COSTA MESA UNPLUGGED:

There came a time some years ago — this column flew by another name, then — when I had gotten used to and even a bit bored with the usual Westside improvement mouthpieces who were season-ticket holders to Costa Mesa City Council huddles.

The cast was a colorful bunch of characters. There were Janice Davidson and Martin Millard. Judy and Mike Berry. Kathleen and Chris Eric. Paul Bunney and the pony-tailed Eric Bever. Jim Fisler and the cantankerous but always entertaining John Feeney.

But then this chap named Allan Mansoor emerged from the ether. He was soft of voice, plain spoken and unassuming. Usually tieless — most often clad in Dockers and button-down dress shirts with a white T-shirt underneath — the clean-cut newcomer always addressed the council during public comments from a prepared statement.

His issues came right from the improver’s song sheet. Catering trucks with their La Cucaracha horns disturbed the peace. The Costa Mesa Job Center was a source of loitering and neighborhood blight. Westside thoroughfares were moonscapes and murder on the undercarriages of resident autos.

Mansoor was always prepared, respectful and polite whenever he laid his issues before the council. I was impressed.

Mansoor soon found himself strapped to a rocket, riding it to an altitude where his name soared among those most often mentioned as candidates for city council. He ran in November 2002 and won a seat on the council with just more than 7,600 votes. I voted for him.

And, so, shortly after the election I invited him for a chat over a coffee.

The guy who showed up was the same guy I’d observed at the council meetings. Soft-spoken. Thoughtful. Fair.

I learned he had grown up in Costa Mesa, on the very street where I reside. He was a graduate of Estancia High School and studied at OCC.

And we talked about the issues. We both agreed the job center should be closed, but for different reasons. I never liked the thing — and had written as much — because it was a city-funded mechanism too vulnerable to illegal employment transactions.

We chatted about how to improve the Westside. There was general agreement there, too. Improved housing. Economic revitalization. That sort of thing.

What impressed me about Allan Mansoor had to do with what he was not — a politician. He was, instead, just a homegrown boy who wanted to make a difference and improve his community.

But then Allan Mansoor became mayor in January 2005. And something happened to him. Somebody slipped him a flask of 100-proof politics. And he drank from it. Freely.

Sure, he helped lead the shuttering of the job center, which was fine in my book. But then he placed his crosshairs on the city’s Human Relations Committee, a group I believed was good only because it kept the competing factions in Costa Mesa talking. It kept the waters calm while the city worked through difficult issues whose solutions would have real effects on people, their homesteads and their livelihoods.

Then, later in the year, Mansoor gave life to his Frankenstein; the one issue that will define his stay at the city’s helm. He ushered to the council’s agenda — without benefit of a study session — the cross-designation of every Costa Mesa police officer, vesting them with the power to conduct immigration screenings.

It struck me as an extreme solution and potentially destructive for its lack of public vetting. An ICE agent in Costa Mesa’s pokey? Fine. But a 165-cop force out combing the streets of Costa Mesa for illegal immigrants? Way too Cold War East Europe for me.

The issue gave Mansoor instant political muscle in the citadels of GOP politics and made him a media star.

The footlights enticed him. He was featured in USA Today. Regularly kibitzed with Lou Dobbs on CNN and chatted it up with Bill O’Reilly on the “O’Reilly Factor.”

He did radio gigs with John and Ken on KFI-AM (640) and rode the crest of national attention following Jim Gilchrist and his Minutemen.

Mansoor the politician reached full bloom during the 2006 election cycle when he sought another term. His campaign was crafted by long-established political operatives, he honed to patently monotonous talking points, and he grossly mischaracterized the positions of those who sought more moderate solutions as having no interest in “upholding our laws.”

Then, Mansoor went over the top. His campaign manipulated images of long-time Costa Mesa residents Mike Scheafer and Bruce Garlich (two good men who were also candidates for city council in 2006) in one of his campaign mailers, making Scheafer look like an organized crime goon and Garlich like a death-camp survivor.

I never thought the homegrown Mansoor I had coffee with years earlier would embrace all this political manure and media stuff.

But, he did. And I regret that he did.

BYRON DE ARAKAL is a former Costa Mesa Parks and Recreation Commissioner. Readers can reach him at [email protected].