L.A. the Bogeyman : Battle Cries Take Same Pitch in Prop. A War

Heavy traffic. Crowded neighborhoods. Smog. Engorged sewers. Crammed schools. Canyons bulldozed for houses and apartments.

This was the kind of urban nightmare that slow-growth advocates invoked this summer to persuade San Diego voters to sign petitions for Proposition A, the growth management initiative that hopes to wrest control of certain development decisions from the City Council and place them directly before the voters in citywide elections.

On the other hand, that is exactly the kind of nightmare that opponents of the initiative envision if voters approve Proposition A. That the arguments are identical is no accident, and it underscores the kind of tactics being used in a high-stakes initiative campaign where emotional appeals and apparently calculated duplication have become staples as the Nov. 5 Election Day nears.

Johnston & Lewis, the political consulting firm hired to handle the campaign to fight the initiative, called police last week after it discovered that five of its approximately 50 campaign billboards had been defaced and vandalized, apparently by Proposition A sympathizers armed with paint cans.

Meanwhile, backers of the initiative have accused the consulting firm of stealing their popular slogan as a political dirty trick aimed at confusing voters and turning the tide of public sentiment against the slow-growth measure.

“It’s one of those clear-cut cases--this will probably be in textbooks about propaganda in future years--a clear-cut case of taking your adversary’s vocabulary, making it your own to have the public come to an opposite conclusion,” Mayor Roger Hedgecock, a supporter of Proposition A, said of the tactics being used by those hoping to defeat the initiative.

Political consultants Jim Johnston and Dave Lewis say, however, that it is “absolutely not” true that they are trying to steal ideas from those who favor the initiative.

“The basis of the strategy was to come up with arguments that would appeal to voters,” said Johnston. “That’s why we proposed those arguments and slogans, because it has appeal, and because they help make up voters’ minds. Am I going to tell you we’re out to intentionally confuse people? No, we’re not.”

The struggle over who claims the nightmare is a psychological fight over who can control the kind of emotional “messages” that will register with voters and win the election, said David Magleby, a Brigham Young University political science professor who has studied the initiative process in California and other states.

Magleby said voters are particularly susceptible to emotional arguments during initiative campaigns because there are no ready “cues” to follow, such as the party affiliation of candidates. Since most voters don’t have the time to study the issues involved, he said, they cast their ballot depending on “how they feel.”

And if the side opposing an initiative can inject confusion into the campaign, it has gained even more ground, because “cautious” voters tend to turn thumbs down on any measure they can’t fully understand, Magleby said. “It is to their advantage to confuse people because (then) . . . they are going to vote no,” he said.

Since the San Diego campaign has become confusing, when local voters “enter the booth,” Magleby said, “they’re going to be in doubt which side is going to be limiting growth and the evils of growth. They’re going to say, ‘I don’t know for sure. I’m going to vote no.’ ”

Proposition A was created by environmentalists and other slow-growth advocates who were angry with a succession of City Council decisions culminating in a September, 1984, vote to permit initial development of the 5,100-acre La Jolla Valley project in the city’s urban reserve, land theoretically off limits to developers’ bulldozers and backhoes until 1995. In the 1979 growth management plan, the city created a future urbanizing zone--the urban reserve--and set it aside to prevent urban sprawl by encouraging developers to build closer to the center city, where roads, sewers and other services already exist.

The initiative not only seeks to nullify the La Jolla Valley vote, it also proposes to take away the council’s power to approve other urban reserve proposals and subject them instead to citywide elections.

During deliberations over La Jolla Valley, Hedgecock and others opposed to the development said it would lead to the “Los Angelization” of San Diego--a buzzword for brown skies, jammed freeways, vistas filled with houses and apartments, and environmental degradation. Slow-growth advocates continued using that battle cry as they solicited signatures on petitions to put Proposition A on the November ballot.

At shopping centers and elsewhere, they passed out fliers asking: “Do you want Los Angeles sprawl-like development for San Diego? . . . Smog . . . Traffic . . . Public service problems . . . Loss of canyons and open space.” They collected 75,000 signatures--23,000 more than they needed to get the measure on the ballot.

