Eckert Opens ‘Preemptive Campaign’ to Stop Challengers

Almost a year before the voters will go to the polls, Paul Eckert has launched what he calls a “preemptive campaign” to quell the hopes of anyone who might deprive him of a third term on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.

Eckert is raising money, seeking community support and crisscrossing his sprawling North County district to speak and cut ribbons, reminding his 400,000 constituents of what he’s done for them since he was first elected in 1978.

Since October, Eckert has had political consultant Herb Williams on a $1,000-a-month retainer to help chart the coming campaign. And the supervisor, never known as glib, has been taking private lessons for several months to help improve his speech-making ability.

At the same time, at least four North County political figures are exploring the waters to find out what chance they have of beating Eckert, the 51-year-old moving company owner who went to the county board as an outsider but has since become increasingly identified with the status quo.

Carlsbad City Councilman Richard Chick announced Thursday that he will challenge Eckert. Oceanside City Councilman John MacDonald, Vista Mayor Michael Flick and Clyde Romney, an aide to Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), have also said they are considering running for Eckert’s seat. The primary election will be held next June.

If any of them decides to run, he will be hoping to string together a coalition of anti-Eckert voters ranging from coastal residents upset with rapid growth to inlanders bothered by Eckert’s support for a controversial trash-fired power plant.

Any campaign against Eckert would likely try to tie him to the county’s ongoing problems, including a scandal involving the letting of a $25-million contract for a telephone system and continuing crises in the Department of Health Services. Eckert’s opponents also say they will have no qualms about bringing up his brief association in 1983 with a woman indicted on prostitution charges, an incident that may loom larger in the eyes of politicos than in the memories of the voters.

For now, though, those thinking of challenging Eckert are hard-pressed to cite specific issues or events they believe will hurt his chances of winning a third term. Instead, they talk about a nebulous, gut-level feeling they have that Eckert’s hard-hitting style has offended enough voters in seven years to make him vulnerable.

“Paul seems to alienate people,” Chick said. “He seems to have a problem saying the wrong thing at the right time and getting people upset.”

“There’s an indication that the people are not being heard, not being listened to,” MacDonald said. “There’s an underlying dissatisfaction.”

Romney added: “There’s a strong feeling that Paul Eckert represents the old politics and that it’s time for a change.”

Romney, a former Solana Beach school board member, is the top aide to Packard, the former Carlsbad mayor who in 1982 became only the fourth man in U.S. history to win a congressional seat on a write-in vote. Packard has never been an Eckert ally, and two years ago he ran his own “preemptive campaign” to discourage Eckert from challenging him for Congress. He said he would endorse a Romney bid for county supervisor.

“Clyde has demonstrated himself to be a very, very astute political figure,” Packard said. “If he chooses to run, he would have my support.”

The three other most likely challengers--MacDonald, Flick and Chick--are locally elected officials who hope to expand their small bases of support into organizations powerful enough to threaten Eckert, forcing him into a general election by depriving him of a majority in the primary. But they have a long way to go.

If the election included only San Dieguito and south San Marcos, Eckert might be more vulnerable. The rapid pace of growth in Encinitas and Leucadia, unincorporated coastal communities governed by the Board of Supervisors, has long spurred resentment toward Eckert, a property rights advocate who many beach-area residents believe has tuned out their concerns.

In San Marcos, a cadre of residents--from several hundred to several thousand, depending on whom one talks to--has vowed to unseat Eckert because of his enthusiastic support for the San Marcos trash-to-energy plant, a controversial project that won final approval from the Board of Supervisors June 4. The privately run plant, when it opens in 1988, will burn 1,000 tons of trash a day in a five-acre building that will have a 300-foot-tall smokestack.

Bruce Hamilton, an electronics company executive and president of North County Concerned Citizens--an anti-trash-plant group--said he doubts any of the 2,000 people his group represents would vote for Eckert next year.

