It’s Boss vs. Employee in Fiery D.A.’s Race

He has the name of a character straight out of Boys’ Life magazine, and friends of Wally Wade say the Orange County district attorney candidate is as squeaky-clean as those profiled in that Boy Scout periodical.

They describe the 55-year-old San Juan Capistrano resident as a Jesuit-schooled “prosecutor’s prosecutor,” whose resourcefulness once saved the life of a colleague who plunged through the surface of a frozen lake. Wade’s campaign, they say, is a bid to “restore integrity” to an office that has been roiled by charges of political favoritism and divisive management.

“Wally Wade has a good sense of right and wrong,” said political activist Shirley Grindle, as she voiced Wade’s main campaign theme. “He doesn’t allow friendship to sway him and he’s apolitical. His attitude is, ‘Justice is justice and this is how it’s going to be.’”

But as Wade seeks to unseat Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas, his boss, in the March 5 election, critics say the deputy D.A. is not the white knight his supporters paint him to be.

Opponents charge that Wade has sought to obscure his record as a former longtime assistant district attorney, saying that under Wade’s supervision, the county’s Family Services Division failed repeatedly to meet federal efficiency standards and was ranked among the state’s worst.

According to division data, the unit complied with state and federal guidelines about half the time and, in the final year of Wade’s stewardship, it collected little more than half of the $176 million that courts had ordered for child support.

Critics also say that Wade has waffled on the issue of plea bargaining.

These starkly contrasting portraits of Wade are emblematic of a race that has shaped up to be one of the nastiest grudge matches in the history of the D.A.’s office.

Wade’s election loss to Rackauckas four years ago has only heightened the bitterness. Rackauckas, who had left a Superior Court judgeship to run for office, raised substantially more campaign money than Wade and had sewn up key endorsements before Wade even announced his candidacy.

“I lost because I was stupid,” Wade said of his 1998 bid. “This is a completely different race though. This time, Tony Rackauckas has a record and it’s not a good one.”

Wade points to Rackauckas’ handling of a consumer-protection case involving billionaire businessman and now ambassador to Spain, George Argyros.

Rackauckas ordered prosecutors to withdraw a lawsuit against Argyros’ apartment company, which was accused of illegally keeping the security deposits of thousands of renters. Critics said it was unseemly, because the apartment company had donated $1,000 to Rackauckas’ D.A. election campaign.

Wade also says Rackauckas has sown division in his staff by passing over experienced prosecutors for promotion in favor of less experienced ones who support the incumbent. Because of this, Wade says, experienced staffers have left the office. . Rackauckas denies he’s biased, insisting that the promotions were based on merit.

Wade, who is married to a nurse and has two adult daughters, credits his parents and his education in Catholic schools for his sense of justice and fair play--qualities he says are lacking in his opponent. At one point, Wade flirted with the idea of entering the priesthood, but settled for church lector.

If elected, Wade says, he would institute a merit system of promoting staffers with extended experience to supervisory jobs. He says he also plans to “bulk up” staffing in the fraud unit and devote more resources to prosecution of elder abuse, child abuse and domestic abuse.

“Children, the elderly and domestic violence victims, they don’t have lobbies,” Wade said. “I think we need to do more to protect these people.”

Wade says he would increase training for prosecutors on plea bargains and encourage his staffers to participate in outreach, such as lecturing students or speaking to civic groups.

Wade, who earned his undergraduate and law degrees at Loyola University, began working in the district attorney’s office in 1980, after briefly pursuing work in journalism and teaching.

Criminal law--prosecutorial work, specifically--appealed to his sense of public service and personal accomplishment, he says. “When you’re teaching, you don’t know how your kids are going to turn out until 20 years later.”

In law, however, Wade saw a “scoreboard” by which to measure his performance. Being a prosecutor was even more appealing, he says, because he was secure in the knowledge that he was doing the “right thing.”

