More Credit Card Revelations Mean New Woes for Martinez : May Hurt His Role as Foe of Initiative

Robert Schuman was eating a pizza at a La Mesa restaurant Monday evening when he realized the depths of San Diego City Councilman Uvaldo Martinez’s political troubles.

Schuman, chairman of the San Diego County Republican Central Committee, eavesdropped as another customer was presented with a check.

“Just put it on Martinez’s credit card,” Schuman heard the customer joke.

In less than a week, disclosures about Martinez’s use of a city credit card had become a topic for street-corner conversation, Schuman realized, even among people who normally care little about San Diego politics and politicians.

“People can relate to this problem,” Schuman said Tuesday. “Everybody thinks of taxes as stealing anyway. When somebody steals your tax dollars a second time, it makes it twice as bad.”

As Martinez and his staff work this week to explain discrepancies in the councilman’s expense records, the political consequences of Martinez’s spending and record-keeping habits are beginning to mount.

The impact may prove greatest on the prospects for Proposition A, the growth management initiative on the Nov. 5 city ballot.

The whirlwind of allegations buffeting Martinez threatens to blow him off the front lines of the drive opposing the initiative--an opposition for which he has been the most prominent spokesman.

Martinez’s association with the opposition to the initiative could knock votes into the pro-A camp, according to activists on both sides of the battle over the measure.

“The issue may never get heard on the pros and cons of the merits of Proposition A,” Schuman said. “Proposition A may be approved just out of a kind of anti-Martinez sentiment.”

Apparently, strategies for minimizing the fallout from Martinez’s difficulties are already being explored.

For instance, Martinez’s name appears with those of four other prominent San Diegans on the argument against Proposition A that will appear in the November city election guide, which is mailed to every registered voter in San Diego. But officials in the city clerk’s office said Tuesday they had been contacted in the last few days by a consultant to the anti-Proposition A campaign committee who wanted to know if there were provisions for removing a name from the ballot argument.

“There were inquiries, hypothetical questions, like what if somebody dies or if some unfortunate event occurs, how does one remove someone’s signature from the ballot argument,” said City Clerk Charles Abdelnour. The questioners did not specifically ask about Martinez, but Abdelnour said he deduced that the councilman was the subject of the inquiry.

James Johnston and David Lewis, the consultants managing the campaign against Proposition A, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Abdelnour said there are no election law provisions allowing the removal of a signature from a ballot argument after the 10-day review period--which ended Sept. 6.

Martinez said Tuesday that he had not been asked to reduce his role in the debate over the initiative, but that he was unsure how large a part he would continue to play.

“That’s really going to be dictated by what ultimately comes out in our report and how it’s received by the auditors,” he said. “I’m confident we’re going to be able to answer a lot of the questions that have been raised.”

Other leaders of the opposition to Proposition A said Martinez’s problems were bound to affect his role in the campaign.

“He probably will not be visible for maybe a week or two,” said Fred Schnaubelt, a former city councilman who is making speeches against the initiative. “There’s an excellent chance he’ll be back as primary spokesman before the November election. But this is certainly a problem that comes unexpectedly.”

Dorothy Leonard, co-chairman of the anti-A campaign, added: “There’s got to be a concern, just because it becomes a negative image.”

Supporters of Proposition A had not settled Tuesday on whether or how to exploit Martinez’s predicament.

David Kreitzer, chairman of San Diegans for Managed Growth, said the group, which worked to place the initiative on the ballot and is conducting the campaign for its passage, could not help but gain an advantage from Martinez’s position.

“Our intent is to certainly take the high road in this thing,” Kreitzer said. “But this is the kind of thing, you can understand, that we can have a little glee about.”

Councilman Mike Gotch, a prominent supporter of the initiative, said there was nothing to rejoice about.

“If inadvertently, Proposition A is to benefit by Uvaldo’s credit card difficulties, so be it,” he said. “But I would not have wished this misfortune on anybody, and I don’t have any intention of profiting from it.”

Kreitzer, meanwhile, said it was just a coincidence that his committee chose this week to renew its complaint to City Atty. John Witt about the propriety of campaign activities conducted in Martinez’s City Hall office last spring as the opposition to the growth management initiative was taking shape.

Martinez said the campaign work was halted before it ran afoul of any city rules; Witt said his office would review the allegations.

Martinez was receiving criticism from other quarters, too. The San Diego chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative political group, called on Martinez to resign if he could not justify his expenditures.

And even some of Martinez’s supporters among Hispanic Republicans registered their disappointment.

“It certainly doesn’t make us look good,” said Oscar Padilla, an insurance broker and GOP activist. “It all comes as a shock to us to know he has abused the privilege of the credit card. If it’s found to be true he did in fact abuse that privilege, we can’t understand it. We don’t know what caused him to be so stupid.”