Chair Sara Wan digs in to try and hold post.
By Arnold G. York/Publisher
A bitter battle for the chairmanship of the California Coastal Commission, which has been seething beneath the surface for months, exploded into the open last week just before the Coastal Commission was due to vote on the issue at its Nov. 6 meeting in San Diego.
The day before the proposed vote, Coastal Commission Chair Sara Wan went public in an interview in the San Diego Union and accused Gov. Gray Davis of maneuvering to push her out as chair. As reported in the Union,Wan said she was informed of Davis’ intent to end her three-year tenure as leader of the powerful coastal agency in a phone call from Davis’ top environmental lieutenant, Resources Secretary Mary Nichols.
Nichols was quoted in the Union, saying, “I flatout deny that. It’s not true, never happened. I think she misunderstood the conversation.”
This bitter public rift between Wan and Nichols is surprising and unusual in that both are longtime activists in the environmental movement and have been close friends for years. They often allied on many environmental issues, and, in the past, have often spoken on environmental issues in tandem.
Although the rift has some of its antecedents in the acrimonious battle over the Malibu Local Coastal Program, it also has some very personal aspects that relate to Wan’s style as chair. A number of commissioners had become more vocal in their complaints about the way Wan, often backed by Executive Director Peter Douglas and commission staff, has used the chair to push her own particular environmental agenda. They say she often treated other commissioners who disagreed with her in an abrupt and somewhat disrespectful manner.
Typically, Wan could count on at least six or seven automatic votes for her views, although that majority had been eroding lately. There were rumors that a couple of commissioners, who in the past had been certain and reliable Wan votes, would be leaving the commission to be replaced by new appointments, which would probably cut Wan’s control further.
Wan moved first, and using her power as the chair, put the election of the chair and vice-chair onto the coastal agenda for November, instead of its normal date, December. If the election had gone forward at the November meeting, the old commissioners would have voted and Wan might have been reelected before there was an opportunity for new commissioners to be appointed.
There were rumors that Wan had cut a deal with one of the swing commissioners to back her as chair, but apparently one of the appointing authorities, probably either the speaker or the governor, nixed the deal at the last moment. Wan found herself in the position of having already placed it on the agenda, and then finding out that she probably didn’t have the votes to push it through.
Wan and fellow commissioner Pedro Nava, whose wife, Susan Jordan, is a cofounder with Wan of a political organization called Vote the Coast, put out a call to the more radical environmental community to try and flood the governor with messages and pressure to retain Wan, which is probably why Wan decided to go public in the news to try and force the governor’s hand.
In what some observers described as a brutal and bloody battle, the Coastal Commission in a 7 to 5 vote rejected Wan’s push for an immediate vote on the issue of the chair and the matter was put over until the December meeting. At that time there will probably be a couple of new faces on the Coastal Commission and Wan’s chance of being re-elected, although not gone, are probably diminished.
On the day after the vote to delay the decision on the chair just about everyone went public, and in the San Diego Union, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press and The Monterey County Herald published articles on the uproar.
Coastal Commission Vice Chair David Potter, who is a Monterey county supervisor and a candidate to be the next chair, said in an interview with the Union, “I’ve been here six years, and I’ve never seen the commission so dysfunctional. It’s gotten unnecessarily ugly.”
Potter was even more blunt in an interview with his local paper, The Monterey CountyHerald. He was reported saying he and other commissioners were “angered by assertions that the commissioners have traded votes or are at the mercy of special-interest groups.”
In language that was uncharacteristic of an experienced politician like Potter, and probably an indication of the depth of the feeling, Potter said to The Herald, “They’re lies. You can’t go around and state those kind of things.”
However, some of the more militant environmentalists didn’t seem particularly chastised by Potter’s comments. Mark Massera, director of the Sierra Club’s California Coastal Program and a close ally of Wan, charged, in a comment to The Herald that was calculated to throw oil on the fire, “It’s no coincidence that David Potter represents the area in Monterey where Clint Eastwood is trying to cut down thousands of Monterey pine trees to build a golf course.”
In the follow-up story in the San Diego Union, two commissioners, John Woolley of Humboldt County and Patrick Kruer of San Diego, were reported to have said they had long supported Wan as chairwoman but couldn’t go along with her power play. Wan characterized it differently. She said she pushed for the vote after she learned three commissioners were plotting to overthrow her as the chairwoman. She said to the Union, “This was a vote to clear the air.”
Of the seven commissioners who voted against Wan in the vote to postpone, four were appointed by Speaker Herb Wesson and three by the governor. The only governor’s appointment to vote with Wan was Christina Desser, a commissioner with a somewhat mercurial disposition, and one whose name has been mentioned as one of those who might be replaced.
Coastal Commissioner Cynthia McClain-Hill, often on opposite sides with Wan, said to the Union, “It’s [her] need to win at all costs without regard to what’s true that is patently offensive to me.”
Wan and her supporters said to the Union, “The vote reflects an attempt by the governor and the assembly speaker to control the commission and reward powerful friends who have developments pending before the agency.”