mittermeier.

And in December 1997, Wilson-Spitzer cast the two losing votes that would have restricted Mittermeier’s duties.

Wilson’s vote Tuesday prompted at least one “Huh?” from an anti-airport South County city councilwoman.

“It puzzles,” says Marcia Rudolph of Lake Forest.

“I have absolutely no doubt as to Supervisor Wilson’s attitude toward the airport,” Rudolph says, “but this is puzzling and does put a little question in the back of our mind--why he would [vote for her] when we might have had a shot at pulling in someone who was more evenhanded [regarding El Toro].”

Rudolph says she won’t second-guess Wilson, but I surmise she won’t be alone in South County in wondering why he flipped. “Behind the scenes, it makes you wonder if there is a quid pro quo in this vote of his,” Rudolph says. “And if it is, what is it?”

This is the kind of palace intrigue that’ll keep the water coolers humming around county offices.

“It’s amazing,” one longtime county employee says of Mittermeier’s escape, “because when you looked at the board agenda for Tuesday, it said, ‘Appointment of Interim CEO.’ We thought it was a done deal. We were all speculating as to who it [her replacement] might be.”

The employee says the consensus is that Mittermeier has done a good job since taking over in the post-bankruptcy era. And maybe the three supervisors didn’t want to write a big severance check.

But then, in the next breath, she says, laughingly, “I wish I had some astute insight as to how she managed to pull that one off.”

You can bet that Mittermeier won’t tell how she escaped.

Houdini never did.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.