Hedgecock’s Exit May Kill the Coalition He Assembled

For Malin Burnham, the best way to take care of local politics has always been the “old-fashioned way.”

What the yachtsman, bank founder, scion of a powerful San Diego family, insurance company president and Republican contributor means is the kind of ritual that requires candidates for City Council or mayor to seek the blessing of influential businessmen and party leaders, like himself. In the clubby world of San Diego politics, the network Burnham unabashedly calls the “good-old-boy Establishment” has been the traditional power base that opened the right doors and campaign pocketbooks with a few, discreet telephone calls.

Roger Allan Hedgecock didn’t play by those rules.

With a flamboyant, abrasive style, the one-time rock music promoter startled the good old boys by seizing the city’s top elected post in 1983 with a brand of emotional populism without parallel in recent San Diego history. Supporters and foes alike agree that the 39-year-old mayor inspired his constituency with a fierce, personal vision for preventing what he called the “Los Angelization” of San Diego--the specter of smog, clogged freeways and miles of parking lots.

“For the first time, people from various ethnic backgrounds and parts of the city that had never been heard were finally being heard,” said Elizabeth Brafford, Hedgecock’s former press secretary and now director of communications at the Hotel del Coronado. “It was exhilarating for us and exhilarating for them to see the positive brainstorming . . . . Roger Hedgecock was the sole person capable of opening City Hall in this way, and no one can take that away from him.”

Hedgecock’s era ended with his conviction Wednesday on 13 felony counts for conspiring to funnel thousands of dollars illegally into his 1983 campaign, and then lying on public financial statements to cover it up. He has resigned from office, effective Friday.

With Hedgecock gone from local politics, the question being asked is whether the coalition he formed, and the style of politics he used, will survive him as a political legacy.

Hedgecock brought together a coalition of homosexuals, young professionals, neighborhood activists, environmentalists, labor union members, minorities and small businessmen--groups that supported the Republican Hedgecock because he represented their best chance of power at City Hall. His most ardent followers say the “movement” will survive on its own, some say it is waiting for a new leader, while others such as Burnham predict it will disintegrate, leaving the old power structure in charge.

Ironically, it was Hedgecock’s coalition of political outcasts that helped him win voter approval for a waterfront convention center, a project that was sought for years by the downtown businessmen who form the core of the Republican Establishment. The convention center, to be built by 1988, is mentioned by everyone as Hedgecock’s crowning achievement during his brief 2 1/2 years in office.

The power that drew together the coalition was Roger Hedgecock, with his intensity and his compelling, sometimes dark, charisma. The son of a Convair photographer, he owned his first house at 17, paid his way through college by promoting rock concerts and graduated at the top of his class at Hastings Law School in San Francisco.

Along the way, he became an environmentalist, a cause he melded with conservative Republican ideals to form a brand of politics reminiscent of the young Pete Wilson, who swept to the mayor’s post in 1971 as a reformer and preservationist.

Hedgecock returned to San Diego from law school in 1972 and began a determined climb up the political ladders that was to include a stunning upset of San Diego County Supervisor Lou Conde in 1976. That race would be the first of eight successful campaigns for election during nine years in public life.

“I’ve been in San Diego since 1942 and frankly, I didn’t see many leaders in this community with the ability that Roger had,” said Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce President Lee Grissom.

But Hedgecock’s style offended many. He excoriated hapless bureaucrats who didn’t have answers when he asked questions, or colleagues when they crossed him in debate. “He was just always over there, beating up on everybody,” said local political consultant Dave Lewis.

Even before then-Mayor Wilson was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1982, Hedgecock was planning his campaign for mayor. Too impatient, proud and controversial to curry the favor of the established Republican powers, Hedgecock formed a coalition crossing the traditional lines of political power in San Diego.

The time was right for Hedgecock. While many California cities saw similar political establishments overthrown by an influx of new citizens and neighborhood interests in the 1960s and 1970s, that kind of change arrived late in San Diego, where the Republican guard remained entrenched as the population burgeoned from 696,500 in 1970 to 929,300 in 1983.

Wilson sidestepped the traditional power network as early as 1971, when he ran for mayor in the wake of the “Yellow Cab” scandal, during which then-Mayor Frank Curran and several council members were indicted for allegedly accepting bribes. (Curran was eventually acquitted.)

Campaigning as a reformer and preservationist, Wilson garnered his early support from much the same people that Hedgecock appealed to--young professionals, environmentalists, neighborhood activists--said J. Michael McDade, Hedgecock’s former chief of staff.

Wilson eventually became a part of the traditional San Diego political structure, said McDade, who managed Wilson’s 1979 mayoral campaign. “By that time, he still had some of the early loyalists, but by then he had straight across-the-board Republican support,” he said.

Hedgecock declined to plug into a network that thrived on the approval of political and business heavyweights like Burnham; Gordon Luce, chairman of Great American First Savings Bank, and Kim Fletcher, chairman of Home Federal Savings and Loan.

“I think that if the so-called Establishment, if they get to know a candidate and have faith and confidence in that candidate, and if they can pick up the telephone and get other people to understand their endorsement of the candidate, that type of a feel and confidence is much more sincere and much more down to earth,” said Burnham, explaining the system.

Burnham said Hedgecock “went around us. . . . What he did do, which is very positive from a grass-roots basis, is he got a lot of common folks involved in the political process on a personal basis--licking stamps, going to rallies and putting up posters and falling into parades.”

McDade believes that Hedgecock’s 1983 election marked a turning point in how San Diego governs itself.

