the last fifty-five days,” he said publicly at the time. His adversaries, he added, had contorted an innocent incident into something criminal.
From there, the city’s chastened prince did the unexpected. He boxed up his things and hotfooted it 1,700 miles to Arkansas.
DREAMING GRANDLY
He was there during most of the 1980s, doing what, nobody is quite certain. Everybody he spoke to from Arkansas heard different stories, the truth grafted, nuanced, or fabricated whole cloth. Maybe he was just airbrushing over his shame about tripping himself up just as new doors were about to open for him. What is known is that he stayed in a house that his mother purchased in a lakeside resort town called Heber Springs in Arkansas’ north-central Ozark Mountains. He also spent time in Little Rock, apparently doing campaign work for state Democrats. Interspersing his political work was a stint as a radio talk show host for a station whose call letters or format nobody can pinpoint all these years later.
Longtime friend Born visited him in Heber Springs in 1988. As usual, Ballreich did not show up to their agreed meeting place. Perplexed, Born asked a local where he could find the town’s big radio personality. “The guy laughed,” Born recalled. “He said, ‘Steve fries fish for a living.’ I thought typical Steve.”
Wherever his paycheck was signed, Ballreich spoke constantly about associating with then-Governor Clinton and his wife, Hillary. Depending on who you ask, he worked for Clinton, advised him, socialized with him, or some combination thereof. There were conspicuous similarities between the two. Both were political junkies and bubbly ambitious during the workweek, good time Charlies hooked to pathological libidos after hours, and magnetic one-on-ones around the clock.
“If you were in a crowded room with Bill Clinton, he’d talk to you like you were the only one there, and Steve was the same way,” quipped Glenn Thornhill, who knew Ballreich from his Young Republicans days. “Steve said he knew Bill and Hillary, and hung around in the same circles. Who knows? It could’ve been bull. But I can see why Steve liked him: Clinton was a successful Steve Ballreich.”
While in Arkansas, Ballreich fathered a daughter, Noelle. One source said he wed the mother in a shotgun marriage that did not last long. Before he died, he admitted he had been an absentee father and that at least Noelle would not be influenced by his poor decision-making.
Unfortunately, there was not always so much clarity. Ballreich, for instance, tried convincing folks he was part Irish in spite of the imposing, blonde appearance that confirmed his German heritage. Whether that blarney was a symptom of a delusional personality or a fanciful one, it helped him compartmentalize his life with slick divisions. Even longtime family friends had little inkling of his wild side, or the fact that he had done semi-pro boxing or battled health problems.
One characteristic he was unable to deflect from public consumption was the sexual appetite that incessantly put him in hot water. He acknowledged to a family friend that he had little restraint over his urges around a pretty face, and that when his “hormones percolated” he was a slave to them. “Light and dark,” this friend used to describe him. “Light and dark.”
Arkansas’ weather and backward climate helped propel him West back to Southern California. He returned almost broke, but with his love of politics and patriotism intact. At first, he stayed with friends until he had saved enough money to rent in South Pasadena, the quaint city of Craftsman homes that had been Alhambra’s arch-enemy for decades over the Long Beach Freeway controversy.
If he lived cheaply, he dreamed expansively. Ballreich, in early 1989, hooked arms with failed Alhambra Council candidate Allen Co in a novel bid to boost voting rates and political participation within the city’s Asian American community. It was a prescient move by a wily tactician; Asian Americans today comprise sixty percent of the town’s population. Ballreich told the media at the time that he was shocked at the level of prejudice towards them among whites and the surge of Asian businesses since he had left in 1979. Someone, he said, had to prepare the city of about 90,000 for a multi-ethnic future once its white-bred past slipped away. Co, who later served on the South El Monte Council, did not return phone calls.
Ballreich’s interests crackled beyond the coming minority-majority. In 1988, he and Merrill Francis, a longtime Alhambra lawyer and civic leader, launched a political consulting business called Pegasus after the mythical flying horse. Their gimmick: Francis, the Democrat and Ballreich, the centrist Republican, would bring a spectrum of campaign experience to their clients. Together only a few years, they mostly ran local council and school board races, generally with little success, branching out to manage then-Councilman Michael Blanco’s losing bid for California Insurance Commissioner.
Though creeping towards middle age, Ballreich was devoted to outdoor exercise, either running or playing tennis practically daily, Francis said. But there were issues. Though few knew it, Ballreich had gone back to Arkansas to have laser heart surgery performed. His autopsy report did reveal coronary blockages.
Francis said he has difficulty recollecting Ballreich’s murder because it coincided with the death of his first wife and his mother. Some memories remained un-dimmed. “Steve was very approachable and there was an excitement about him—a sex appeal. He made a strong impression.” At the time of his murder, Francis said, his partner was still a “ladies man with a pretty active social life.” Among other women he was dating was a youngish one who worked in the court system, Francis added. He did not know if detectives interviewed her. Authorities did disclose to Francis that Ballreich’s answering machine tape had given them promising leads. They said the murder had the earmarks of a professional job, what with shots to his face and heart area.
During their years together, Francis said Ballreich spent part of it traveling around the country promoting a patriotic cause for a man who later refused to pay him. Though angry about being stiffed on that job, Ballreich routinely took chances that almost no one else would, be it with spec assignments, pranks, or women half his age. It was as if he required the adrenaline kick to keep him interested. “Steve was a natural risk-taker,” Francis said. “He’d bet beyond his paying capability. One time he put up the pink slip on his car on a prize fight… What I’m seeing [today] is that he was a like a piece of quartz shining through many facets.”
Francis, now seventy-two, spoke at the funeral and tried assisting police. He does not subscribe to conspiracy theories that others whisper suggesting that Ballreich’s murder was politically motivated. “That scuttlebutt didn’t mean anything,” he said. “But there is disappointment that there hasn’t been retribution for whoever killed him.”
Ballreich’s allegiance to Clinton was as strong as ever after he re-migrated from the South. He told many in 1991, including Francis, that he would not only support the Arkansan for President but would raise money for him. If Ballreich was on the Clinton team, it is news to some of the ex-Presidents key advisers. Los Angeles lawyer John Emerson, who was involved with Clinton’s 1992 campaign to win the California primary, said he didn’t know who Ballreich was. Linda Dixon, assistant manager for volunteer and visitor services for the Clinton Foundation, parroted the same line. “I’ve been with President Clinton twenty-three years and I’ve never heard his name before,” Dixon said. “I’m only speaking for myself.”
Ballreich’s Young Republicans chums kept in contact with him to the end. Over drinks, they razzed him about how a died-in-the-wool conservative could champion a liberal-tilting Southern Democrat. When the needling stopped, these same longtime acquaintances noticed that while Ballreich was still the impulsive, flirtatious guy he’d always been, he had a more serious bent to him, a sort of world-weariness.
DIFFERENT MASKS
His death was quick, brutish, and well orchestrated. Residents who heard the shots summoned Alhambra police. Witnesses relayed they
