The love San Diegans shower on the Chargers is not lavished on the team’s special counsel. Among the faithful, Mark Fabiani is as popular as a Raiders quarterback. Last October, when the Harvard-trained lawyer addressed Bolts diehards at Spreckels Theater, his remarks were drowned in boos.

Could those boos turn into cheers?

On Friday, the Chargers made a series of dramatic moves. First, it announced an agreement in principle to become tenants in the Los Angeles Rams’ planned $2 billion arena in Inglewood. With a firm L.A. offer in hand, the team then turned to San Diego, promising to play the 2016 season in Qualcomm Stadium.

Finally, Chairman Dean Spanos issued an emotional statement, saying he had fresh hopes the Bolts would stay in San Diego “for the long term in a new stadium.”


CHARGERS LATEST

Chances are, the Chargers’ revived efforts will be led by Fabiani. While he spent much of the last year blasting San Diego and its leadership, a 180-degree about-face would not surprise insiders.

“If Dean Spanos gave directions to Mark Fabiani this afternoon to open discussions with San Diego and see what we can do,” City Attorney Jan Goldsmith said earlier in the week, “Mark Fabiani’s attitude would change.”

Since the Chargers hired him in 2002, Fabiani has deflected anger and criticism away from the Spanos family. Frustrated by mediocre performances by the team’s players and relocation threats from the franchise’s executives, fans call the 58-year-old counselor “bully,” “henchman,” “hired gun.”

Those who know him, even his opponents, use a different word.


“He’s a very intelligent man,” said Adam Day, the chair of Faulconer’s task force.

“He’s incredibly intelligent,” said Fred Maas, who led the task force under Faulconer’s predecessor, Mayor Jerry Sanders.

“He’s brilliant,” said Bill Southworth, his debate coach at the University of Redlands.

This brilliance has sparkled in numerous settings. A smash-mouth competitor, he foiled then-L.A. police chief Daryl Gates. A political animal, he was President Bill Clinton’s special counsel during the Whitewater investigations. An adviser to the rich and beleaguered, he’s mapped out strategies for disgraced bicyclist Lance Armstrong and Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelman.


Colleagues say he has an uncanny sense of timing, knowing when to speak and when to stay silent — requests for an interview for this story were met with polite demurrals, Fabiani citing scheduling conflicts.

Others, though, describe a dedicated family man, a fan of Italian culture, a weekend bicyclist, and someone who should never, ever be underestimated. If you look across the bargaining table and see Mark Fabiani, a former opponent said, it’s safe to this won’t be an easy session.

“Welcome to the big leagues,” Adam Day said.

‘A connected guy’

The son of an Ontario police officer, Mark Domenic Fabiani was raised in Southern California’s Inland Empire. At La Verne’s Damien High School, Mark starred on the debate team, honing his skills at Saturday workshops. Later, his undergraduate diploma from Redlands would list his major as philosophy, but everyone knew Fabiani’s true course of study was the art of argument.


“He researched his butt off,” said Coach Southworth. “He knew everything, he knew what he was talking about and he was very strategic. He knew how to dissect arguments and extend them.

“And, obviously, he had a very effective speaking style.”

Obvious to Southworth, that is, because he witnessed Fabiani’s performance in 1979. Throughout that academic year, two-person teams at colleges across the nation had argued the pros and cons of a single topic.

RESOLVED: That the federal government should implement a program which guarantees employment opportunities for all United States citizens in the labor force.


In the fall, Fabiani’s team dominated tournaments at Harvard, Northwestern, Emory.

Before arriving at the University of Kentucky for the nationals, though, his partner left the squad. At the last minute, Fabiani was paired with another debater. While surviving the initial rounds, eventually they were eliminated.

Harvard took the top prize — for teams. The prize for the top speaker? Fabiani.

“I’ve won the national championship since,” said Southworth, who still leads the Redlands program. “But of the students I’ve coached, Mark would certainly be in the top three. He is one of the top all-time debaters.”


Debaters need to analyze massive amounts of material and craft winning arguments, skills valued by law firms and law schools. Redlands doesn’t send many graduates to the Ivy League, but Fabiani’s high grade point average and debating prowess resulted in admission to Harvard Law.

In Cambridge, he fell into a remarkable circle. Fellow students in the Class of ’82 included a future governor (Deval Patrick of Massachusetts), two future U.S. senators (Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Jack Reed, D-R.I.) and one future U.S. Attorney General (Alberto Gonzalez). Even in this constellation, Fabiani was a star.

Through debate, he had met veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who linked him to the Kennedy clan. Even as a first-year student, Fabiani “seemed to be a connected guy,” said David Steuer, a classmate who is now a partner in a Palo Alto law firm. “And that turned out to be the case.”

He was mentored by Alan Dershowitz, the celebrated constitutional law professor. When Claus von Bülow was accused of attempting to murder his wife, the wealthy socialite hired Dershowitz as his lawyer. Dershowitz, in turn, tapped his best and brightest students to assist in the defense.


“Mark was one of those young lawyers on Dershowitz’s team,” said John Stodder Jr., who worked with Fabiani at his first post-Harvard stop, Los Angeles City Hall. “Mark was in that room.”

After graduating from Harvard, Fabiani swapped coasts and continued to soar. In Los Angeles, he once more became a key player making critical decisions behind closed doors.

‘A real believer’

Ascending quickly, Fabiani eventually became Mayor Tom Bradley’s right-hand man. Brash and quick, part of a new breed challenging city elders, the young lawyer helped engineer the departure of several powerful figures who — in this newcomer’s eyes — had outlived their usefulness.

