Elusive Univision Chairman Spreads Wealth Around in Gubernatorial Race

A. Jerrold Perenchio, the Los Angeles billionaire who heads the nation’s largest Spanish-language television network, has become the biggest contributor in the California governor’s race, donating $1.3 million to three candidates.

Perenchio’s extraordinary largess--he has given $625,000 to Democrat Gray Davis in this race, along with $500,000 to Republican Richard Riordan and $205,000 to Republican Bill Jones--not only distinguishes him in the gubernatorial campaign. It also helps deepen the sense of mystery around the television executive, who is as well known for his elusiveness as for his political participation.

Perenchio is a former boxing promoter and one-time Hollywood talent agent who shuns media attention, a potent political player who often gives to both sides, and a Spanish-language media baron who does not speak the language that he broadcasts.

Over the last four years, the chairman and CEO of Univision Communications has given $8.75 million to state and local political campaigns and has never given an interview to explain his reasons for those contributions.

“I really don’t want my name in the . . . paper. You should respect my privacy,” he told a Times reporter in 1981. “I just don’t want to give out any interviews. I just hate them.”

Two decades later, nothing has changed. “He does not do interviews,” said his executive assistant. Associates say they fear being fined or fired if they speak to the news media.

Fresno-born Perenchio, the grandson of Italian immigrants, had early successes promoting boxing--he helped arrange the closed-circuit broadcast of a famous 1971 bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. As a Hollywood agent, his clients included Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda. He helped produce popular television shows such as “The Jeffersons,” and was a pioneer of pay-TV.

Today, his properties include Spanish-language broadcasting, cable television, Internet sites and the music business.

He also is a major landholder in Malibu, where he has become a significant political player in a debate over development of his property there. The next governor will have the power to appoint Coastal Commission members whose votes could determine the property’s future.

“He is a very astute and shrewd businessman,” said one admirer. Perenchio is “a global thinker, looking at the global landscape. Obviously, he’s a big player in that landscape.”

His Spanish-language media empire offers politicians and advertisers a way to reach the nation’s rapidly growing Latino population and “that influence is growing every day.”

That ability to reach Spanish-speaking voters, combined with his substantial wealth, has given Perenchio ample opportunities to play a role in state and local politics. He has used his money to support an array of candidates and causes, defying easy ideological or party characterization.

Garry South, campaign strategist for Davis, said Perenchio is “kind of an equal-opportunity contributor. He generally gives to both sides.”

A Republican Who Supports Democrats

In the 1998 gubernatorial campaign, Perenchio contributed $235,000 to Davis and $200,000 to Davis’ opponent, Republican Dan Lungren. South said he does not “know what the rationale or purpose” of giving to competing candidates is.

Perenchio is not afraid to take a firm stand on issues. He donated $1.5 million in an unsuccessful effort to stop a 1998 state proposition to end most bilingual education in California.

He gave another $1 million in 2000 to an ill-fated campaign to persuade the state’s voters to support vouchers for students to attend private school.

Even though he is a Republican who supports his party at the state and national level, Perenchio also backs Democrats. In addition to his Davis donations, he contributed $135,000 to Antonio Villaraigosa while he was speaker of the California Assembly.

Perenchio also gave $1 million to help Los Angeles host the Democratic National Convention in 2000, a cause that Riordan, as mayor, championed and contributed to as well.

And when Riordan sought his financial help to rewrite the city’s charter and put his handpicked candidates on the Los Angeles school board, Perenchio was there to help, donating at least $525,000 to those efforts.

“The Republican Party appeals to his ideology,” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “The Democratic Party appeals to him as a businessman.”

Sean Walsh, consultant to Jones, the secretary of state, agreed that Perenchio spreads his contributions around. He said Perenchio’s political giving is “good for business. He is a man who is not blinded by ideology.”

Helped Jones Early in Race

Walsh, who is also a confidant of former Gov. Pete Wilson, said Perenchio donated early to Jones’ candidacy for governor but made it clear he would back Riordan if his longtime friend entered the race.

“The Perenchios see the Riordans a lot socially,” said an associate of the former mayor. “Because of that good friendship, Dick found it very easy, whenever he had a cause, to hit Perenchio up for it.”

While Perenchio’s level of giving makes him one of the state’s most sought-after political donors, he does not take advantage of that role to draw attention to himself. He rarely appears in public, and even then he strikes a low profile.

Perenchio made a rare cameo appearance at a Jan. 14 launch party for Telefutura, Univision’s second broadcast network.

