It’s crude, tacky and brilliant. It’s Disney.

They can be the friendliest of people. Smiling faces. Firm handshakes.

They want people to like them. What’s not to like? They gave us Disneyland.

But when they’re not happy, watch out. If you’ve watched Tony Soprano in action, you know what I mean.

The Disney Co. is happy today, because an Anaheim City Council that leaned 4 to 1 against it on a key housing issue as recently as six months ago has dissolved into a 2-2 tie that translates into a victory for the company.

Just to make sure that fifth council member, Lucille Kring, didn’t goof things up last week by voting against it, the company took her out of the picture.

No, not Soprano-style. It merely raised an eleventh-hour specter that a wine shop she planned to open in the area might present a conflict of interest.

As a result, Kring abstained on the advice of the city attorney, even though he wasn’t sure if she was in conflict. The 2-2 vote left standing a city Planning Commission decision not to change zoning in the “resort district” that would have allowed a mix of condominium and affordable housing in the Disneyland environs.

Disney objected to the affordable-housing component as being out of place in the district, preferring a hotel-condominium package.

So, all is well for Disney, except that it had to violate the unofficial Power Brokers Code by being so blatant in getting what it wanted.

I’m sure it would have preferred to have wined and dined people and had their three votes out of five counted. But to come in at the last minute, literally on the day of a council vote, and wave a cautionary flag about a possible conflict of interest....

Crude. Tacky. Brilliant.

Conspiracy theorists, unite!

Surely, City Atty. Jack White was in on the fix. Aha, why not include Kring in the plot, cleverly concealing her role by appearing to be caught blindsided by the whole thing?

Sounds good, except that White isn’t seen as that kind of guy. His job is to protect council members in such moments of uncertainty. As for Kring, if she were in Disney’s pocket, she simply could have voted the company’s way.

We’re left only with Disney exercising its muscle, as it has over the years when its interests are at stake.

Along the way, urban myths develop. The company doesn’t micromanage the city, nor weigh in on every issue that comes along. What it does is protect its interests fiercely and fight when it has to. It is not the secret power behind the throne of city government.

Let’s take note that had Richard Chavez not lost his council seat in November, the vote last week certainly would have been 3-2 against the company. Disney is not invincible.

Of course, Chavez did lose, and perhaps the dark forces of Disney pulled those levers, but that only goes to show how convenient conspiracy theories can be.

How can you blame Disney for thinking it’s a special presence in Anaheim? It has made the city what it is and probably expects fealty. It is known for putting council candidates through exhaustive pre-election interviews, and no council member is unaware of the company’s shadow.

The sense is that the company exerts less local power than it did in decades past. But last week’s power play served to remind everyone that the company is far from toothless.

As of late Friday, City Atty. White was planning to ask the Fair Political Practices Commission for a judgment on the Kring matter. The FPPC can take up to three weeks to reply. In the meantime, the 2-2 vote will stand because council members are prohibited from bringing the matter to another vote.

An outside party, such as a developer, can put the issue back in play. The city surely hasn’t seen the last of the debate about whether to build affordable housing in Disney orbit.

Kring, newly elected in November, said she eagerly awaits the FPPC decision. She feels caught in the middle, she says, and hadn’t decided how she would have voted on the housing project before she recused herself at the last minute.

No, she said, she wasn’t part of a Disney conspiracy. Nor, however, would she take the opportunity to chastise the company for its late intrusion into the council’s deliberations last week, although the wine shop she and her husband have in mind -- which Disney said California case law pointed to as the potential “conflict” -- had been known about for some time.

“They’ve got a lot of people doing research,” she said of Disney. “I don’t know how they found this case, but they certainly did.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana

.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.