What Drives Joe Dunn : O.C.’s Democratic Senator Finds a Niche Challenging Caltrans

An Orange County politician crusading against Caltrans is a bit like 96-year-old Strom Thurmond, after 45 years in the U.S. Senate, suddenly clamoring for term limits: It’s not exactly going out on a limb.

Few of state Sen. Joe Dunn’s constituents in Anaheim, Garden Grove or Santa Ana would argue with his contention that the state’s transportation department is something less than a well-oiled machine.

Not when there are faulty welds in the Orange Crush freeway interchange, a construction blunder that will cost almost $2 million to mend. Not when oversized trucks bash into overpasses with some regularity, often after Caltrans erroneously approves the rigs’ routes. Not when the agency has simultaneously embarked on 60 construction projects in Orange County alone--more roadwork than in any other California county.

Still, county Democrats, already surprised by Dunn’s 1998 election from historically Republican turf, are downright giddy that he has carved himself such a visible niche. Quickly, the 41-year-old has morphed from consumer advocate to commuter advocate, hammering away at Caltrans to remedy transportation problems that resonate with voters of all political flavors.

For 15 years, Dunn was a successful lawyer who specialized in what one colleague calls the “toxic torts”--immense legal pursuits over faulty products such as fen-phen, breast implants and cigarettes, often involving hundreds of plaintiffs and typically targeting powerful corporations.

Now that he’s in political office, Dunn backs the Democratic Party’s traditional issues, such as abortion rights, gun control and HMO reform--but more than anything else, he is crafting an image as Sacramento’s Ralph Nader. Even as some accuse the rookie legislator of pandering to the trial lawyers who helped usher him into office, Democrats believe Dunn’s charge to wrest control of the motoring issues will only help to cement the party’s newfound foothold in Orange County.

Inroads in O.C.

When Dunn ousted Rob Hurtt, the former Republican Senate leader and a Garden Grove industrialist, in last year’s race for the 34th Senate District, it was another step in making Orange County a two-party battleground.

Dunn’s 2,700-vote victory over one of the most conservative lawmakers in Sacramento followed U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s win over maverick Republican Robert Dornan in 1996 and Democratic Assemblyman Lou Correa’s 1998 drive to become Orange County’s first Latino legislator--all in a county that effectively cemented Republican Pete Wilson’s victory in the 1990 governor’s race.

“Anytime a Democrat from Orange County says, ‘We can win this race,’ there is skepticism,” said Wylie Aitken, an Orange County attorney and part of the county Democratic Party’s fund-raising arm. “But the diversity and growth of this county is going to dramatically change the political landscape. I think it’s clearly the beginning of a new age.”

Dunn’s role has been forged largely on his pet transportation issues, which, as Republicans point out, is the political equivalent of kissing babies.

“In a sense it’s almost a matter of survival,” said Dana Reed, a Los Angeles attorney and a commissioner on the California Transportation Commission, which decides how transportation dollars should be spent. “An elected official who ignores transportation does so at his or her peril. It’s like crime. It’s like education. It’s like affordable health care. These are things that people expect their officials to be involved in.”

It was widely anticipated that Dunn and Correa, because they were elected from what has traditionally been the state GOP’s stronghold, would walk into the Capitol on a red carpet. But even Dunn’s targets say his crusade has given him more clout than anyone anticipated.

“He’s asking good questions,” said Caltrans spokesman Jim Drago. “It’s good government at work. Reasonable people can disagree and have a different read on different issues.”

In July, a 7,000-pound fiberglass tank was knocked off a truck under an overpass near the junction of the Riverside and Orange freeways. The tank killed a driver in a following car, and investigators determined that the bottom of the bridge was two inches lower than the truck’s stated load--though the truck’s route had been approved by Caltrans.

Dunn pressed for an investigation, and last week, state officials revealed that at least 14 accidents involving oversized trucks misrouted by Caltrans have occurred so far this year, twice the number they had previously acknowledged.

Orange Crush Welds

Caltrans also has revealed that welds in the $85-million Orange Crush interchange in Santa Ana broke at pressures lower than they were designed to hold. Though engineers insist the bridges are safe, Caltrans decided to replace 700 welds. The fix will cost at least $1.8 million--but it wasn’t enough for Dunn, who is pressing for an outside review.

“I told Caltrans from the get-go that I wasn’t out to get them,” Dunn said. “And my sincere hope was that my initial prodding into those issues would show that there was no need to look any further.

“But I found a system that is underworked, overstaffed, that has outdated equipment and almost no assurances anywhere in the process that there are true safety checks. There wasn’t some predesigned plan that I was going to go after Caltrans because they are a favorite target of criticism. A cynic could say that this is safe territory. But that was not what prompted it at all. . . . The more facts we dig out, the more it appears that there is a problem.”

Dunn reported that he was “livid” during the welds dispute--but that’s about as testy as he’s gotten. Drago said it became evident during a transportation oversight hearing last week that Dunn has no plans to abandon civility.

“It was not what I would call a show trial to just go in there and beat people up,” Drago said. “That kind of approach, to legitimately seek answers and information, that’s really doing the public’s business. It’s kind of refreshing.”

Dunn’s new role in the Senate is a direct product of his 15-year career as an consumer advocate attorney, first in his native Minnesota and then in Orange County. Over the years, he has touched many of the nation’s best-known product liability cases.

Born and raised in St. Paul, Minn.--the youngest of five boys and a descendant of three generations of labor workers--Dunn attended the University of Minnesota law school. He was immediately hired at a law firm, Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, that specializes in consumer advocacy cases.

His Record as Lawyer

Since moving to Orange County in 1985, he has represented Los Angeles County in its litigation against the tobacco industry and represented plaintiffs who sued the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington, alleging radiation exposure.

He oversaw thousands of breast-implant cases, was the lead attorney in suing an Orange County company that manufactured defective artificial-heart valves and coordinated cases in the UCI Medical Center fertility clinic scandal. In settling that litigation, UCI has paid $20 million to more than 100 infertile couples, including dozens who had eggs stolen.

And, as a partner in the Newport Beach law firm of Robinson, Calcagnia & Robinson, Dunn is still one of the coordinating attorneys for lawsuits filed against the makers of fen-phen. American Home Products Corp. is facing more than 4,000 lawsuits nationwide from people who used the diet drug cocktail before the drugs were recalled in 1997 amid evidence that users had developed hypertension and other heart problems.

“Consumer safety has just been a passion of his,” Aitken said. “This is just a very logical extension of that passion.”

Still, some question Dunn’s motivation. The senator raised more than $800,000 for his campaign. Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, a watchdog group, says half of it came from Dunn’s fellow trial lawyers. It shows that Dunn represents the interest of litigation-hungry attorneys, “not those of his constituents or the consumer,” said Anthony Bell, the state GOP’s former communications director and Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse’s executive director in Los Angeles.

For example, critics point to legislation that would pave the way for more lawsuits against auto insurers. The plan--orchestrated in large part by Dunn--would lead to new litigation and premium increases of $350 a year, Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush said last month.

“He is increasing and opening the avenues for litigation,” Bell said. “We’re just concerned that he’s representing personal-injury lawyers instead of consumers.”

Dunn concedes that he “sees eye to eye with trial lawyers on many issues,” but he denies that he is in any way beholden to them.

“After practicing law for 15 years I believe in the tort system,” he said. “But every organization of every political persuasion can get greedy, and trial lawyers are no exception. Will I stand up to trial lawyers? Of course I will. The constituents didn’t hire me because of my agenda. They hired me because of their agenda.”