The race for Newport Beach City Council

Mathis Winkler

NEWPORT BEACH -- Like his political hero Ronald Reagan, District 5

City Council candidate Robert Schoonmaker grew up under modest conditions

in Queens, N.Y.

“It was the type of neighborhood where you knew the druggist and he’d

give you an ice cream cone to make you stop crying when you’d hurt your

knee,” Schoonmaker said while sitting in the kitchen of his Big Canyon

town home. “And the butcher knew what Mother wanted. Even though it was

part of a large city, it was like living in a small community because

people knew each other and cared about each other.”

Riding the L-train from Queens to Manhattan for hours back and forth

became a favorite pastime for Schoonmaker and his friends.

“We were in Seventh Heaven,” he said and laughed.

During his teen years, the family moved to Ithaca in upstate New York.

It was there that he met his wife and took his first job in the defense

industry in the late 1950s, he said.

Job scarcity on the East Coast drove the Schoonmakers to the West

Coast a few years later.

“Work here was very plentiful,” he recalled. “I got two or three job

offers on the very first day.”

Working as a test engineer in the Apollo program turned out to be one

of the high points in his career, Schoonmaker said. He settled in

Fullerton with his family, although he’d already been flirting with the

idea to move to Newport Beach.

“When we looked for a home to buy, we looked in Newport Beach and

Fullerton,” he said. “But the wife worried about [Newport Beach] being

too close to the water. Too damp.”

By the time Schoonmaker retired in 1992, the city on the ocean didn’t

seem that wet anymore.

“We liked Newport Beach very, very much,” he said. “And we realized

that Newport really isn’t damp and might be a real nice place to retire.”

Apart from his volunteer work for his homeowners association,

Schoonmaker also volunteers every weekday morning in his wife’s computer

lab at Guinn Elementary School in the Anaheim City School District.

And as one of two candidates in this year’s race who has said he won’t

accept any contributions -- the other being District 7 candidate John

Heffernan -- Schoonmaker spends much of his time walking precincts and

talking to voters.

When he ran for a council seat in 1996, he spent between $400 and $500

on the race.

“It will be a bit more this time,” he said. “But not much more.”