“There had always been a certain group of people who had access and power in the city,” he said. “It had been virtually, exclusively Republican, moneyed, connected to developing and banking interests. I think old-line San Diego . . . those were the people who had ready access to the city and I think even in the area of campaigning.

“The fact that Roger reached out to over 4,000 contributors made a lot of little people feel they had a stake in the office,” said McDade, referring to Hedgecock’s feat of raising $571,672 from contributors under the city’s $500-a-person limit for the 1983 primary and general election campaigns. “If you heard tears being shed (about the conviction) across the city, it was in those households, probably more than anyplace.”

But while Hedgecock was tapping his far-flung coalition for money, he was also putting together his own moneyed establishment of sorts through the J. David & Co. investment firm of La Jolla.

Run by mysterious, aloof financier J. David (Jerry) Dominelli and his live-in girlfriend, Nancy Hoover, the company pumped tens of thousands of dollars illegally into Hedgecock’s mayoral campaign by funneling it through a political consulting firm established in January, 1982, by Tom Shepard, a former aide to Supervisor Hedgecock.

“Where he got his money was not from the grass roots,” Burnham said. “He got his money from an illegal source.”

After winning election in May, 1983, Hedgecock quickly scored another political coup by convincing voters in November, 1983, to approve construction of a downtown, waterfront convention center. Wilson had been unable to convince cost-conscious San Diegans to approve a similar proposal during his tenure.

Hedgecock seemed to have unlimited potential to change the course of local government and at first his abrasive personality was unchecked. He freely badgered conservative Councilman Bill Cleator, the Republican Party favorite in the 1983 mayoral race, during council discussions. At a media breakfast to discuss the convention center vote, he trained his dark eyes on one reporter and suggested he might shoot her for asking questions he didn’t like.

“If you were on the other side of an issue from him, you weren’t just wrong, you had to be stopped at all costs,” said Robert Schuman, chairman of the San Diego County Republican Central Committee. “You were the enemy . . . . I don’t think there are a lot of people dancing on his grave, but by the same token, not everybody is tearful over it.”

Yet Hedgecock won grudging praise in a newspaper editorial from the conservative San Diego Union, which had refused to endorse him in the campaign even though his opponent was a Democrat, Maureen O’Connor.

“He was the most articulate spokesman in the city for the positions on growth management,” said Jay Powell, coordinator for the local chapter of the Sierra Club. “He was able as the leader on the council and the chairman of that committee to sit there and make those statements . . . . Those guys had to sit there and listen to those statements.”

In February, 1984, Hedgecock’s unraveling began. The J. David & Co. financial empire collapsed. More than $100 million in investors’ funds had disappeared, and news stories soon revealed links between the ill-fated company and Hedgecock’s early mayoral campaign.

The state’s Fair Political Practices Commission and the San Diego County district attorney’s office launched investigations, which culminated in a $1.2-million civil lawsuit and a felony indictment.

Despite the cloud of allegations, Hedgecock won reelection in 1984 over La Jolla businessman Dick Carlson, a political newcomer. But the mayor’s power was eroded by the legal charges, and he lost a close, crucial fight to prevent the 5,100-acre La Jolla Valley development from taking place in the city’s urban reserve, land that had been set aside in the northern reaches of the city for preservation until 1995.

“There’s a sense of almost theater about this,” Grissom said about Hedgecock’s demise. “It’s almost pathos. It’s a Greek tragedy in some ways. He had so much. He’s really bright, he’s tireless, he has vision, he’s articulate. It’s as if the only person who would really damage him was himself. And he did.”

Now those who supported Hedgecock wonder whether the coalition that brought him to power will lose its clout.

“It’s a kick in the teeth, a real kick in the teeth,” Brafford said. “People tend to deify the person who stands for the movement, but let’s be realistic. Roger will be very sorely missed. He is irreplaceable, but there are other intelligent, active people in the city who have ideas.

“I think we’re being naive and overly dramatic to sound the death knell for the things that Roger stood for because he’s the figurehead.”

Environmentalists are hoping to cling to their power with the passage of Proposition A, an initiative on the November ballot that would wrest control of the urban reserve from the City Council by requiring a popular vote on any development decisions for the area. The unusual measure, Powell said, will make sure there is a “check in place” on a council that is “teetering on the brink of corruption right now.”

Brad Truax, a spokesman for San Diego’s homosexual community, said he believes that Hedgecock’s political coalition is viable but must wait for another “dynamic” leader.

“I think it is possible that there will not be someone to fill his shoes, at least not right away,” Truax said. “But if someone emerges a year down the road, the people who are part of the coalition will still be around. We’re still here.”

Truax, among other Hedgecock supporters, has mentioned that Councilman Mike Gotch, a Democrat who is mentioned by political observers as a possible candidate for mayor, seems to be the most likely to inherit at least some of the groups from Hedgecock’s coalition. Other contenders for mayor may be O’Connor, Assemblyman Larry Stirling, San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender and Councilmen Bill Cleator and Ed Struiksma.

But some political consultants, politicians and businessmen like Burnham believe that Hedgecock’s coalition will disintegrate, leaving politics to the customary San Diego power brokers.

“Roger was the thread that kept the patchwork quilt together,” Grissom said of the coalition. “They were just beginning to roll. Now they are without a political guru, so to speak.”

Burnham said he doesn’t “see anybody on the horizon that has that type of unique personality.”

“I don’t want to compare Roger with the Kennedys, but that’s the type of flair he really had with the voters,” Burnham said.

“I don’t know that we will get all the way back to where we were, but certainly in a community where we still like to think that politics is less than a full-time job, I think the old-fashioned way will still prevail.”