Hedgecock Always Wanted to Be in Charge

In 1972, a cadre of ambitious young men convened monthly meetings over lunch at the Executive Hotel, just a block from City Hall. Their purpose was to plot their futures as San Diego power brokers.

Among the group was a dark-eyed attorney named Roger Allan Hedgecock.

“Roger’s dreams were very environmentally oriented--the basic dream of protecting San Diego from becoming Los Angeles,” said Dick Murphy, a city councilman who was one of those at the meetings. “That was half of his dream.

“The other half of his dream was to be in charge.”

Hedgecock is the kind of guy who always has to be in charge, according to dozens of people who have known him.

A born leader and hustler, he bought his first house just out of high school, worked his way through college by promoting rock concerts, then cut his hair, graduated as president of his law school class and plunged into a career of politics. He was a conservative Republican who struck political pay dirt in the liberal environmental movement.

By 1983, when he became mayor of the nation’s 7th-largest city, Hedgecock had redefined San Diego politics by assembling a coalition of “yuppies,” labor union members, minorities, businessmen and homosexuals. He did it partly by presenting, in a convincing and charming manner, a riveting vision of San Diego’s future.

He also thrived on a biting, intimidating style best reflected by how he once advised a friend to run a political campaign: “Attack, attack, attack.”

“Roger was all about power in so many ways,” said Scott Piering, a London rock music agent who worked and lived with Hedgecock during his college years in California.

“It’s a confrontational world, in business and politics,” Piering said. “Roger was not about to come in second.”

Now Hedgecock has, for the moment, won again, gaining a mistrial in Superior Court on charges that he committed felony conspiracy and perjury in a complex scheme to illegally funnel thousands of dollars into his 1983 mayoral campaign. Hedgecock will be able to retain his office, but he and the city face an agonizing replay of the court case.

More than just a case about the finer points of the law, the trial that ended Wednesday was a public hearing on the mayor’s complex character and personality.

While Hedgecock and his attorney argued that he was an honest man guilty of inadvertent mistakes, prosecutors painted a portrait of a former county supervisor who had once solicited a $24,000 loan from a businessman with a vested interest in his vote. Prosecutors said Hedgecock was a man so unscrupulous and consumed with “raw ambition” that he ultimately lied, cheated and connived to steal an election.

Whatever the view, San Diego’s mayor remains a person who, very early, realized he was different and better.

“Everything he did reeked of confidence,” said John J. Bowen, Hedgecock’s civics teacher at St. Augustine High School 21 years ago.

“I had an exchange a couple of times where he made me feel like I should go back to college,” said Bowen, who still remembers Hedgecock well. “Roger had a definite knack of making you feel inadequate at times.”

Part of that knack came from Hedgecock’s formidable mind, which friends and former aides say is able to quickly absorb vital information from stacks of law briefs and technical government reports. His ability to recall sometimes the most arcane facts puts him at an advantage during arguments and debates.

Dennis Hedgecock still remembers how his brother, three years his senior, would ignore invitations to play outside and lock himself away to read books. He remembers that his brother particularly liked biographies and accounts of California water history. It was as if Roger were researching how “other people acquired, dealt with power in their lives,” Dennis Hedgecock said.

When it came to earning money, young Hedgecock was just as intense. Dennis said: “That guy was hustling for money.” Childhood jobs included a paper route and shelving books at a local branch of the library, the earnings from which were parlayed into a $12,000 down payment on a small house in Ocean Beach.

By the time he was 17 years old, Hedgecock was a landlord.

Hedgecock plowed through St. Augustine, the Catholic all-male bastion in North Park, with the same kind of aplomb, earning the yearbook title of “true nonconformist” by the time he graduated in 1964.

Despite a chronic problem with his complexion, a problem that would scar him for life, he overcame any insecurity and was able to charm or dominate those around him.

Hedgecock’s bearing led to a part in the school’s play, “Stalag 17.” Bowen, also the school’s drama coach, said he cast Hedgecock as the Gestapo captain of a prisoner-of-war camp. “He was most convincing,” Bowen said.

Hedgecock reserved some of his persuasive powers for the high school political arena. Nominated for class vice president at St. Augustine as a junior, he showed a knack for the game of campaigning in an unsuccessful bid against the star quarterback.

