My Political Mentor, Part 1
I first met my political mentor, Dick O’Neill, in 1970 when I worked as the Student Coordinator for the John Tunney (d. Ca.) US Senatorial campaign. Our offices were on mid-Wilshire in an old furniture showroom and consisted of the upper Mezz where the Big Wigs worked, and the ground floor where the drones like me worked.
The drones’ job was to call potential voters (landlines then) from a pre-prepared list with a script advocating Tunney, and my job was to go get those drones, mostly local students, to do so. Making the calls sometimes was interesting if you got an eccentric, but it was mostly boring. But it was nothing compared to walking precincts because (pre-air quality laws) the afternoon smog turned a thick orange-brown color and made me nauseous.
I noticed Dick because he often came and was fawned over by the Mezz Big Wigs, which meant he was a major donor, but afterward, he did something no other major donor did: made phone calls and walked the precinct – and if he did it, students would too.
Dick was a big man with big bones, big muscles, wide shoulders, and particularly big and strong hands; I wasn’t surprised to learn he was an ace pitcher for his college baseball team. He did not walk so much as he shambled, thick graying hair askew, pants held up by suspenders, an old (usually stained) dress shirt with one flap untucked, and his most marked characteristics: a big booming laugh, infectious, and his whole body shaking, his eyes squeezed and hands moving to the merriment of it.
After the campaign ended with a Tunney win, I didn’t see Dick again for about a decade while I finished school, worked on Wall Street and moved to NYC. When I returned, I quickly again involved in democratic politics and discovered that Dick and his sister had inherited the vast Rancho Mission Viejo, whose land holdings (except for the beach cities and Capistrano) stretched from Mission Viejo down throughout all southern Orange County, then swept around the backside of Cleveland National Forest, and thence to Oceanside. During WWII, the southern lands were nationalized by the US for Camp Pendleton, and Dick’s childhood home and Ranch headquarters became the Base Commander’s home.
And every year, Dick and his sister were on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans.
I found out about Dick when I met Frank Barbaro, chairman of the OC Democratic Party, and learned Dick, Frank, and another guy, Howard Adler, in 1978-79, had run a Democratic Registration drive resulting in a tiny Dem County voter edge, which became a short-lasted string on Dem victories. This, of course, scared Republicans, who soon mounted vastly superior resources to retake the lead and surge way ahead. Within another few years, there were zero elected Democrats to partisan seats (nine) in the county.
It was with this background that Dick and Howard Adler decided to act. They created a Democratic money-support club and picked two young, ambitious guys to run it: Laguna’s very own David Stein and me, who oozed charisma. The club was named the Democratic Foundation of Orange County. It had two classes of membership: $1,000 per year for regular membership, and if you couldn’t afford that, $100 for associate membership. Within a year, there were about 120 regular members and about the same associates.
But who would join, and how did we accomplish it? Alas, I’ve run out of space for this column and must continue in a future one; but I will tell you the answer: Dick made it happen, and the first win was in 1992.
Michael co-founded Orange County School of the Arts, The Discovery Cube, Sage Hill School, Art Spaces Irvine and several other area nonprofit organizations. He is a business partner with Sanderson-J. Ray Development and has lived in Laguna Beach since the early 1980s.
