Chairman of Anti-Airport Committee Quits

A fissure that appeared last week in the coalition behind the landslide victory of an anti-airport ballot initiative spread wider Tuesday with the resignation of a key measure proponent.

Laguna Hills attorney Jeffrey Metzger resigned as chairman of Citizens for Safe and Healthy Communities--Yes on F, the group that sponsored Measure F on the March 7 ballot to block a commercial airport at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

“My job is done,” Metzger said late Tuesday of his decision to resign. “I’m going to get back to my family, my law practice and my other community causes.”

Metzger and his replacement as committee chairman, Bill Kogerman, denied that Metzger’s departure was prompted by bad blood over a fund-raising letter Metzger issued one day after the election--on behalf of a separate group backing Measure F. Only last week, Metzger said he intended to be on the team of lawyers that will defend Measure F.

Citizens for Safe and Healthy Communities previously had asked contributors not to give money to the other group, the Safe and Healthy Communities Fund, and had accused its organizer, Ed Dornan, of confusing donors and splintering fund-raising efforts for the anti-airport initiative.

Dornan, an ally of Irvine City Councilman Larry Agran, was asked to quit the Yes on F campaign in December because of those fund-raising activities, which involved a separate direct-mail effort to win votes for Measure F.

Len Kranser, spokesman for Citizens for Safe and Healthy Communities--Yes on F, acknowledged there had been “tension” over the fund-raising tiff, particularly after Metzger’s letter was sent. But he said Metzger’s resignation was voluntary.

“We’re gearing up for the next phase,” Kranser said, referring to a lawsuit filed by pro-airport groups against Measure F. He said the committee’s Laguna Hills offices will remain open.

Kranser declined to discuss the political differences between some of the group’s leaders, including Kogerman, a conservative, and Agran, who in the 1980s served as a liberal, environmentally minded mayor of Irvine.

Agran, who was reelected to the council in November 1998, is being discussed as a possible mayoral candidate who would run against Irvine Councilman Mike Ward. Ward was among those signing the letter against Dornan’s fund-raising appeal.

Last week, Agran downplayed the flap over Metzger’s letter, calling it “a small matter.”

Frayed nerves are to be expected after major campaigns like the one behind Measure F, said Fred Smoller, political science professor at Chapman University. Intense political efforts often involve factions temporarily putting aside differences for the sake of a common goal, he said.

“Politics often involve strange bedfellows that don’t agree,” he said.