“I remember Roger seeking out the key (school) leaders in various groups, going after their support,” said Phil Clifford, the eventual winner and now a New York attorney. “I found that to be a very interesting, intelligent approach for someone who was an underdog. I admired him for that.”

Once, Hedgecock broke up a staid senior convention held to nominate the school’s class officers when he stood up and nominated for president the school “geek,” recalled lifelong friend and St. Augustine graduate Anthony Berardini.

Hedgecock delivered a nominating speech that had students stomping and cheering because he promised that the unlikely candidate, if elected, would make sure everyone could “go south,” schoolboy slang for sneaking over to Tijuana for a beer. The “geek,” however, lost the nomination.

Meanwhile, Hedgecock, the ever-hustling entrepreneur, also became manager of a musical band composed of high school buddies. The hobby grew into a business at UC Santa Barbara that eventually helped him pay his way through the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

It also provided a release for the sometimes impulsive, iconoclastic Hedgecock, who would have a hand in booking the likes of the Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix, Santana and Jim Morrison and the Doors at concerts throughout the state.

During that time, Hedgecock adopted the attitude and dress of the counterculture, on one occasion dressing to emcee a concert in a shirt that looked like a U.S. flag. But Haight-Ashbury could not divert him from The Plan.

“He had his life very well mapped out,” said Piering, a roommate in San Francisco and a partner in the concert promotion business. “Roger knew what he was going to do in the next 10 years. He wanted to be an attorney, and he completed that on target.

“He didn’t specifically talk about becoming mayor, but he said he wanted to get involved in local (San Diego) politics. And then he would get involved on the state level.”

The means to accomplish that sprung from nearby environmental calamities. A pipe in an off-shore oil rig near Santa Barbara broke in 1969, spewing oil over the ocean and onto the beaches. In January, 1971, two oil tankers collided in San Francisco Bay, leaking oil to the shore.

“There was a feeling that we were in an environmental Titanic,” said Lance King, a Washington, D.C., lobbyist whose path crossed Hedgecock’s when both worked in the environmental movement. “The question was whether we would give up or try to get to the wheel house and change the course” of the ship.

The sense of urgency was particularly suited to Hedgecock, who had honed his sense of power by helping to organize Hastings students for a one-day strike in 1970 to protest the escalation of the Vietnam War.

Drawing on his skills, he plunged into the environmental movement. He worked for the Sierra Club on its lawsuit to stop what the organization charged was an environmentally unsound land deal in the Newport Beach area, helped create an environmental club at Hastings and earned election to a student advisory panel to the federal government.

Days after the tankers collided in San Francisco Bay, Hedgecock and other student environmentalists were scheduled--coincidentally--to meet with William Ruckelshaus, the head of the newly created federal Environmental Protection Agency. While others came empty-handed to the conference room, Hedgecock brought a can of oily scum left over from the accident.

“He pushed it across to Mr. Ruckelshaus and said, ‘What are you guys going to do about this mess?’ ” said King, who had arranged the meeting. “Roger was earnest, in a sort of prosecutorial way.”

The only thing Hedgecock lacked for The Plan was a power base, and he returned to San Diego to build it.

First, he got everyone’s attention by campaigning for the 1972 proposition that formed the California Coastal Commission and by fighting plans for development in coastal canyons. His efforts would anger some of the wealthy clients of the law firm where he worked as an environmental attorney, but they caught the eye of “yuppies” like Del Mar Mayor Nancy Hoover, who was instrumental in selecting him as the city’s attorney in 1974.

Then he raised eyebrows when, as a Republican, he worked in the unsuccessful 1974 City Council campaign of Democrat Craig Frederickson, tapping into the network of social service professionals and others who would walk the precincts for him in a few years.

Finally, he moved people.

“I was dazzled by the guy,” said Solana Beach attorney Dwight Worden, who was a University of San Diego law student when he heard Hedgecock give a speech about environmental concerns in 1972. “He was committed, so totally into it, that it was contagious.”

In 1976, Hedgecock made his move. Bypassing the party structure, he used his coalition to score an electrifying victory over county Supervisor Lou Conde. He had attained real power by age 30.

Almost immediately, he earned a reputation as a bad boy for excoriating county officials and workers who dared cross him, or belittling those who tried to bluff their way through public meetings. On several occasions he crossed swords with Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, the man who would later open the grand jury investigation that led to the felony case.

