Vote for Mayor Spotlights Racism Charges

The Lake Forest City Council could be heading for a bitter conflict tonight when it selects a new mayor, a process that in recent years has been tinged with allegations of racism.

For several years, the council has declined to give the position to six-year Councilwoman Kathryn McCullough. She is the first black council member elected in Orange County and, if voted in tonight, would be its first black mayor as well.

A familiar scenario is expected to play out at the council meeting. For the fifth year in a row, McCullough, the only council member who has not served as mayor, will be nominated for the post by Councilwoman Marcia Rudolph. McCullough also has been nominated five times for mayor pro tem, a job that often leads to a future nomination for mayor.

The council’s three other members have voted as a bloc during those years to elect one of themselves as mayor and one as mayor pro tem.

The choices have sparked protests in recent years from some residents and from Rudolph, who charged that the council majority’s decision to withhold the gavel from McCullough appeared racist.

“What other explanation is there?” Rudolph said Monday. “Any other comments they have made don’t appear to hold water.”

McCullough “has been in the trenches as a leader in the community; she has more leadership experience than those three put together,” Rudolph said. “People have to draw their own conclusions.”

But the majority bloc--Mayor Richard Dixon and council members Helen Wilson and Peter Herzog--deny accusations of racism. Wilson said she would not vote for McCullough this year; the other two said they had not decided.

“It’s really unfortunate that a small group of individuals chooses to bring up those issues in our community, where it’s completely inappropriate,” Dixon said.

Council members declined to give their reasons for denying McCullough the mayoralty. Any issues they have with McCullough are private, they said, and will be discussed with her in person.

“I do not believe in airing my laundry in public,” Dixon said Friday. “I think McCullough does a good job on the City Council, and I’m not going to say anything to undermine that.”

Lake Forest is a general law city, which means that its mayor is elected by council colleagues, rather than directly by the public.

Being mayor “is not an automatic right,” Dixon said. “Just because you’re on the council doesn’t mean you get to be mayor or mayor pro tem. That does not exist anywhere.”

McCullough said she has never received a clear explanation from any of the three.

“I don’t know what’s in their hearts,” she said. “We want an answer why, why, why, and that’s what the people of Lake Forest deserve.”

But she accused the council majority of monopolizing the mayor’s seat in the face of public opposition.

“They’re saying that everybody who voted for [Rudolph] and all the people that voted for me don’t have a voice, because the three of them are going to make the decisions, and that’s it,” McCullough said.

Several dozen McCullough supporters protested last December as Dixon, a health insurance broker, was elected to a third term as mayor.

Manny Marroquin, a spokesman for the League of United Latin American Citizens, told the council last year that the vote appeared to have racial overtones.

“I’m sorry that the city of Lake Forest doesn’t recognize diversity,” Marroquin said at the time.

McCullough, an ordained minister, was recently elected by mayors, City Council members and city managers across the state to the League of California Cities Board of Directors. She serves on several local, state and national committees and has run a nonprofit food bank in the area for more than 30 years.

McCullough and other council members helped lead the drive to make Lake Forest a city in 1991.

“If I’m not a leader, why do people keep putting me in leadership positions?” she said. “I think the people have waited a long time, and I feel the people’s desires should be met.”

Wilson, however, said she thought McCullough was not up to the task of leading the council’s meetings. She planned once again to vote for Dixon, she said. It would be his fourth term.

“I just have to have a comfort level that the person leading the meetings is going to be fair,” Wilson said, “and I don’t have that comfort level” with McCullough.