Daly Takes Pride in Hometown Victories

During the 10 years Tom Daly was mayor of Anaheim, his hometown went through transformations and upgrades at a near breakneck pace. The convention center was expanded. A new theme park opened. A professional hockey team was born and a World Series won. The tangle of streets around the resort district was streamlined, emerging as neat and orderly as a Disneyland line.

But Daly, 48, a hometown boy who once delivered the Anaheim Bulletin and pitched for Anaheim High School, counts his mayoral successes in the mundane: 20,000 more trees, six new parks, countless utility poles and wires that have been buried under streets.

He may have left for Harvard, where he studied government, but when he was done, he came home. And that may explain why his moments of pride are more likely to come at the neighborhood grocery store than while sitting next to Michael Eisner, watching the Mighty Ducks.

“It’s when people come up to me and say, ‘Tom, we’re going to miss you. You’ve been a good mayor,’ ” Daly said.

By the measuring sticks used to gauge a city’s health, the city is better than when Daly was first elected to the City Council in 1988.

Major assets, such as the convention center and Edison International Field, have been remodeled and renovated. Crime is down. The general fund reserves are strong. Investment in tourism is paying off, despite the economic hit after Sept. 11. Revenue from the hotel bed tax, for example, doubled from $28.7 million in 1991-92 to $57.7 million in 2001-02.

Some said it was Daly’s ability to balance big, headline-grabbing projects while still drawing attention to downtown or West Anaheim that made him effective.

“I think Tom was a guy who understands that in Anaheim, we are about big and small things,” City Manager Dave Morgan said. “Tom understood you have to do both and you have to do both well.”

Daly, for example, pushed to rebuild the blighted Jeffrey-Lynne neighborhood, a high-crime, heavily Latino neighborhood community behind Disneyland made up of apartment complexes with many different property owners and landlords. The $55-million project was completed this year.

Disneyland Resort President Cynthia Harriss said that though Daly supported Disney expansion and often helped the company gain momentum for its projects, he made sure residents’ needs were addressed.

“He exemplified, through his style and staff, the sensitivity that Anaheim got uprooted for progress but did it in the easiest way one could,” Harriss said. “He balanced the fact that there are citizens here who have lived here for generations.”

There are others who believe Daly didn’t do nearly enough to improve the city for residents, instead focusing on trying to hang onto the Los Angeles Rams when they played in Anaheim, negotiating the Angels’ Disney deal, and developing the resort district.

“I’m glad to see him finally gone,” said Anaheim resident Steve White, one of Daly’s critics. “His focus, as far as I’m concerned, has been on tourism to the detriment of neighborhoods. I think it’s been totally lopsided during the entire time that Tom’s been in office.”

Anaheim’s demographics changed dramatically during Daly’s term. The Latino population, for example, swelled from 31.4% to nearly 50% in a 10-year stretch. That shift provided the backdrop for ongoing disputes between the Latino community, city leaders and police.

Latino activists still believe the presence of an INS agent at the city jail has fostered a growing mistrust of police and government.

Los Amigos of Orange County President Amin David said that Daly’s performance was lackluster and that he didn’t act aggressively on affordable housing as a step toward improving life for minorities and the poor.

Once considered a rising Democratic star, Daly was the target of occasional Republican jabs, including once in 1998 when he was considering a run for the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

Republicans accused him of campaign finance violations, and he was charged with a misdemeanor by a special prosecutor. A judge later tossed out the charges, and many deemed the incident a politically motivated scare tactic aimed at keeping him out of the race.

This week, Daly will take over his new job as county clerk, an elected post but one far less visible than serving as mayor of the state’s 10th largest city.

“I don’t think it’s been a case of ‘we had great expectations and he never made it.’ It’s not like that at all,” said John Hanna, former county Democratic chairman. “I think he has been a great leader. And all politics is local, despite what some people might think.”

Daly has spent his life in public service. When he was 8, he walked door to door, helping his father hang doorknob fliers for Tom Kuchel’s state Senate campaign. His first county job was as an intern for then-Supervisor Ralph Clark.

Daly won’t count out any future political runs. “I would never say never,” he said. But he added, “I really am a local-level politician and I have a deep passion for Anaheim.”

Daly still has a list of tasks he didn’t finish: improving neighborhood identities, building a youth sports facility, continuing to revitalize downtown.

Despite the unfinished business, Daly can’t help but look back with pride on his city, his leadership. Not bad for a kid who used to sneak away from home and ride his bike over to Anaheim Stadium to watch the new ballpark take shape. Not bad to end his term with his favorite team winning the World Series.

“That’s as good as it gets for a mayor who happens to be a big fan,” Daly said. “I have a good memory of problems solved, progress pursued. The scoreboard reads pretty well.”