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For 35 years, Santa Rosa attorney Richard "Dick" Day was the ultimate governmental watchdog and environmental leader.
Day, whose fingerprints are all over the political and environmental landscape that has shaped Sonoma County since his arrival, died Saturday at Kaiser Hospital. He was 67.
The cause of death is undetermined.
His son, Doug Day, said Sunday that his father was driving home Nov. 13 from a visit with family in Oregon when he stopped at a hospital in Klamath Falls complaining of abdominal pain.
It turned out to be a leak in his aorta and he was airlifted to UC Medical Center in San Francisco, where he had a stent inserted on Nov. 16. He was transported by ambulance to Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa Wednesday to recuperate further, his son said.
"Everything was looking good," said the younger Day, who said his father died unexpectedly at around 4:20 a.m. Saturday. Services are pending.
The Idaho-born Day arrived in Rohnert Park in 1968, a 32-year-old attorney fresh out of U.C. Berkeley's Boalt School of Law.
He had barely set foot on Sonoma County soil when he won election to the Sonoma County Board of Education in 1969, and just a year later sought election to the county Board of Supervisors.
He lost and later moved to Santa Rosa, but his campaign set a tone for the three decades of political activism that followed when he urged that he and his opponents abandon their use of campaign signs, charging they were a blight on the landscape that did nothing to inform voters about the issues.
It was, in a sense, Day's warning shot that it was the issues that mattered, nothing else. From that time on, if there was a major political or environmental fight in Sonoma County, it's almost certain Day was going to be involved.
"He was my hero," said his son, a teacher in Santa Rosa's Mark West School District. "If he believed in something, he would put out the effort. He didn't ask others to do it. He walked the talk."
During his more than nearly four decades of activism, Day's legal and political skills helped open the state's coastline to public access; surrounded eight of the county's cities with voter-approved boundaries to protect against urban sprawl; pushed adoption of stricter campaign finance laws by the county and Santa Rosa; and fought all attempts to pass a sales tax increase to widen Highway 101 without the benefit of other transit improvements.
His skills, said good friend Bill Kortum, a former county supervisor considered the father of Sonoma County's environmental movement, were even more amazing considering he often was fighting underdog causes against entrenched forces.
Who else would take on the chairmanship of Sen. John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in the Republican-dominated bastion of Orange County?
"Dick was quite capable of sticking his neck out," Kortum said. "It was a classic case of the role he played."
Kortum's own group, Californians Organized to Acquire Access to State Tidelands, was fighting county attempts to keep 13 miles of beachfront as the exclusive domain of the Sea Ranch community in the late '60s.
Kortum credits Day's legal acumen with convincing the state Supreme Court to order county supervisors to reverse that decision, and for COAAST's successful statewide ballot measure that formed the California Coastal Commission and guaranteed public access to beaches.
Part of Day's power came from the pulpit of two groups he helped form. Sonoma County Conservation Action, the county's largest environmental lobbying group, has worked on anti-sprawl measures, while Concerned Citizens for Santa Rosa won city support in 1992 to restrict construction to 1,000 homes a year, after years of runaway growth.
"He was in on all the big issues," said longtime friend Kate Sater, a member of Conservation Action's board of directors.
"He was never afraid to challenge people on the issues," she said.
His list of losses was just as impressive. Battles to stop construction of Warms Spring Dam and the incorporation of Windsor on growth-related grounds, and the failure to win support for district elections in Santa Rosa to lessen the political dominance of one geographic segment of the city were among them.
His most painful loss, however, was more personal. A lifelong Democrat and integral part of the county's Democratic Party machinery, Day was appointed to fill a Sonoma County Municipal Court judge vacancy in 1979 by then-Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.
A year later he lost the judgeship when a deputy district attorney challenged him for the seat in a mid-year election.
Day rarely minced words. He said what he thought and was quick to protest what he perceived as government wrongdoing or misguidedness.
But even those he often battled with, including former Santa Rosa City Manager Ken Blackman -- whom Day once accused of running an "anti-democratic" form of city government -- said every city needs its Day.
"At times I don't think his criticisms were completely justified, but there needs to be somebody on the other side," Blackman said.
"There needs to be a Dick Day or someone like him raising questions and challenging those making the decisions. Our system works best when it has those checks and balances," he said.
Santa Rosa Councilwoman Noreen Evans credits Day for helping her successful effort to get county supervisors and her own council to adopt stricter campaign finance laws.
Besides that and other changes Day helped bring about, Evans said, he leaves one other important legacy: "the number of public officials in all nine cities and the county he helped elect who will carry forward the vision he had," she said.
Day is survived by his son, five brothers and sisters and one grandson. His wife, Jean, a retired Sonoma State University librarian, died last year.