Growing Apart: Familiar Foes, Enduring Issues

They battled on the Huntington Beach City Council. Now, Jim Silva and Dave Sullivan are squaring off again, this time for a seat on the county Board of Supervisors and the crucial vote on plans for a commercial airport at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. The airport proposal has been the defining issue throughout the county, moved along by the board mainly on 3-2 votes. A win for the incumbent, Silva, would ensure that airport plans progress. A victory for Sullivan, the challenger, could be the death knell for the project. Here is a look at the two men, who are poles apart on major issues.

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Wearing a white T-shirt with a green shamrock design, greeting residents with his heavy Boston-Irish accent, Dave Sullivan seems distinctly out of place as he walks through the northern beach cities of Orange County in search of votes.

But over the last 30 years, Sullivan has set himself up as a veritable Orange Countian and, now, a viable candidate for the Board of Supervisors. He became a Republican, established a career, raised a family and fought tough political battles in his adopted city of Huntington Beach.

In the early 1990s, he sparred often with Jim Silva when they both were on the Huntington Beach City Council. They clearly defined themselves there on major subjects such as real estate development in parks and the Bolsa Chica wetlands and salary increases for police and fire personnel--all issues that Silva supported and Sullivan opposed.

It seems natural, then, that Sullivan is once again at odds with Silva, now a county supervisor seeking reelection, over the county’s most controversial development proposal: plans to build an airport at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

Though Sullivan’s environmental activism got him far in Huntington Beach politics, his opposition to the El Toro airport is another matter. The 2nd District, which covers Seal Beach, Cypress, Rossmoor, Stanton, Costa Mesa and Los Alamitos as well as Huntington Beach, voted predominantly in favor of a 1994 ballot measure supporting an airport.

In addition, a majority of his campaign funding has come from South County residents opposed to the airport, sparking complaints from many people in his district. Sullivan has raised more than $193,000, all but $28,000 since the end of June, said his campaign treasurer, Cheryl Heinecke. Sullivan has fund-raisers scheduled in South County every day this week, she said.

Though he is in the political fight of his life as the underdog, Sullivan is determined to win and unwilling to bend his beliefs for political expediency.

“I wouldn’t have entered the race if I didn’t think I had a chance,” he said on a recent day while walking precincts. “I’m convinced I can win this election if I succeed in getting my message out.”

Sullivan, a physically fit 60-year-old whose thick eyebrows furrow when debating, said he is accustomed to winning upsets. In the tradition of East Coast politics, he is not afraid of confrontation.

He had the least amount of campaign money when he first ran for City Council in 1992. His tenacity and genuine conviction about saving parklands and wetlands and limiting development on the Huntington Beach waterfront gained him many allies.

“I was impressed with his willingness to fight for a cause that really didn’t benefit him in any way,” said Bob Bittle, a Huntington Beach planning commissioner appointed by Sullivan. “Dave seems to wave the banner on the unpopular issues.”

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Even critics admit Sullivan is a man of conviction, but they contend that he lacks the finesse necessary to compromise on tough issues that might be better resolved without confrontation.

In talks with developers on reducing the scope of the Bolsa Chica project, for instance, Sullivan doesn’t really negotiate, allying himself instead with a minority viewpoint and steadfastly refusing to give an inch, said Councilman Dave Garofalo.

“Dave Sullivan the man is truly a nice person, but Dave Sullivan the politician is really fueling fires of discontent among disenfranchised individuals who are looking to him as their only hope,” said Garofalo, who supports Silva.

Sullivan was born in 1937 in Boston. Though his father, Alexander, died when he was only in third grade, the younger Sullivan felt his influence. His father, business manager of the Boston school system, introduced his young son to political luminaries such as Henry Cabot Lodge and Boston’s outspoken Mayor James Michael Curley.

Sullivan, a modest man who worked during the summers at at Fenway Park selling hot dogs and peanuts to help support his mother and younger brother, was accepted into Harvard. But he opted instead for Boston College, where he graduated in 1959 with a degree in biology.

He went on to get degrees in dentistry and orthodontics and moved to California in 1967 with his wife, Kay. The couple have three children, Theresa, 34, Kathy, 33, and David, 27.

Sullivan’s politics were heavily influenced by the Irish Catholic tradition of his native Boston. He voted, for instance, for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election.

He did not delve into politics at first, focusing instead on building his orthodontist practice. But he did switch parties, becoming a Republican in the late 1960s.

“I felt that some liberals were too free-spending with taxpayer money,” he said. He refers to himself as a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, with moderate social views, a penchant for environmentalism and strict fiscally conservative views.

In 1989, Sullivan was catapulted into public life when the City Council proposed building a large shopping center and homes along the Huntington Beach waterfront. The council also supported building a golf course in the city’s Huntington Central Park, instead of leaving it as open space.

Those ideas, along with the proposal to develop the Bolsa Chica wetlands, sparked an environmental grass-roots movement focused on changing the makeup of the City Council.

Sullivan and a few dozen local residents gathered nearly 20,000 signatures to place Measure C on the ballot. The initiative sought to prohibit city leaders from approving development projects on the city’s parks and beaches without a majority of support from the voters.

“The first time I heard him speak, he was yelling, ‘Recall! Recall! Recall!’ at a rally, and I thought this is a man whom we need to put on our team,” said Sullivan’s eventual campaign manager, Debbie Cook, a lawyer who spearheaded lawsuits against developers of the wetlands and the Huntington Beach waterfront.

“There are very few people you run into who have a moral barometer. He knows what is right and wrong and he just pursues that,” she said.

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When Measure C passed by an overwhelming majority in 1990, Sullivan decided to run for the council. He and other environmental candidates won, tilting the balance of power on the council against development. Sullivan often clashed with Silva, who was then in the minority on development issues.

Sullivan said he does not oppose development. But it needs to be controlled, he said.

“I am for growth,” he said. “But it needs to be responsible, and I think that I hold the view of the majority of the people in this county.”

Though he originally supported the idea of an international airport at El Toro when the City Council passed a resolution in favor of it, Sullivan now says such a project in South County would be an unfair burden on residents of Lake Forest and Irvine in particular.

“You cannot put an airport in the middle of a developed residential area. It impacts too many people,” he said. “That is why I’m opposed to an airport at Los Alamitos too. Our future needs can be met at Ontario or March [Air Force base in Riverside County], and we don’t need to ruin the quality of life in Orange County.”

But others see his anti-development views as narrow-minded and obstructionist.

“He does not choose to see the regional and city benefits, or [to] protect private property rights” of developers, said Lucy Dunn, project manager for Hearthside Homes, which owns the Bolsa Chica mesa. The adjoining wetlands were bought by the state in 1997 and are off-limits to any development.

Sullivan angered not only developers but also the Huntington Beach Police and Fire departments by opposing salary increases. He said he saw attempts at raising their salaries as “pension spiking,” but he gained notoriety for his outspoken criticism on the salary issue.

“He leaped into fame after four cruel, hard years of employee-bashing,” Garofalo said.

Now focused on county government, Sullivan said he wants to reduce the powers of the chief executive by changing the title and having the supervisors ratify hirings and firings of department heads.

If elected, he also intends to change the way business is conducted at the county by televising the meetings and encouraging more public participation.

“The majority of the board does not appear to be interested in public input,” he said. “For a democracy to work, you have to encourage public input.”