Ferguson ‘held firm’

War veteran and former state legislator Gil Ferguson, a longtime Newport Beach resident who also worked as a journalist, a developer and a political activist, died Sunday after an illness of several months. He was 84.

Nearly everyone who knew Ferguson, whether or not they agreed with his politics, respected him for sticking to his beliefs. Even the name of the political club he founded, Principles Over Politics, reflects that ethos.

“Unlike so many politicians that are a mile wide and an inch deep, he was not that wide but very deep,” said Buck Johns, a friend of Ferguson’s for years.

Ferguson was born in St. Louis in 1923 and moved to California in 1942, according to an assembly resolution commending his service in 1944. He served in the Marines for 26 years and fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

“He had the military bearing, he had the military presence, and everything that he did, in my estimation, came from his military experience,” Johns said.

During his military career, Ferguson wrote articles for American and European publications and military magazines, and he even produced promotional films for the military.

After retiring from the Marines, he went to work for the Irvine Co., where he founded the Irvine World News as a vehicle for the company to reach people buying homes in its developments.

He later started his own public relations firm in 1972, and with his wife, Anita, he ran a housing development company, Gilita — a combination of their names.

But he was perhaps best known for his deeply held political views. Elected in 1984 to represent an Assembly district that included Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, Ferguson, a Republican, served for a decade.

“You knew exactly where Gil stood,” said Marian Bergeson, who served in the state senate while Ferguson was in the Assembly. “There was never any doubt, and he held firm.”

He was one of a group of legislators known as the “cavemen” for their unbending conservatism and their opposition to many of the initiatives of the Democrat-controlled legislature.

“They voted no on everything,” Johns said, but he added that some of his positions have been vindicated. For example, then-Gov. Jerry Brown and then-Caltrans head Adriana Gianturco halted the building of new freeways in the early 1980s.

“Gil and the cavemen were the ones that said, ‘No, we have to keep building freeways,’ ” Johns said.

When he decided to run for a state senate seat, he didn’t try to hedge his bets by running for reelection to the assembly. The GOP backed someone else, and he was out of office. UC Irvine political scientist Mark Petracca respected him for that.

“He chose not to run for reelection, even though he could have, and gave up what was essentially a safe seat,” Petracca said. “I thought to myself, ‘My goodness, there’s a principled guy. He’s not just a guy playing politics.’”

Ferguson wasn’t afraid to criticize when he disagreed — he took on the Orange County GOP when he thought it wasn’t going in the right direction, and he wrote a column for the Daily Pilot on 2006 savaging the way the party seems to back whichever candidate has the biggest checkbook to fund a campaign.

A 1994 Los Angeles Times article recalled some of Ferguson’s more controversial positions — he proposed that repeat rapists be castrated, and he was among the first to suggest term limits in California.

“Some of the things he said were pretty salty, which is good because he said what some people were thinking,” said Marianne Zippi, whom Ferguson backed in an unsuccessful bid for the assembly in 2004.

As an assemblyman, he didn’t forget his Marine days and started a flap when he proposed a resolution saying there was military justification for the internment of Japanese-Americans in the U.S. after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The proposal failed miserably.

“Gil Ferguson was politically incorrect before it was cool to be politically incorrect — and he was proud of it,” Petracca said.

Zippi said Ferguson wanted his political club to continue, and she plans to keep it going as long as members are interested.

“I asked him just a few days ago about the mission statement, and he said, ‘Our whole purpose is to bring issues up that politicians are avoiding and hold their feet to the fire,’” she said.

A memorial service is set for 10 a.m. May 19 at Newport Harbor Lutheran Church, 798 Dover Drive, Newport Beach.