Five Players Give San Juan a Quiet Clout : Politics: Experts agree area has advantage with presence of Sheriff Gates, Democratic activist O’Neill, developers Birtcher, Moiso and transportation official Hausdorfer.

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO —  For a small town in the boondocks of Orange County, it used to take an old trick to get political attention: Throw a barbecue.

“That was the only way we could get them to listen to us,” said Lawrence Buchheim, a longtime San Juan Capistrano rancher whose brother, Carl, was the city’s first mayor. “First, we had to offer them a steak and a couple of drinks.”

San Juan Capistrano is still out in what’s left of the boondocks of Orange County, backed up to 40,000-acre Rancho Mission Viejo and the Cleveland National Forest. This city of 30,000 people still prides itself on its rural, homespun roots and, like the rest of the South County, it still has never had an elected legislative representative higher than a city council member, not even a county supervisor.

But today, five of the most important of a new generation of players in the county’s business and political levels have made the rolling hills of the Capistrano Valley their home or headquarters. And they are listening to the needs of the community.

Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates is the most visible. But working in relative obscurity here are Richard O’Neill, a longtime Democratic Party activist, restaurant owner and rancher in the valley; Arthur B. Birtcher, a major Pacific Coast developer whose family owns a sprawling estate in the hills below Laguna Niguel; Gary L. Hausdorfer, once considered a front-runner for a South County congressional seat and who now chairs the powerful Orange County Transportation Authority, and developer Anthony R. Moiso, who lives in Laguna Beach’s Emerald Bay but works out of his headquarters next to Ortega Highway.

Their presence undoubtedly lends political clout to San Juan Capistrano and the South County region, most experts agree.

“Absolutely, it’s important,” said Phillip R. Schwartze, a county land-use consultant and lobbyist from San Juan Capistrano and a former chairman of the powerful Local Agency Formation Commission, which oversees the incorporation of county land into cities. As chairman, Schwartze watched out for San Juan Capistrano’s interests during the recent incorporation fever that saw five new cities spring up in the South County.

“To me, having someone from your area involved in regional activities is the most important thing there is,” Schwartze said. “At a regional level you have better access to control of the city’s destiny and potential funding opportunities.”

It cannot hurt a community to have the man who heads the county’s largest law enforcement agency (Gates); or a man who chairs a transportation entity responsible for overseeing $500 million a year in traffic improvements (Hausdorfer); or a man who has headed up the Democratic Party at both the county and state level (O’Neill); or a developer whose company is in the top five commercial builders in Southern California (Birtcher). Not many county cities can make these claims.

Indeed, when talk of a new regional airport began to center on South County in the 1980s, San Juan Capistrano city officials knew whom to turn to: O’Neill. As the story goes, Buchheim, Hausdorfer, and then-City Manager Stephen B. Julian appealed to O’Neill, on whose ranch or adjacent to it the airport was proposed.

“Dick told us: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll stop that airport if I have to go to the President of the United States.’ I said: ‘The man has spoken and the meeting’s over.’ We all packed up and went home,” Buchheim said.

But the reasons each of these men settled into the valley had nothing to do with politics or business. It’s the lifestyle here, they say.

“I can’t think of any other place in Orange County I would want to live other than San Juan Capistrano,” Hausdorfer said. “It’s nice to have a place to call home where the pace is a little slower, where people know you by name. I think that’s very appealing in a world that’s pretty unfeeling sometimes and fast-moving.”

That’s not to say these men have not had their detractors.

San Juan Capistrano’s Tom Rogers, an outspoken member of a county taxpayers group, charged that, outside of those of Birtcher, most of the activities have been self-serving.

“I don’t know the Birtchers, so I can’t say much about them, but, for the rest of these guys, from the standpoint of political clout, I have never seen any sign at all that they have done anything except to benefit themselves,” Rogers said. “Don’t get me wrong; these aren’t bad people. But if they have done things for the South County, it was for themselves first. All in all, most of it has not been a benefit, but probably a detriment.”

Said Birtcher, who lives on an eight-acre estate--Rancho de Dios--with his mother and brother as well as other members of his family: “We are card-carrying San Juanians. Our family is very, very involved in the cultural, social and spiritual qualities that make this little town.”

Of the five, Hausdorfer is the Johnny-come-lately of all, having lived in San Juan Capistrano “only” 20 years, a newcomer contrasted with the rest. Birtcher has lived in the city 32 years, Gates all his life. O’Neill and Moiso are relatives (Moiso is O’Neill’s nephew) whose family purchased the 230,000-acre Rancho Santa Margarita y las Flores in 1882.

A capsule of each of the five:

* Birtcher, 53, is co-chairman of the Laguna Niguel-based family company now called, simply, Birtcher, with his brother, Ron. The company has a network of 22 regional offices in 14 states, is currently developing more than $2 billion of property and manages more than $850 million in various real estate portfolios. Birtcher is a member of the policy advisory board of the Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley and a trustee at the University of San Diego. But he and his wife, Gaye, are also active on the local level. He is a member of the board of governors of Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo, a member of the board of directors of Orange County United Way’s construction committee and chairman of Mission San Juan Capistrano’s restoration fund.

* Gates, 53, has been elected five times to the office of county sheriff-coroner. He went to the old Capistrano Union High School, and he and his wife, Dee Dee, are building the Ortega Equestrian Center in San Juan. Gates joined the Sheriff’s Department in 1961 and was assigned to guard duty in the County Jail. He rose to the rank of undersheriff and, with the backing of outgoing Sheriff James A. Musick, eventually ran successfully for the office of sheriff in 1974.

* Hausdorfer, 46, is a self-employed investment adviser who moved to San Juan Capistrano from his native Glendale. He has been a member of the City Council for 14 years after briefly serving as a planning commissioner. Considered a rising star in the Republican Party, Hausdorfer was a front-runner for the new congressional seat that never materialized in the redistricting that followed the 1990 census. In 1990, he became the first South County representative to the old Orange County Transit District. Last summer, Hausdorfer became chairman of the OCTA, the new group formed out of the merger of the OCTD and the Orange County Transportation Commission in 1991.

* Moiso, 53, is a seventh-generation Californian and president and chief executive officer of Rancho Mission Viejo’s Santa Margarita Co. He is responsible for the ranching, farming, development and financial management of the ranch, at 65 square miles the county’s second largest (behind the Irvine Ranch) privately owned landholding. After a stint as a first lieutenant in the Army, Moiso joined the Mission Viejo Co. in 1965. He left soon after the company was sold to Phillip Morris Cos. Inc. in 1972. In 1983, Moiso restarted the Santa Margarita Co. and later embarked on the establishment of the 5,000-acre town of Rancho Santa Margarita, which will ultimately provide housing for an estimated 40,000 people.

* O’Neill, 69, is the grandson of Richard O’Neill, an Irish immigrant and prominent cattleman who, with James Flood, purchased Rancho Santa Margarita y las Flores in 1882 when it stretched from Aliso Creek to Oceanside in San Diego County. His father, Richard O’Neill Jr., took over the Orange County portion of the ranch during World War II when a large portion of the acreage was sold to the Department of the Navy for the establishment of Camp Pendleton. Because of these holdings, O’Neill has long been on Forbes magazine’s list of the country’s wealthiest individuals and families, with holdings listed at $300 million. Besides being on another very restricted list--those of prominent Democrats in South County--O’Neill owns the El Adobe restaurant and the old Tiny Naylor’s in San Juan Capistrano and has a home on Rancho Mission Viejo.