The race for Newport Beach City Council

Mathis Winkler

NEWPORT BEACH -- When District 7 City Council candidate John Heffernan

graduated from Stanford University in 1972, his father sat him down for

some career talk.

“Your brother’s a farmer, the other a doctor and I’m a lawyer,”

Heffernan remembers being told. “If I’m gone, we need a lawyer in the

family.”

Heffernan had planned to become an engineer or an architect. But when

his father died two days later, he knew law school was his only option.

“He’d just paid for four years at Stanford,” Heffernan said, sitting

in his law office across the street from the city’s central library.

“That was a fair request.”

While he’s never regretted going along with his father’s final

request, his profession’s downfall does have him a little worried.

“The level of trust between lawyers, the truthfulness, the

objectiveness to reach a compromise for the common good has

deteriorated,” he said. “I never thought I’d be in a profession where you

are perceived in the general public as someone who should not be

trusted.”

Asked if he’d choose law school again, Heffernan paused, then said

he’d become a doctor instead.

“Most countries can get by with few lawyers,” he said. “But they can’t

get by with few doctors.”

Although his father had opened a law office in Newport Beach in 1946,

Heffernan grew up on his mother’s family farm in Santa Ana. (“The

Segerstroms were neighbors,” he said.)

“It was kind of a humble start,” he said, adding that his German

mother wouldn’t have approved of the stack of files crowding his office

floor.

“When you are raised on a farm and get on the back of a truck with

workers, you don’t forget that,” he said. A large painting of tomato

pickers and another of a janitor reading a newspaper in a Laguna Beach

cafe remind him of where he’s from, he added.

Heffernan isn’t accepting any contributions, so he’s putting his own

money up for the campaign. He expects to spend about $25,000, although he

adds that it might add up to a little more. In return for using his

family’s money, he’s banned any campaign activity from his home.

“The whole campaign puts a strain on the family,” he said. “But they

have been good sports about it.”

His run for a City Council seat is not a sign of greater aspirations,

he said.

“This is public service,” Heffernan said. “This isn’t going to lead

anywhere. . . . I don’t view myself as Moses. But with enough change,

maybe we can start thinking outside the box and do things differently.”