The race for Newport Beach City Council: Steven Rosansky

Mathis Winkler

NEWPORT BEACH--District 2 council candidate Steven Rosansky’s arrival

here 15 years ago resembled that of his Greek and Russian ancestors on

Ellis Island many decades earlier.

Fresh out of law school, he decided to settle in Newport Beach after

visiting girlfriends from his university in the beach community.

Riding his bike around Balboa Island, “I went up and down the street,

looking for a ‘for rent’ sign,” he said. Once he found one, he rented the

place “on the spot.”

A short while later, he gave up the legal profession and switched to

the real estate business. By that time, he also had moved to West

Newport, where he now lives in the Newport Shores neighborhood.

“If I move, I’ll move to the beach,” he said, adding that the ups and

downs during the last economic recession sometimes made him think that he

might have been better off sticking to law. “I’d like to have an

oceanfront home.”

Rosansky said his ultimate goal is to become a real estate developer.

“I’d like to build things,” he said, sitting outside the Boy Scout Sea

Base on Pacific Coast Highway, where he volunteers as an assistant

Scoutmaster.

If there’s one regret he has about his possible election to the City

Council, it is that he won’t be able to spend as much time with the Boy

Scouts as he has in the past. The Scouts and the council both meet

Tuesday nights.

“Be prepared,” the Scouts’ motto, has remained with him since his own

Scout days in Brooklyn, N.Y., Rosansky said.

Apart from preparing for his run for office, he also is getting ready

to help his wife, Gina, open a new business. She already has a franchise

sandwich bar and ice cream parlor in Orange. Rosansky said she hopefully

will open more in the near future.

Rosansky, who has spent less than $1,000 on his campaign so far, keeps

telling voters at candidate forums that he is not going to push just one

issue if elected.

He presents himself as a candidate who doesn’t have a “pet issue” and

will look at the larger picture once elected.

Rosansky said he has not been back to his family’s U.S. origins in New

York for 14 years. Apart from a great aunt, everyone has left Brooklyn

anyway, he said.

“There are not Mayflower relations in our background,” he said. “We

came to Ellis Island. We’re the American dream, I guess.”