Shortly after joining the D.A.’s office, Wade was tapped to handle some of the office’s most delicate cases: political corruption investigations and grand jury presentations. Maurice Evans, formerly an assistant D.A. and supervisor of Wade’s, said he was impressed by Wade’s seriousness and demeanor in the Special Assignments division. While many young deputy district attorneys quailed before judges or superiors, Wade showed confidence.

“He had a maturity that a lot of new prosecutors don’t have,” Evans said.

Evans says Wade’s presence of mind saved his life 15 years ago.

The two were fishing with co-workers on a frozen lake in the High Sierra, when they saw a small boy fall through the ice. Evans scrambled to grab the boy, but tumbled into the frigid water.

While Evans managed to heave the boy to safety, his own predicament grew serious. Weighed down by boots and soaked woolen clothing, Evans broke the ice whenever he tried to pull himself up. “Then, when I was getting very scared, I saw somebody’s hand reach over the ice and I grabbed it,” he said. “It was Wally.”

Wade had ordered members of the fishing party to lie flat on the ice, one behind the other, each holding the ankles of the man in front of him, forming a human ladder. By distributing their weight evenly over the ice, the men were able pull Evans to safety without breaking through.

Afterward, Wade explained that he’d learned the technique as a Scout.

While Wade’s campaign literature does not mention the rescue, it does boast that the candidate won all nine homicide cases he has handled and has prosecuted dozens of other types of cases, including drunk driving, kidnapping, rape, drug smuggling, bookmaking and home invasion robbery. Former Dist. Atty. Michael Capizzi said Wade acquitted himself well in each.

“Wally’s very thorough; he doesn’t do anything rash or impulsively,” Capizzi said. “He exercises excellent judgment.”

Rescues and campaign statements aside, Wade’s opponents insist that his performance as a supervisor shows that he’s not cut out to be a district attorney.

Rackauckas describes Wade’s supervision of the Family Services Division as a prime failure. In the roughly six years that Wade supervised the division, and immediately before Rackauckas’ election victory, Family Services routinely flunked federal administrative compliance standards and ranked at the bottom among counties statewide, according to department reports.

“When Wally was in charge, the office was neglected and starved for resources,” said Michael Schroeder, the former state Republican Party leader who is running Rackauckas’ campaign. Upon taking office, Rackauckas says, he expanded the division’s staff and collections increased 60%.

Wade concedes that staffing remained low during his tenure in Family Services but says that was the responsibility of then-D.A. Capizzi, who held the purse strings.

Wade says he took steps to improve services to families, and insists that Rackauckas has benefited from them as well. Among other things, Wade says, he hired an outside consultant to examine ways of improving efficiency at Family Services. The office also created an ombudsman position, increased automation and grouped employees into more efficient teams, he says.

“I don’t mind giving Tony Rackauckas credit for having the good judgment to increase staff, but he’s also taking credit for changes made before he arrived,” Wade said.

Rackauckas campaign leaders have also faulted Wade for what they say is his involvement in the prosecution of Republican former Assemblyman Scott Baugh, for suspected voter fraud. Critics charge that the case was a matter best left to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission.

Wade, however, says he had nothing to do with the case, that he was concentrating on prosecuting figures in the county’s bankruptcy.

Wade no longer supervises a division in the D.A.’s office; he handles welfare fraud and major fraud cases.

Critics have also faulted Wade for his apparent wavering on the issue of plea bargaining. In his 1998 candidate’s statement, Wade wrote: “I insist on no plea bargaining with criminals. Criminals should be prosecuted, not pampered.”

In this race, however, Wade has said plea bargaining is sometimes necessary to ensure appropriate punishment and that prosectors should be trained on bargaining guidelines.

Wade vaguely recalled his stance on the matter in the previous election and registered surprise when shown a copy of his statement.

“Did I say that? I guess I did,” Wade said. “Anti-plea bargain is what every district attorney would like to be, but in reality it happens. In the world we live in, that’s the way it has to be, because it’s a human system.”