“He has not listened to the will of the people,” Hamilton said, repeating an oft-stated criticism of Eckert. “He has listened to the big money.”

Outside San Marcos and San Dieguito, however, there are few signs that Eckert is in any trouble. North County is home to the semi-rural brand of conservatism from which Eckert sprung, and while each of his challengers might have strong support in a single community, Eckert can point to a string of accomplishments across the 5th District, which spans North County from the coast to the Anza-Borrego Desert.

In Carlsbad, Eckert takes credit for negotiating a deal to let the city buy a parcel of county land for a public services center. In Oceanside and Vista, Eckert prides himself for prompting the county to build transit centers. In Fallbrook, Eckert points to an empty lot on which will soon rise a county-built senior citizens center. And all over North County there are organizations that have benefited from the political clout Eckert exercised when he wrested money raised by county tourism taxes away from Balboa Park museums and earmarked them instead for tourism-related groups in his district.

Eckert says he believes the anti-trash-plant contingent is a small but vocal minority in San Marcos. He’s not worried about Encinitas, where he has never been the favorite of the 8,000 or so registered voters. And he said his own polls show that the October, 1983, disclosure that he spent a summer evening bar-hopping with two women, one of whom was later implicated in a prostitution ring, will not hurt him.

“It’s not an issue,” he said flatly.

Though he is still the board’s most conservative member, Eckert has softened the anti-government platform on which he was first elected. Today, Eckert is one of the county’s biggest boosters of public involvement in job training, and he is a member of the state Job Training Coordinating Council. He also has argued for the continuation of federal revenue sharing and has fought for funds for North County community clinics, a social program long identified as a liberal cause.

The one issue that continues to dog Eckert is his personality. As long as he has been a public figure, Eckert has antagonized those with whom he disagrees. Unlike craftier politicians, Eckert refuses to project the impression that he is weighing both sides of a debate long after he has made up his mind, and that trait can make him seem inflexible.

“At times, Paul offends people because he is abrupt,” Al Diederich, general manager of the Fallbrook Chamber of Commerce and an Eckert supporter, said. “He really gives short shrift to anyone who doesn’t comprehend what he is explaining to them. He believes if he understands something and he explains it then you should understand it.”

“I always tell people where they stand with me,” Eckert said in an interview. “Sometimes they mistake that for rudeness or arrogance.”

If Eckert is worried about the coming race, it doesn’t show. He exudes the confidence--well-founded or not--of a champion prizefighter eager to take on a string of lightweights. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t in training.

Always active in his district, Eckert has been traversing the county, holding fund-raisers with businessmen and developers. He has raised $40,000 so far toward his goal of $100,000 by year’s end. He seems in no danger of falling prey to the same overconfidence that helped send former Supervisors Tom Hamilton and Paul Fordem, who withdrew from his race because of ill health, to defeats in 1984.

“I was a little naive when I thought I could do all I wanted to do in eight years,” he told a group over breakfast at the Executive Hotel in downtown San Diego one recent Friday. “I’m not in charge. I’m just one of five votes on the board. I need four more years to accomplish what I want to do.”

Eckert told the guests that he sees himself as one of the county’s ranking Republicans, and he asked for their help in dissuading the four North County Republicans thinking of challenging him in the nominally nonpartisan race.

Later that morning, Eckert spoke to about 100 high school students attending “Legislative Day” with the Kiwanis Club at a Vista bowling alley. In the afternoon, he helped cut the ribbon at the opening of a blacksmith’s shop at the Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum in Vista. The exhibit was built with $50,000 from the tourist tax funds Eckert shepherded to North County.

“There’s a need to let the other candidates know that you have a sincere desire to hold on to your job,” Eckert said, explaining why he has launched his campaign so early. “If I wasn’t out actively campaigning, they’d be saying, ‘You know, I think Eckert’s gonna retire.’ I want everyone to know I’m dead serious about running for the Board of Supervisors again.”