Coad Running Against Rival--and Her Record

It’s a full house at Mama Cozza’s Italian restaurant in Anaheim. Still, Cynthia and Tom Coad are easy to spot. They’re the ones who don’t sit.

Their eyes, honed from years in politics, scan the room looking for a friendly face. On a Friday evening, they’re all friendly.

“Oh hi, how have you been?” Cynthia Coad says, warming to a couple eating pasta. “You know I’m running for reelection.”

Coad, who is seeking reelection March 5 to the Board of Supervisors, is in a tough battle. She’s finding that her voting record and role as part of a pro-airport board majority has given her opponent, Fullerton Councilman and fellow Republican Chris Norby, plenty to vent about.

At Cozza’s--friendly territory, where her campaign T-shirt is encased in glass alongside photos of celebrities such as former Ram players Jack Youngblood and Jackie Slater--Coad is, as always, with her campaign manager and husband of 47 years.

“Hey, Cynthia! Tom!” bellowed restaurant owner Frank Cozza as he strode over to them. “How are you today? You know you have our support.”

Coad has lived in the area--actually an unincorporated county island--for 40 years, since her husband left the Marine Corps and set up a dental practice in nearby Garden Grove.

Lately her schedule has been jammed with campaign appearances as she runs against Norby, who is heavily supported by South County residents for his opposition to a controversial plan to build an international airport at the abandoned El Toro Marine base.

Coad strongly favors the airport, saying it will mean more jobs and long-term economic vitality. It’s a stance that critics say makes her a poster child for jet aircraft, noise and pollution.

Four years ago, Coad handily defeated a popular Latino Republican challenger. But after four years on the board, Coad, now in her second year as chairman, is on the defensive. She’s having to explain her airport position, why she voted for the county’s pro-union labor agreement, and opposed Measure H, a countywide initiative to use tobacco settlement money on health care that was overwhelmingly approved by 65% of county voters in November 2000.

Coad also is running in a very different district than the one to which she was elected in 1998. Redrawn to reflect 2000 census figures, the 4th District gained Fullerton, where Norby’s voting strength lies. It lost parts of Coad’s strongholds in Anaheim Hills, Orange and Anaheim to the neighboring 3rd District, now represented by Supervisor Todd Spitzer.

Still, with the help of her husband, she has locked up endorsements from nearly every elected official in her district, including most of Norby’s colleagues on the Fullerton City Council. However, Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly, running for county clerk-recorder, recently switched his backing to Norby.

The defection surprised her, Coad said, especially after Daly said she’d done a great job at her recent state of the county speech.

Coad is a steadfast airport supporter along with Supervisors Jim Silva and Chuck Smith, who make up the board majority planning for an airport that would serve 18.8-million passengers a year by 2010.

“I still have faith an airport is needed,” Coad said in an interview. “It’s safe and it will attract the high-paying jobs that we need. Is it politically viable? We’re going to find out March 5.”

That’s when county voters decide Measure W, an initiative that would rezone the former El Toro base from an airport to a park. The proposed zoning would permit a large-scale park with academic campuses, light industrial use and other development.

Recent polls suggest an airport at El Toro is unpopular with county voters--though less so in north Orange County. Still, Coad says she and other supervisors are duty-bound to carry out Measure A, a 1994 countywide initiative that narrowly passed, zoning the former base for an airport.

Especially after Measure F, an anti-airport initiative approved by voters in 2000, was ruled unconstitutional. “They say I don’t listen to the will of the people. Well, the legal thing we’re following is Measure A. That’s the will of the people.”

Airport supporters like David Ellis have praised Coad, saying, “She’s only carrying through her belief, that’s what we elect people to do. It’s called leadership, taking a stand.”

During a recent speech at a Republican women’s club in Fullerton, Coad was grilled about her support for a landmark union pact requiring that union workers make up at least 85% of the workers on any new major county public works projects.

A deal struck when the board majority sought labor alliances to fight Measure F, the union pact raises hackles within the county’s Republican ranks. And after Coad dodged a question from the audience on her support for the agreement, club president Patricia Lochrie grabbed the microphone and insisted on an explanation.

“I wanted her to clarify her position on that because she didn’t answer the question,” Lochrie said.

Coad said she could have provided a better answer, but she didn’t want to spend time answering a negative question instead of sharing her views on other issues.

The union labor deal is costing her dearly. Already, predominantly nonunion contractors have raised an estimated $15,000 for Norby.

“This is on a very visceral level, retribution,” said Eric Christen, a spokesman for the Southern California Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction.

“From a political and economic level, it’s people exercising their right to replace [the agreement] sought by unions and developers trying to get the airport built, which obviously the county doesn’t want,” he said.

Another campaign issue is Measure H, an initiative that pitted the same three-member board majority against health care and community leaders.

It would have the county spend most of the $750 million in tobacco settlement funds over the next 25 years on health care, not bankruptcy debt and jail beds as Coad and colleagues Silva and Smith had wanted.

After it was approved by 65% of the voters in 2000, the same three supervisors voted to sue to block the measure’s implementation, listing as a defendant Dr. J. Brennan Cassidy, a private Newport Beach physician whose name appeared on the initiative’s petitions.

Coad recently sought Cassidy’s support.

“I said thank you very much for the endorsement list [Tom Coad] handed me, and that’s all I said,” said Cassidy. “I did not give her my endorsement.”

Neither Coad nor Norby got a nod from the 3,000-member Orange County Medical Assn. The association interviewed both candidates, but there was no strong sentiment for either candidate, even though Coad did win praise on health care programs she has supported, said Dr. William Callahan, the association’s legislative committee chairman.

Coad, now 68, was raised in Iowa and put her husband through dental school. Then, after raising seven children, she decided to carve her own niche as a college instructor. She also ran for a seat on the North Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees, serving six years. Then in 1998, she easily defeated former Anaheim Councilman Lou Lopez for the open 4th District seat.

The Coads spent $600,000, mostly personal funds, to win a job that pays about $107,000 a year.

The Coads’ wealth, estimated at more than $10 million, came from Tom Coad’s success as a dentist-turned-investor who bought Qualcomm stock before it went public in 1991. It has allowed her to make a loan to her current campaign against Norby for $90,000.

Hate her for other things, she says, but not the fact that she and her husband are living the “Orange County dream.”

“Look, my first three kids were born in a free clinic,” she said. “I put my husband through dental school and we had to borrow money to get out here when my husband was stationed as a Marine at El Toro.”

Coad said her motivation to seek higher office came while working as a volunteer at an Anaheim barrio called La Colonia Independencia, teaching English to Spanish-speaking residents in a run-down area plagued with high unemployment and other social problems.

“These are poor areas, hardly bastions with a lot of money. It was the pits. I told myself I’m going to become elected and try and fix these things,” Coad said. “I asked myself, ‘Who else would do it?’ ”