Will TV ‘Bubba’ Be Fresno’s Mayor?

This farm capital of California, a sprawling city of 420,000 residents surrounded by miles of shimmering vineyards and fruit fields, would seem a safe distance from Hollywood.

But earnest townsfolk will tell you that this is where Mike Connors, TV’s Mannix, grew up as Krikor Ohanian--in the same corner of Armenian Town that nurtured a baby named Cher. Then there’s the giant actor known as Jaws, whose mouth of metal once menaced James Bond. He hawks used cars here.

And just a few months ago, actress Anne Heche was found wandering nearly naked in a cotton field, mumbling to farm workers about catching a spaceship to heaven.

But until now, none of Hollywood’s expatriates here, a list that also includes Festus from “Gunsmoke” and Butch from “Our Gang,” has ever taken the plunge into local politics. With just a few days to go in the race for mayor, actor Alan Autry, a.k.a. Bubba, the fictional good old boy cop who played alongside Carroll O’Connor in the TV series “In the Heat of the Night,” sits as the unlikely front-runner.

Autry topped a field of nine candidates in the March primary, his 29% of the vote surprising local pundits who had written off his candidacy as a lark. What made it all the more remarkable was that the runner-up, the man facing Autry in the runoff Tuesday, happens to be one of Fresno’s most accomplished politicians.

Suddenly, this sixth-largest city in the state finds itself confronted by a question that goes straight to its heart. Can Fresno--a town so sensitive about its image that the local newspaper once printed a special 100-page section to rebut a national study in which the city ranked dead last--really elect Bubba as mayor?

It is true that an actor/mayor has been tried before in this state, and with some success. But Fresno, with its 14% jobless rate, its uneasy mix of 80 ethnic groups and the financial ills resulting from decades of suburban sprawl, is hardly Carmel-By-The-Sea. And the 48-year-old Autry, for all his down-home charm, is no Clint Eastwood.

The question, going into the campaign’s final stretch is whether Autry’s celebrity--waning though it might be in Hollywood--looms big enough for Fresnans to overlook his lack of political experience. By his own reckoning, Autry has voted just once in the last 20 years, a vote cast for himself in the March primary.

The man opposing him, Dan Whitehurst, could not present a more stark contrast. Whitehurst is a former two-term mayor of Fresno who left politics 15 years ago to pursue a fellowship at Harvard and then a fortune in the California funeral business. His campaign has been distilled to a simple concept: Two Nice Guys Are Running for Mayor. One Is Qualified.

“I have no doubt that it takes years and years of political experience to be a ‘deft politician,’ ” replies Autry, his Oklahoma drawl tinged with just enough sarcasm to make his point. “If the country can survive eight years of Bubba as president, surely Fresno can survive a term of Bubba as mayor.”

The question of how the real cops of Fresno would greet their celluloid counterpart was answered when the police officers union threw its weight behind Autry. Whitehurst supporters link the key endorsement to Autry’s friendship with the department’s controversial assistant chief. As a result, the direction of the police force has become a campaign issue.

Deep Roots in the Area

Autry is no carpetbagger. He grew up in a poor Okie family in Riverdale, a tiny rodeo town 30 miles outside Fresno, where he starred in three sports. A big, thick-boned kid, he was recruited to play quarterback at the University of the Pacific in Stockton and then played a season or two with the Green Bay Packers in the mid-1970s.

On his way to training camp one summer, he stopped in Chicago to visit a friend working on the crew for director Robert Altman’s movie “A Wedding.” Autry struck up a conversation with a stranger--who proved to be Altman himself--and the director gave him a small role in his next movie.

The acting bug bit, and Autry landed roles in “North Dallas Forty,” “Southern Comfort” and a dozen other films, some more forgettable than others. The combination of his drawl, his big ruddy face and his beefy arms limited his range. After a seven-year run as Lt. Bubba Skinner, Autry won a new role on the TV series “Grace Under Fire.” The new character, he said, was simply “Bubba in better clothes.”

He moved back home and opened an acting school and production company in 1997. Today, the tabloids that once charted his busy love life no longer find much fodder in a born-again Christian with a pretty wife from Arkansas, three children and a quiet career 200 miles north of Hollywood.

But Autry’s celebrity--Bubba can be seen on cable each week--is still a potent draw here. He connects easily with people, slapping backs and peppering speeches with country expressions, and he’s not afraid to tattle on himself to deflect any expectations of stardom.

Autry has struck a chord with voters by playing up his role as a fresh-faced outsider untouched by political cynicism. Indeed, his political artlessness is seen by many as a plus--a local version of the Jesse Ventura factor. It hasn’t hurt that a good chunk of Fresno shares his hardscrabble Oklahoma roots or that the candidate has been joined on the stump by such friends as actor Chuck Norris.

“I just had my picture made with Bubba,” a blushing Jessy Kellum, 91, announced to her daughter at a campaign stop last week. “He’s such a sweet boy.”

Residents got a chance to size up both candidates at a recent debate in a part of town where the Latino dropout rate exceeds 50% and nine out of 10 Southeast Asian students speak limited English. In a tired school auditorium filled with 200 people, Autry found himself surrounded by supporters, doubters and autograph seekers. Seated beside him was the 52-year-old Whitehurst, who had no trouble turning on his own considerable charm.

