Commentary: How did Team Newport uspet the council status quo?

As an opinion columnist, I have found the four years of outgoing Mayor Rush Hill’s council service very interesting, especially how it ended.

The election has been over for more than a month now, and people are still trying to figure out what happened in Newport Beach, particularly who is to blame.

With all the folks I’ve sat with, the culpable names have flown around fast and furious: political consultants, political donors and just plain old “Duffy.”

All four candidates on the slate known as “Team Newport,” with Marshall “Duffy” Duffield at the top of the ticket against incumbent Hill, won their elections against more established, yet firmly status quo, candidates.

At the top of the establishment-is-good slate was Hill, and while challengers Michael Toerge and Tim Brown didn’t consider themselves part of Hill’s slate, Hill and councilman Keith Curry lumped them together in campaign speeches and in an attempt to combat Team Newport’s establishment-is-bad slate.

So while all the “blame” is being directed at Duffy, and even the Residents for Reform Political Action Committee and their backing, at the end of the day, it wasn’t the money spent that made the difference.

After all, Jack Croul spent almost $250,000 in 2008 in an attempt to defeat Curry, and I raised more than $100,000 that same year to target then-Councilman Steve Rosansky. And both of our opponents overwhelming won reelection, as the status quo always had.

What explains the 2014 defeat of the status quo? Hill.

The former Newport Beach Citizen of the Year, founder of the Economic Development Committee and self-proclaimed eighth council member defeated candidate Ed Reno in 2010. Reno had the exact same message as Team Newport: Pensions are too high, city employees get paid too much, the civic center project was too expensive to build.

But when Hill took office in 2010, his castle quickly began to crumble. A resident filed two complaints with the Fair Political Practices Commission about Hill voting on a Mariner’s Mile project that was near his property, resulting in letters from the agency but no formal penalties. Then he snapped at people, once using a curse word, during a couple of council meetings.

So on the campaign trail, Hill kept telling Newport Beach’s voters that the direction of the city was a good one, which it is.

That Newport Beach’s finances are in good shape. Which technically, they are.

That Newport Beach’s harbor, beaches, streets and schools are great. Which they are.

That Newport Beach’s police and fire departments are the best in the county. Which they are.

But at the end of the day, even all the great stuff about Newport Beach couldn’t overcome all of people angered or aggravated by Hill.

So he lost, and so did everyone associated with him.

And just as mercurial was his rise, so was his fall.

Thank you, Rush Hill, for giving me four years of things to write about.

Newport Beach resident JACK WU is a columnist for the Orange County Register and a former Daily Pilot columnist.