Even his friends began to sense a change, a growing impatience. Hedgecock’s approach to life was reflected in the way he chose a book--first speed-reading 100 pages to make sure he wasn’t wasting his time.

“There was no doubt in your mind he wanted to go somewhere else,” said Frederickson, now with the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. “You spent five minutes with the guy and you got that feeling. It’s a very important perception. Most people felt he was headed somewhere else.”

That “somewhere” was to be San Diego City Hall. In a special election called for May, 1983, to fill the vacancy created by Pete Wilson’s elevation to the U.S. Senate, Hedgecock nudged out Maureen O’Connor, a former city councilwoman and wife of the founder of the Jack In The Box empire.

The bitter campaign featured scenes of vintage Hedgecock. One aide, who asked to remain unidentified, remembered how the hard-charging Hedgecock would fall into a deep sleep within five seconds of taking the passenger seat in his campaign car. Then, without a nudge, he would jolt awake and full of energy as the driver would brake at the next public appearance.

At another point, the mayoral hopeful met with close aides over brunch at a local restaurant to talk strategy, said one of the participants, who asked to remain unidentified.

Discussion turned to a proposed dirty trick where the Hedgecock camp was to float a letter complaining to state officials that O’Connor had failed to report some financial holdings on public disclosure forms.

The idea was to have three Democrats sign the letter, thus giving Republican Hedgecock the room to deny any knowledge.

Aides told their boss that two of the Democrats, fearing inquiries from the press, had decided to back out of the scheme.

“He kind of flew into a rage and said, ‘What do these people think Maureen is going to do for them? I’m their champion!’ ” the participant recalled.

Victory didn’t mellow Hedgecock. A month after being sworn in, he became irritated because political ally Mike Gotch, a city councilman, proposed at a controversial hearing that each side be allowed one hour for public testimony. Hedgecock had set a 30-minute limit for each side.

When Gotch managed to win the procedural skirmish on a council vote, Hedgecock jumped out of his chair and blew up at Gotch. Swearing at Gotch, within earshot of other colleagues, he said, “You’re going to pay for this as long as you’re on this council.”

Many people began to feel a sense of deja vu .

“Roger reminds me a lot of the Nixon syndrome,” said Councilman Murphy. “Either you are my friend or you’re my enemy. . . . Roger sees things either in black or white.

“Roger’s mind-set is that he believes that he can achieve his goals best by intimidation. Whatever he’s trying to do, whether it is good for the city or to further his political career, intimidation is his way of operating.”

Hedgecock consolidated his power in the city by spearheading a successful drive to get voters to approve a waterfront convention center, something that even favorite-son Pete Wilson was unable to do. Hedgecock kept hustling like someone on his way to someplace else. Aides whispered that he was interested in becoming governor.

“He had the rare talents of skill and personal salesmanship,” said Lee Grissom, president of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce. “He had the mental adroitness. He was articulate, understood the issues and was tireless.”

In addition, Grissom said, Hedgecock has had the aura of political and personal invincibility.

“Roger placed no limitations on himself, no limitations at all,” Grissom said. “Any constraints that are placed on him come from the outside.”

That ultimate constraint would come in February, 1984, when the La Jolla investment empire of J. David & Co. collapsed into bankruptcy. The firm’s demise generated scandal and exposed Hedgecock’s financial ties with principals J. David (Jerry) Dominelli and Hoover, the former Del Mar mayor.

The controversy would rage for a year, putting the acerbic mayor on the defensive for the first time since his 1983 election. He struggled for command in explaining why he took a $130,000 loan from Hoover to remodel his State Street house, why he never reported the sale to Hoover of a $16,000 promissory note in November, 1982, why he asked Hoover’s attorney to hold off recording the sale until after the May, 1983, election, and why--oddly--he continued to collect interest on the note after he sold it.

Hedgecock would blame the controversy on a “conspiracy” to topple him by Dist. Atty. Miller and by the San Diego Union, the city’s largest newspaper. He was so convincing that voters reelected him in November, 1984, while he was under indictment.

In the end, Hedgecock was able to convince the most important person so far--the one juror who held out for his innocence. Hedgecock, who had reached for so much so fast, was able Wednesday to stay in charge.