Ending of Moreno Story Still Up to Him

For a long time, smoke trailed behind Santa Ana Councilman Ted Moreno. Last week came the fire.

When a federal jury convicted him in what amounted to a shakedown case, the Santa Ana city councilman who made his name fighting City Hall was suddenly looking at a few years in prison.

It’s possible there will be no Ted Moreno legacy, that he’ll simply go down as another small-timer felled by personal corruption.

Yet, somehow the Ted Morenos of the political world leave their mark.

He didn’t invent the art form that led to his conviction. He didn’t even perfect it.

The mold is that of the politician who’s both a man of the people and who can’t keep his hand out of other people’s pockets.

Not to elevate Moreno to icon status, but the image of Huey Long, the celebrated “Kingfish” of 1930s Louisiana politics, comes to mind. Or of more recent vintage, former Chicago Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, longtime head of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee.

Long and Rostenkowski both were powerful men hailed for putting the needs of the little guy at least in the same ballpark with those of the rich and famous.

Before being assassinated, Long was impeached and later acquitted by his state legislature; Rostenkowski served 451 days in federal custody in 1996-97 on charges he misused federal funds.

Maybe Moreno saw himself like them, a champion of the average guy. If so, he wasn’t alone.

Judy Edge is a neighborhood activist in Moreno’s southeast Santa Ana district. She’s heard the knocks on Moreno and, while not condoning the dealings that got him convicted, sees someone different than most.

“I think Ted is just a great City Council person,” Edge says. “He’s very responsive to my requests and to my neighborhood.”

If residents wanted explanations for council actions, often conducted in such regimented ways that citizens can’t follow them, Moreno would give them, Edge says. If individual residents, no matter how powerless, had a problem, it wasn’t unusual to see Moreno show up in person.

A Give-and-Take Type

Edge says she talked to Moreno at least once a week and that she never saw the loose cannon so many others have described.

“We [in the neighborhood association] have an agenda to have the streets, curbs and gutters fixed, and I felt that was Ted’s agenda,” she says. “His thinking was that you take care of the small things and the big things would follow. Others would say, ‘He didn’t get anything for you.’ That’s right. The council majority just shut him out, just shut him out.”

History also shows us that when Populist candidates run afoul of the law, their constituents often forgive.

“I was horrified to see what I saw on that tape,” Edge says of the government’s tape of Moreno accepting what it alleged was extortion payoffs. “Ted should have never been in that room,” she says of the apparent shakedown. “Ted should have run away.”

She accepts the reality that he stayed, that he didn’t tell the government informant that he didn’t do business that way.

As far back as 1994, when he was but a 26-year-old running for a state Assembly seat, rumors circulated that Moreno was on the take. It got to the point that Moreno even addressed the rumors publicly, an almost unheard of offensive.

Despite losing that 1994 primary, Moreno’s name was floated the next year as a possible successor to Orange County Supervisor Roger Stanton.

That went nowhere, and Moreno, who once won a corporate scholarship given to promising young people, now finds himself stripped of whatever it was he wanted out of public life.

But in the true tradition of politicians who believe their own press clippings, as late as three months ago he was talking about resigning his council seat, then running again this fall--as a means of circumventing term limits.

The jury last week made sure that was a moot point.

Instead, Moreno will have time in prison to sort out who he really is and what he’ll do with the rest of his life.

Will he be the person still admired by some constituents, or will he emerge as the troubled and corrupt soul depicted by his opponents?

Moreno wanted to control city government. At that, he failed miserably.

No kingfish, he now faces a much more basic task: learning to control himself.

*

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.