For years, Whitehurst was the “boy mayor” of Fresno. Only 28 when he was first elected in 1977, he could do little wrong, it seemed. The old line ethnic communities--Serbian, Armenian, Greek, Chinese, Basque, Italian--warmly embraced the son of the biggest funeral home director in town.

He took the time to learn their histories and cultures. He was smart and funny and could tell a good mortician joke. When Fresno came in last on the list of livable U.S. cities, Whitehurst went on the “Late Night” show and traded one-liners with David Letterman.

Voters came to appreciate his doggedness, the way he stood up to developers and rooted out more than a half-century of police corruption. A long line of police chiefs had controlled gambling, prostitution and drug rackets. One chief was so brazen that he married the town’s biggest madam and used his boodle to buy a big horse ranch across the river.

The City Is More Complicated Now

But that was Fresno then. The city that greets Whitehurst today is a more complicated place. For one thing, so many of the faces staring back at him are recent immigrants from Mexico and refugees from Laos, who continue to struggle in an economy defined by big agriculture and chain discount stores.

Crime no longer rates as the most pressing issue. Under current Mayor Jim Patterson, who has served his allotted two terms and cannot run again, Fresno has nearly doubled its police force. Its efforts at community harmony earned the city an “All-America” award this year.

“I know this sounds like a silly cliche, but I really sense that this city is on the verge of a renaissance,” Whitehurst said. “We’ve got a ways to go, some big problems to tackle and I feel I have the experience and ability to move us ahead.”

At times, campaigning in this evangelical stronghold has sounded like one big public confessional. Autry felt compelled to tell voters about his past abuse of drugs and alcohol and how he experienced a conversion one bleak day in 1983, while walking along a slough near his hometown. “The good Lord had his talk with me that day,” he said. “And there hasn’t been a drop of alcohol or drugs to enter my system since.”

Whitehurst has had to come clean on a relationship with Fresno’s largest home builder, Bob McCaffrey. Before he jumped back into politics, Whitehurst was paid more than $100,000 in fees to lobby for McCaffrey’s controversial “new town” development in adjacent Madera. The builder invested thousands of dollars as a partner in Whitehurst’s funeral business.

It was a troubling admission, mostly because Fresno has been rocked by a six-year FBI investigation, dubbed Operation Rezone, that sent nearly a dozen developers and politicians to prison. Payoffs to rezone farmland came in paper bags. One city councilman sold his vote to McCaffrey’s father-in-law for a new blue suit.

“I don’t see myself getting involved in anyone’s zoning issues as mayor,” said Whitehurst, whose brother-in-law also works for a large developer.

The failure of Fresno, both candidates agree, can be glimpsed in a thriving north side and a decaying south side with a near-dead downtown. To accompany a $30-million Triple-A baseball stadium soon to be built downtown, Autry wants to create a big, meandering lake.

Both say the next mayor must reduce the double-digit jobless rate that plagues the vast middle of California, an anomaly in an otherwise robust state economy. Neither blames agriculture, the region’s top employer.

Whitehurst wants to create 16,000 jobs in the next four years by expanding agriculture’s links to the global economy and by building industrial parks to attract small manufacturers.

Autry says Fresno’s inexpensive housing and low living costs attract people with few or no job skills. “You don’t drop out of school and move to San Francisco or San Diego. You drop out and stay here or you drop out and move here,” he said. “We keep talking about bringing in new industry, but we often don’t have the skilled people to fill those jobs.”

To be successful, the new mayor has to “think outside the box,” Autry says. To find creative ways to educate Fresno’s large underclass, he envisions himself as an almost equal partner with the chief of schools in bringing about education reform.

Questions About Police Department

During the past eight years, locals say, no Fresno institution has consolidated more power and received less oversight than the Police Department.

Whitehurst is troubled by a recent series of small scandals involving the 700-officer force. Drugs and cash have turned up missing from the evidence room, and a large cache of explosives was stolen from a police bunker.

Autry says Police Chief Ed Winchester and Assistant Chief Jerry Dyer have done a fine job overall, working hard to reduce crime and to reach out to minority communities. He believes that Dyer, a good friend and a fellow born-again Christian, would make an “excellent” chief when Winchester retires.

But Whitehurst says he is reluctant to endorse either Winchester or Dyer now. “There are issues and problems inside the Police Department that need to be addressed,” he said. “I won’t hesitate, if it becomes necessary, to bring in a police chief from the outside.”

In recent days, as the candidates have trudged from one debate to the next, the Bubba factor has appeared to be holding strong. A new Fresno Bee poll has Autry leading Whitehurst by 12 percentage points, with nearly one out of five likely voters still undecided.

If Autry does win, political insiders say, it will be the new first lady, not Bubba, who will enliven the local scene. Already, Kimberlee Autry has brought a bit of tinsel town to raisin city, they say, raising eyebrows with her tight, bare-midriff outfits and high heels.

“Hollywood? That’s not Hollywood,” Autry laughs. “That’s Arkansas.”