One of his victims: Police Chief Daryl Gates, forced out in the wake of the 1992 riots. The chief famously denigrated Fabiani as a “slick-haired ... young kid.” That view was echoed by Los Angeles City Council President John Ferraro, who once ejected the young lawyer from a meeting after a fierce argument.


Fabiani could be charming, though, as he demonstrated with another city worker, an administrative assistant 10 years his junior. Before leaving L.A. City Hall, he would marry June Grubbs.

While some oldtimers were irritated by Fabiani’s “ambitious, smarty-pants” crew, they helped an aging mayor re-connect to parts of the community that had felt disenfranchised. Those links proved invaluable after the videotaped beating of a black man, Rodney King, went vital.

“Mark,” Stodder said, “was a real believer that people are kind of the source of policy.”

He brought this people-first perspective to Washington in 1993. After a year in two federal departments, Justice and Housing and Urban Development, he joined the Clinton White House. With fellow lawyer Chris Lehane, he became known for his quick and effective work fending off Republicans like New York’s Sen. D’Amato in the initial stages of the Whitewater investigation.


The duo, Newsweek proclaimed, were the “Masters of Disaster.”

Personal disaster brushed Fabiani one evening in January 1996. Walking from his Metrorail stop in suburban Alexandria, Va., Fabiani found his commute home interrupted by two strangers. The men grabbed Fabiani, threw him into a car and drove him to a series of automatic teller machines. After Fabiani handed over $1,600, the kidnappers set him free.

Fabiani left D.C. within the year. Although he would work for Vice President Al Gore’s unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign, even coordinating the team’s daily messages to the media during the Florida recount, he did not return to Washington.

Instead, he set out for San Diego.


The Chargers’ goal

As introductions go, this one was a hit.

On Aug. 29, 2002, the newly hired special counsel to the Chargers assured his audience that his job was to find a profitable way to keep the team in San Diego “for the long haul.”

Unnamed Los Angeles parties were eager to lure the team north, Fabiani acknowledged to the Citizens’ Task Force on Chargers Issues.

“But to the Chargers,” the lawyer said, “that is all beside the point. The Chargers’ goal is clear: We want to play championship caliber football in San Diego.”


There was just one catch. The team, Fabiani said, required a new stadium. While the special counsel did not make this explicit in that public meeting, in private he was adamant that most of the cost must be borne by taxpayers.

His timing was terrible. He joined the Chargers while City Hall was focused on the Padres’ new ballpark, Petco Park, which would open in 2004. In that election year, Mayor Dick Murphy won re-election only to be swamped by a pension funding scandal. Just five months into his second term, he resigned.

The pension debacle, the Great Recession, the rise in home foreclosures. All seemed more pressing problems to Murphy’s successors, Sanders and Faulconer, than replacing Qualcomm Stadium with a sports palace for an owner with a net worth around $1 billion.

Still, task forces were appointed, meetings were held, deals were discussed. If Fabiani continued to insist on hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies, some negotiators didn’t blame him.


“Mark isn’t paid to be a potted plant, he’s paid to be an advocate for his client,” said Maas, Sanders’ point person on football stadium issues. “He’s an absolute class act, and I respect how he’s protected his client.”

Goldsmith, who has known Fabiani since 2009, agreed. “Mark is working for a client who he cares for a lot, Dean Spanos, and Dean Spanos makes the decisions not Mark Fabiani,” he said. “People need to realize this.”

Yet Tony Manolatos, a spokesman for Faulconer’s 2015 stadium task force, suspected that Fabiani was eager to torpedo recent efforts to craft a plan for San Diego.

In private meetings of the task force, “he told us the Chargers were agnostic when it came to the stadium’s new location — it really didn’t matter to them. He told us to settle on a site, spend your time analyzing these two sites and then come up with a financial plan.


“That’s what we did,” Manolatos said, “and then he was criticizing us every step of the way.”

This was an act, County Supervisor Ron Roberts said, intended for a select audience: The other 31 NFL team owners. They would have to approve the Chargers’ move out of San Diego.

“Early on,” said Roberts, “I think their hope was to show the NFL they were completely unloved in San Diego. ... It was all part of a game plan.”

To a large degree, that scheme failed. Early in January, the owners rejected a plan for the Chargers and Oakland Raiders to leave their respective cities and build a joint stadium in Carson. The Rams’ decision to leave St. Louis for Inglewood was blessed, and the Chargers were given a year to negotiate space in that new stadium — or mend their ruptured relationship with San Diego.


Some voices have been raised against Fabiani being in the room when the team resumes talks with the city. If the lawyer loses the Chargers account, he won’t starve. His current roster of clients include two Las Vegas billionaires: Adelman, the casino owner and major Republican Party donor, who last month bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal; and Elaine Wynn, the ex-wife of casino owner Steve Wynn.

These services don’t come cheap. Quoted monthly rates for Fabiani and business partner Lehane range from $30,000 to $100,000. No wonder Fabiani can afford condos in La Jolla and Manhattan, each worth close to $1 million, and indulge in trips to his favorite overseas vacation spot, Italy.

Still, another round of talks between team and town is now inevitable, and someone has to represent the Chargers. After all the boos, tears and drama, is the City Attorney willing to resume negotiating with Mark Fabiani?

“Can I work with him? Yeah,” Goldsmith said. “People don’t like some the things he’s said, and rightly so. But he’s serving a role.”


peter.rowe@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1227

Twitter: @peterroweut