NEWSMAKER OF THE YEAR:The face of Costa Mesa

It would be hard for Allan Mansoor to top 2006.

He won a second term as mayor of Costa Mesa. He set the agenda for a determined, unswerving majority on the City Council. Most of all, he was the face the city showed the world and his was the voice that was heard from Costa Mesa when it was thrust into the national debate over illegal immigration.

And all he had to do, like lighting a fuse, was make a modest proposal that exploded into controversy — and then watch the results.

Coming into this year, Mansoor already had helped move an agenda that for some earlier councils would have been a pipedream. The job center closed at the end of 2005, a move some residents had demanded for years, and this year in a unanimous vote — rare since the 2004 election — the council voted for an ambitious plan that would allow, but not coerce, redevelopment on the Westside.

A crucial ingredient to Mansoor’s success, and what separated the 2005-06 council from earlier ones, to resident Chris Blank, was another councilman’s shifting politics.

“To me, the biggest difference is [former Councilman and Mayor] Gary Monahan went from being somewhat moderate to kind of on the far edge, as far as I’m concerned,” said Blank, an attorney who became a regular at council meetings in 2006. “It was Monahan’s support that allowed Mansoor to have a majority for some of the things that in my opinion were most controversial.”

At the sole council meeting in December 2005, with no prior study session or discussion, Mansoor proposed that Costa Mesa become the first city to have its police trained to enforce federal immigration law and to enforce it widely against people suspected of breaking laws — whether they were jaywalking or robbing a bank.

It was, in fact, Monahan’s spur-of-the-moment compromise that the council approved in a split vote: to limit the number of officers with immigration powers to those in the jail, the gang detail and a few others. The first council meeting in January, after people had several weeks to stew over the idea, was packed with supporters and critics. A protester was arrested. But Mansoor met the turmoil with the same answer he would give all year long: The federal government had failed to uphold the law regarding illegal immigration, so it was right for the city to step in and do it.

“If it wasn’t a problem, I don’t think he would have approached it at all,” said Donn Hall, a planning commissioner and former mayor who has supported Mansoor. “Each council from the beginning until now addresses the problems facing the community at that time.”

As the city’s Latino residents grew concerned about the police becoming la migra, a Spanish phrase referring to immigration authorities; Mansoor was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs; and he was heard on NPR talking about the city’s official stance on illegal immigration — a topic that was making and breaking political careers. But the job of explaining the city’s immigration plan was left largely to then-Police Chief John Hensley, who spoke at community meetings and fielded the nonpolitical questions.

After nearly a year of talking about immigration — a year during which, according to federal immigration officials, Costa Mesa officials never formally approached them about enforcement training — Mansoor finally appeared vindicated when a relatively new Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office director offered to place an agent in the city jail to check the immigration status of people booked there.

Mansoor considers that offer his biggest success of the year.

“I think that’s going to have a huge impact on reducing crime, especially when you consider that most criminals are repeat offenders,” he said. “It was just the right thing to do, and the public was feeling very frustrated about it, and they wanted action taken, so I decided to go forward.”

But Mansoor isn’t the only one claiming victory for having a federal agent in the city jail.

“It’s not at all what Allan was looking for,” Blank said. “Allan was looking for having every police officer trained and picking up taco cart vendors for not having their license. The fact that it’s not a field operation … I count that as a victory for the people who thought Allan’s idea was a dumb idea.”

It’s not yet clear how the federal agent will work out — no data has been released on how many people who have been arrested and interviewed have been found to be in the United States illegally.

And it hasn’t been a perfect year for Mansoor, though he may be loathe to say so. Hall admits Mansoor “made some comments which weren’t too popular,” presumably referring to what he said after 23-year-old Israel Maciel was killed in a drive-by shooting.

When asked for his reaction to the shooting, Mansoor said city officials needed to remove the “welcome mat” for criminals. “When you have job centers, soup kitchens and a high concentration of downscale rental units, it drives the city down,” he said then. The remark provoked a number of angry letters to the editor of this newspaper from people who thought the mayor was being insensitive to a grieving family.

But Mansoor couldn’t name any mistakes he made in 2006 and said he doesn’t think of things that way, but rather as learning experiences.

“In general, I try to be clear about what I’m trying to do and what I’m not trying to do, and I think any time that the public misunderstands or misinterprets what you’re trying to do, I try to look for ways of improvement in that area,” he said.