The event at Univision’s gleaming new glass-and-steel headquarters on the San Diego Freeway in Westchester was catered by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. There were several open bar stations, and waiters squeezed through the crowd of mostly advertisers, public-relations types and Univision staff.

There were also dashes of Hollywood glitterati, boxing champs and politicos, including Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Maria Contreras-Sweet, Davis’ secretary of the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency.

Five-time world champion Oscar De La Hoya was there, as well as actors Hector Elizondo, Lorenzo Lamas, Michael York and Erik Estrada of “CHiPs” fame.

Perenchio did not speak publicly. Instead, he mingled with some luminaries. The billionaire would have been inconspicuous--pale complexion, corporate gray hair and a patriotic red-white-and-blue tie--if not for his blue-blazered security detail.

He spent some time talking privately with Riordan before being whisked away by his security team about a half-hour before the speeches started. In his absence, however, Perenchio’s aides made the sort of partisan statement that he loathes to make himself.

When the speeches began, a Perenchio associate introduced Riordan as “the next governor of California.”

Contreras-Sweet was stunned at the slight to Davis, and she complained vigorously to Univision staff members at the event. A Univision executive said later that introducing Riordan in that fashion was done at the instruction of Perenchio.

If Perenchio’s interests are global, they also occasionally are intensely local. Take the television executive’s investments along the narrow coastal plain of Malibu.

Perenchio has had a personal and professional place in Malibu for many years. When he is not at his sprawling mansion in Bel-Air or at Univision’s Century City or Westchester offices, the 71-year-old is known to enjoy life at the Malibu Colony, a spectacular enclave of oceanfront homes. His personal golf course lies behind a high stone wall near that home.

Outside that wall, Perenchio owns some of the largest pieces of open land in the heart of Malibu. His plans for that property have been roiling the political waters in the exclusive beach community for some time.

The proposal by Malibu Bay Co., the holding company for Perenchio’s coastal properties, would convert some of his land in the Civic Center area to commercial uses such as shopping centers and office buildings. Its plans, negotiated with two City Council members, are contained in a development agreement that needs final approval from the city government.

Perenchio-Backed Initiative Prevailed

Environmentalists worried about the potential for large-scale development of the open land in the Civic Center placed an initiative on the November 2000 Malibu ballot to require a public vote on any commercial project more than 25,000 square feet.

The City Council responded by putting before the voters a narrower proposal that would require a public vote only in the case of extensive commercial development on 30 acres or more--a limitation that would include the Malibu Bay Co. land.

Perenchio spent nearly $200,000 on newspaper and cable television ads, mailers, slate cards and videotapes sent to voters. The campaign against the initiative and in favor of the council’s alternative was only partly successful. Both measures passed. But the council’s approach received more votes and prevailed.

While the two sides were battling at the ballot box that fall, Gov. Davis signed legislation by then-Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg and Senate President Pro-Tem John Burton. The law stripped Malibu of the responsibility to prepare and adopt a local coastal program to regulate development and protect natural resources along the coast. Instead, it gave final power over planning in that area to the California Coastal Commission.

Whoever is elected governor this fall will influence the direction of the Coastal Commission--and the future of some of the most valuable coastal property in the world.

The governor, the Assembly speaker and the Senate president each appoint four members of the 12-member commission. The commission oversees development along the state’s entire 1,100-mile coastline.

“The power of appointment is of paramount importance,” said attorney Melvin Nutter, a former commission chairman and head of the League for Coastal Protection. “Clearly, the Coastal Commission is a political body with political appointees.”

The commission and Malibu government could soon be at odds, as the development agreement and coastal panel’s visions for the area are significantly different. The city’s deal with the Malibu Bay Co. allows for commercial and residential development, while the commission’s local coastal program is more limited: It emphasizes visitor uses.

“The Civic Center is the largest area of undeveloped land in the city,” said Gary Timm, district manager for the Coastal Commission. “It should reflect a reasonable amount of visitor-serving uses” such as overnight accommodations, restaurants, surf and dive shops and businesses that encourage recreation. “Office buildings are typically not called visitor-serving.”

Although Perenchio and his associates will not discuss the issue, his son, John, argued in a series of newspaper advertisements that the development agreement represents a fair compromise between the city and the developer.

It is the Coastal Commission that has the power to resolve those differences--and its actions will therefore have profound implications for Malibu and for Perenchio.

“This is not a Malibu issue. This is a state issue,” said Steve Uhring, president of the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy.

“The Coastal Commission’s charter is to protect the coast. If the Coastal Commission can’t protect the environment in Malibu, who is going to?”

*

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.