When they filed their written ballot arguments with the city clerk’s office on Aug. 8, the pro-A camp kept up its anti-Los Angeles drumbeat. They said developers hoped to “bulldoze precious canyons and increase traffic congestion.” They urged a yes vote on the initiative to “save our neighborhoods and prevent urban sprawl.”

The statement ended with a catchy slogan: “No LA! Vote Yes on A!”

But that assertion, which has struck a responsive chord in San Diegans anxious to safeguard their clean air and relatively unclogged freeways, was no longer the exclusive property of the proponents.

When anti-A forces handed in their ballot argument, it sounded very much the same. The second line of the argument warned: “Don’t Let Them ‘Los Angelize’ Our Neighborhoods.” Proposition A, it added, would “force growth” into existing communities and gobble up vacant lots, canyons and open spaces.

The argument appeared to be the result of a conscious decision by anti-A forces to mimic the other side.

“The initial reaction is to defend--the City Council, growth, the ‘violations’ of the Future Urbanizing area,” Johnston & Lewis wrote in a confidential campaign proposal to its clients in July.

“Forget the rational arguments,” said the memo. “Forget the fact that thousands of today’s protesters of growth would have no place to live had today’s attitudes and policies on growth been in effect 20 years ago.

“The winning strategy: we want the same things ‘they’ want. We’re against ‘Los Angelization.’ We’re against destroying our canyons. We’re opposed to overdeveloping existing neighborhoods.”

The campaign against the growth initiative will have plenty of money to spread its word. While papers filed Friday show the pro-initiative San Diegans for Managed Growth have raised $42,123.48 as of Oct. 19, the No on Prop. A Citizens for Community Planning reported contributions of $307,211.42.

Earlier this month, Johnston & Lewis continued with the strategy elucidated in the memo by purchasing space on 50 billboards around the city for advertisements, some striking in their similarity to slogans and names of their campaign foes. For instance, one ad featured prominently in the mid-city area says “Save Our Neighborhoods. No on A.”

As it happens, Save Our Neighborhoods is the name of a coalition of mid-city neighborhood groups, such as the Normal Heights Community Association, which formally endorsed the initiative Friday.

Coalition member Jim Villars said he and others among the groups were upset over the use of the coalition’s name on the billboards and other campaign material. “It’s deceitful and deceptive . . . . We are in the process of discussing it and planning a response,” he said.

Both Johnston and Lewis said they had never heard about the mid-city coalition until they were asked about it by The Times.

“We certainly didn’t do it to step on those people’s territory,” Johnston said. “Hell, it’s a great line.”

The billboards that bring the loudest howls from proponents of the initiative, however, are those that feature a cloud of smog underlying the message: “No LA. No on A.”

“They’ve stolen our slogan of ‘No LA. Vote Yes on A’ and, with their development money, have put up billboards which we can’t afford,” said Bob Glaser, attorney and political consultant for the initiative’s supporters.

U.S. Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego), a supporter of the initiative, added: “It’s the worst and most deceitful campaign I’ve ever seen. It should receive the distortion award of all time.”

Asked if his firm intended to steal the slogan, Johnston said, “Nope. We produced a billboard and the concept of the billboard was to have a smoggy cloud envelop this blue sky. We’re dealing with this small space there, and ‘No LA’ fit into that space.”

Oddly enough, Johnston said, he called police last week because, he charged, politically motivated vandals have defaced five of the firm’s 50 billboards by making a simple change in wording with spray paint, leaving behind the original motto for the pro-A side. The small but significant alteration in wording--changing one “No” to a “Yes”--further underscored just how Orwellian the campaign has become.

The side backed by developers’ money now is warning voters of neighborhoods glutted by growth. It is running radio ads that intone, “See canyons bulldozed in living color . . . Don’t let them ‘Los Angelize’ San Diego.”

The nightmare, it seems, is up for grabs.

“Did they invent the word ‘Los Angelization?’ ” asked Johnston. “Why don’t we have as much right to it as they?”

Lewis, his partner, added: “We are not trying to confuse voters, but I can see how voters can be confused.”