Involved with politics

Jack Croul, a former paint industry magnate, has added splashes of color to election year politics in Newport Beach.

The longtime Newport Beach resident pumped nearly $1 million of his own money into two separate political campaigns in 2008.

“I’d like to see the city run well,” Croul told the Daily Pilot earlier this year.

Croul bankrolled the successful Measure B earlier this year.

He poured about $680,000 into the Measure B campaign, outspending the opposition several times over with polling and direct mail.

Approved by voters in February, Measure B requires Newport Beach to build its next city hall on a piece of city-owned land in Newport Center. Critics of the measure wanted to see all of the land reserved for a park.

Croul circumvented city campaign finance laws earlier this year by funding an independent expenditure group to support local activist Dolores Otting’s run for the District 7 City Council seat against incumbent Keith Curry.

Croul pumped about $250,000 into the political action committee Taxpayers for Safer Neighborhoods for mailers, signs and phone polling in support of Otting.

Newport Beach limits how much money one person can donate to an individual City Council candidate to $500, but there’s no cap on how much an independent group can spend on fliers and things like television ads and billboards promoting one candidate — as long as a group works independently from the candidate.

Croul’s boost to the Otting campaign may have ultimately backfired. Otting lost to Curry by more than 9 percentage points. Some residents protested Croul’s political contributions by posting homemade signs on East Coast Highway.

“Jack Croul can’t buy me,” one sign read.

Croul’s Newport Beach roots run deep. He moved to the city in 1957. The former chairman of Behr Process Corp., Croul sold the company in 1999 and has since focused on traveling, his collection of vintage cars and philanthropy.

The Croul Family Foundation, which Croul oversees, donated about $3.4 million last year to charitable groups, most of it to homeless shelters, food banks and nonprofit groups such as United Way.

Whether Croul will remain an influential force in local politics in the coming year remains to be seen.

“My wife told me to stay out of politics,” Croul told the Daily Pilot last month.