JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

About six weeks ago, the Pilot ran an editorial asking -- more in

sadness than censure -- why so few candidates seek election to local

public offices. A few days later, a local citizen who had just filed

wrote a letter that was published on the Community Forum page and offered

some very specific answers to that question. His name is John Heffernan,

and he is running from District 7 for the Newport Beach City Council.

Heffernan is now six weeks older and wiser, and I thought it might be

interesting to see if the views expressed in the Pilot letter had changed

after this brief brush with the political system. So I asked him that

question over a cup of coffee.

It is now clear to him that most of the points he made in his letter

are givens in any political contest and aren’t going to go away. These

include complex and detailed public disclosure of personal finances, long

hours of work at the expense of family time, public scrutiny of highly

personal affairs, and the constant risk of alienating both friends and

fellow citizens. He went in aware of these shortcomings, and nothing that

has happened since has changed these perceptions.

What has changed is a much more acute awareness of how the political

system works -- and the impact of money on any political race. He had

made a rather ingenuous pledge to himself to finance his own candidacy

completely and avoid all political debts by not seeking any outside

money. This determination was challenged very quickly by the realities of

setting the table properly for a serious effort to win political office

at virtually any level.

Although Heffernan is a successful attorney, he says he doesn’t even

come close to the personal financial resources needed to try to buy an

elective office. He and his wife, who teaches science at a local high

school, have two young sons, and Heffernan has a long history of social

service -- Hoag Hospital board member, Orange County Food Bank chairman,

for example -- and deep family roots in this area, where his father once

practiced law.

But none of this prepared him for the financial bare bones needed just

to compete for a seat on the Newport Beach City Council, especially in a

district where his two opponents were both substantial and better known.

It started with an outlay of $900 to provide a candidate statement for

the ballot. Then it got serious as he looked into what are deemed two

necessary accouterments for a successful political campaign: inclusion on

the mailing of candidate slates and the hiring of a political consultant.

Candidate slates are those postcards we get en masse during an

election year, form-fitted to specific groups of people in which

candidates for lesser offices are tied to nationally known names heading

up party tickets. The implication is that Al Gore or George Bush is

really hot to see so-and-so elected to the Newport Beach City Council, or

-- only a little more honestly -- that people voting for the top of the

ticket on the slate being mailed should clearly favor the lesser

candidates at the bottom.

A shining example of how sophistry pays off in politics, these slates

are created by political consultants for all sorts of special-interest

groups -- Native Americans who attended Notre Dame, Republican soccer

moms over 50, Democrats in the Fortune 500, that sort of thing.

According to Heffernan, it would have cost him about $1,500 per slate

in his voting area. When he found out he would have no control over the

content of the message or the company he would be keeping on the slate,

he saved himself a bundle by passing.

Then Heffernan investigated the employment of a political consultant

recommended to him and found it would up the campaign ante even more

dramatically. “I figured he would cost me about $75,000,” said Heffernan.

“And he started out by telling me he didn’t like my candidate statement

because I identified myself as a lawyer. They want Ronald Reagan on a

horse. It would have taken substantial fund-raising to go this route, and

I didn’t need a consultant to tell me that lawyers aren’t high in public

favor these days. So I went back to financing my own campaign.”

That entailed hiring two UC Irvine legal interns who -- among numerous

other activities -- created a homemade brochure for his first public

meeting.

“A political campaign can’t be like a house remodel,” he told me,

“where you get started and then don’t know when to stop. Certain things

like campaign brochures and bumper stickers and banners are necessary.

But you have to control spending, and I hope to hold it to $25,000 of my

own money.”

He has been struggling, since the day he filed, to define a position

on the Greenlight measure, which both of his opponents oppose. “I think

it was intellectually incorrect for me to be a resident-focused candidate

without taking a position on Greenlight,” he said. So last week, he

decided to support it, even though he still has some strong reservations.

Was this simply a political ploy to win over Greenlight supporters in

the hope that his opponents would split the other votes?

He admits that element is present, but says that “Greenlight is a

well-deserved slap across the face of this City Council, where six of the

seven members are former planning commissioners. If Greenlight does

nothing more than raise their conscience level and force the council to

address the problems that distress and anger Greenlight supporters, it

will have been successful. And I certainly support that.”

Meanwhile, Heffernan will be taking his two sons, Casey and Grant, to

their baseball Pony League games, where he serves on the board -- a job

he attained without the help of a political consultant.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.