BETWEEN THE LINES -- Byron de Arakal

A couple of marquee items have entered the history books of our fair

twin cities that illustrate the danger of sloppy strategic thinking. And

in both instances the epilogue reveals vanquished characters who were

plainly too smart -- or seemingly so -- for their own good.

You’ll recall that it was Tuesday a week ago when roughly 10,000

Newport Beach folks trundled over to their local polling place to pass

judgment on Starpointe Ventures’ plan to erect a 10-story,

250,000-square-foot office tower at Koll Center Newport. The moment was

the city’s first special election under the edict of the Greenlight

Initiative. And in case you missed it, the $50-million project took a

drubbing. It wasn’t close.

But it might have been. Indeed, the ballots may well have fallen in

the project’s favor if only Starpointe’s lead general, Tim Strader, and

his political field marshal, Scott Hart, hadn’t committed a deadly

campaign flub.

Their costly miscue occurred, as I see it, when they formally tagged

the pro-project campaign organization as the “Greenlight Implementation

Committee.” Now a literal parsing of the moniker with some amount of

squinting can lead one to imagine that the name was technically correct.

It was Starpointe, after all, that set the date for the special election

(its legal right under Greenlight), and in so doing one might presume in

a vacuum that it was implementing Greenlight.

Nevertheless, in the cynical and calculating arena of politics, the

tactic was clearly too clever by half. Political campaign operatives call

it handing your opponents an issue. And so, quite predictably, the

fathers and mothers of the Greenlight Initiative torched the move as a

sinister plot to fool voters, to convince them that somehow the forces of

Greenlight were behind the campaign to bless the Koll Center project.

Whatever game plan Strader and company had for staying on message, for

communicating the facts and merits of the projects to Newport Beach

voters, was dashed. Instead, they found themselves back peddling for

nearly the entire campaign. And it occurs to me that had they found

windows of opportunity to peddle the project’s particulars, the

campaign’s dented credibility would have smothered the effort.

So chalk up the defeat of the Koll project to a self-inflicted gunshot

to the foot.

Turning the page, I’m reminded of the utter mismatch of wits that I

and a throng of others witnessed at the Nov. 19 session of the Costa Mesa

City Council. It was on that evening that the council spared our good

community further mind-numbing scrutiny of the Segerstrom Home Ranch

development. I’ll trust you’re aware the project received an affirmative

nod from that body. But you should know the project’s opponents will

hatch a referendum signature drive (another Greenlight-like experience to

relish) this Saturday.

The insufferable exchange of the evening occurred between Paul

Freeman, the cagey representative of C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, and the

intellectually enigmatic Councilman Chris Steel. Steel, who has had an

increasing tendency lately to engage in rambling off-subject sermons and

needless denials of impropriety, told Freeman of his continued unease

with the Segerstroms’ $2-million pledge to Costa Mesa schools, subject to

the council’s approval of the project. Home Ranch opponents had derided

the booty as a bribe. Sensitive to that perception, and following a

surreal cavalcade of pronouncements that “nothing untoward or

inappropriate” had occurred between him and the Segerstroms’ Freeman (no

one had asserted they had), Steel pressed Freeman to withdraw the pledge

and remove it from the development agreement. In its place, Steel asked

Freeman for the $2-million gift whether or not Home Ranch won the

council’s blessing. Freeman agreed.

Now, to the uninitiated, it might have easily appeared that Steel was

the principled and clever gunslinger in this exchange and got the draw on

Freeman. I saw it as Freeman playing chess with a blind man. Why? Because

it was already clear at that point that three council members would be

approving the project. Freeman, by “giving in” to Steel’s entreaty,

risked nothing.

I wanted to give Steel (God bless him) the benefit of the doubt and

conclude that he knew all of this going in. That his request of Freeman

was a deftly calculated move to purge the Home Ranch development

agreement of any residue that smelled of a “bribe,” but which nonetheless

committed the Segerstroms (not by contract, but by pledge) to the

$2-million kitty for the schools.

But then, inexplicably, Steel revealed from the dais that he pressed

the Segerstroms to pledge (and they agreed) $200,000 to cover the tab of

moving the languishing Huscroft House to Fairview Park.

The language of that deal was placed in the development agreement

without Steel’s objection. Now if we’re wringing our hands over

perceptions here, one might call this extortion. His final confounding

act was to approve every element of the Home Ranch project except for,

get this, the development agreement. Why? Because the school gift

remained within its provisions, and so the perception of bribery.

Bewildered? Me too. But at least we know Steel’s sensitivity to

perceived extortion isn’t nearly so acute as his unease with perceived

bribery.

* Byron de Arakal is a writer and communications consultant. He lives

in Costa Mesa. His column runs Wednesdays. Readers may reach him with

news tips and comments via e-mail at o7 [email protected] .