‘Stay, Roger, Stay,’ Hedgecock Fans Chant at Downtown Rally

For two days, the calls poured into Mayor Roger Hedgecock’s office--more than 3,000 calls, 10 to 1 in favor of Hedgecock withdrawing his announced resignation and staying on after allegations there had been tampering with the jury that convicted him of 13 felonies.

The volume of support was not decisive, Hedgecock said in announcing that his plans to quit were on hold. But he obviously liked what he had heard.

“The messages coming in from the people of this city I think demonstrate their commitment to a justice system that has integrity,” Hedgecock told reporters Friday. “And they’re saying to me, ‘Don’t resign and give validity to a tainted verdict.’ ”

That certainly was the message of approximately 200 Hedgecock supporters who rallied on the Community Concourse beneath the mayor’s 11th-floor City Hall office about 90 minutes before Hedgecock’s dramatic announcement.

“When the verdict came, it was painful to do, but I bit my tongue and decided I would accept that verdict,” said lawyer R. Alan Smith, one of the organizers of the rally. “But when I read the paper and saw what those allegations of jury tampering were, I wasn’t going to accept that verdict any more until we knew for sure what the truth of the matter was.”

Smith described himself as a conservative Republican and “mid-city business leader” who had become a Hedgecock supporter only in the last year. He organized the rally with the Rev. Robert Ard, president of the San Diego Black Leadership Council and a longtime Hedgecock proponent.

Ard resonantly--and prophetically, it turned out--warned Hedgecock’s critics that the mayor was not going anywhere soon.

“We have come to tell those who sent their letters and telegrams of condolence and to view the body that they’re lining up too soon,” Ard said.

Later he added, “It’s not over until the fat lady sings. Though she has walked up to the microphone, she hasn’t hit a note.”

Speakers at the rally represented at least a portion of the spectrum of special interests that Hedgecock had forged into a powerful political base. There were blacks, Latinos, senior citizens, domestic workers and more. Repeatedly they lauded Hedgecock as a politician who had made City Hall listen to new voices.

“He’s a very popular mayor who has opened up City Hall to common people, all of us,” said businessman Mateo Camarillo, a member of Hedgecock’s Latino advisory group and vice chairman of the San Diego Convention Center Corp. “For giving us that opportunity, his punishment should not be taking the office from him.”

Lea Davila, director of the prenatal program at the Chicano Community Health Center, took the afternoon off Friday to attend the rally.

“This wouldn’t have happened if we had laws to empower him instead of making it difficult for him to do the job he’s supposed to do,” she said. “I want him to know we want him to fight, we want him to stay.”

Billy Paul, a handyman from the Clairemont area, echoed her support. “He’s always willing to listen to the little guy and hear both sides before making a decision,” Paul said.

Though some at the rally said they thought Hedgecock had come to his office window to join aides in waving to the crowd, Mel Buxbaum, the mayor’s spokesman, said Hedgecock had not. He did not need to hear the chants of “Stay Roger, Stay” to convince him he had the public’s support.

“Over 3,000 calls have come in,” Buxbaum said. “And 2,827 are for him to stay, 268 are for him to leave. I think that says it all, doesn’t it?”

J. Michael McDade, the mayor’s former chief of staff and a close adviser, said the public response was evidence Hedgecock remained a potent political force in San Diego.

“Looking at the outpouring from the public over the past few days, which has been phenomenal in support of him, I think he may still very well have an extremely strong political base, despite all the problems he’s been through,” McDade said.

Buxbaum discounted the results of a call-in poll conducted by KGTV (Channel 10) television Thursday. In that poll, 4,405 callers urged Hedgecock to resign, while 4,163 said he should stay in office.

Buxbaum said he had been told by phone company officials that technical problems had prevented the poll from recording all the calls of support for the mayor. Moreover, he said he put more stock in the calls received in the mayors’ office than in the television station’s poll.

“That kind of thing is very inaccurate, because people just punch up the numbers and the same people sit there calling over and over,” Buxbaum said. “Every one of our calls is substantiated with a name, a number and a message. Our people call just once.”

Lisa Cattel of KGTV said the only report of technical problems with the poll was that subscribers to the MCI Telecommunications Corp. long-distance service apparently were unable to place calls to the station.