Prop. A: Voters Say Slower Is Better

San Diego’s most recent political revolution, while a major setback to developers, granted new life to a slow-growth coalition that just weeks ago appeared to be on the verge of collapse.

The revolutionary Proposition A, approved by San Diego voters by 56% to 44% margin, is a far-reaching measure that takes crucial development decisions away from the City Council and puts them in the hands of voters.

Both backers and foes of the measure agreed Wednesday that the initiative’s victory represented an angry, emotional reflex by voters who are feeling increasingly frustrated by the kind of burgeoning growth they see threatening green canyons, clogging their freeways and polluting their air.

Despite an unprecedented $600,000 campaign by developers to persuade them otherwise, voters recognized the initiative as a way for the average citizen to register discontent about the changes.

“What we did with Prop. A is we struck a responsive chord in a very angry electorate,” said Councilman Mike Gotch, a leading proponent for the measure.

Bob Meadow, pollster for the anti-A campaign, called the vote a “symbolic lashing out against growth. People are frustrated by it. People go to Mission Valley and they can’t get a parking space and they see what they thought was a vacant lot now has a condominium being built on it.

“They wanted to do something--anything--against growth.”

The crucial battlegrounds over Proposition A, both sides agree, proved to be the Republican neighborhoods north of Interstate 8, where the public’s brooding, no-growth sentiment is the strongest.

Both advocates and opponents of Proposition A found themselves making pitches to the residents of Rancho Bernardo, La Jolla, Clairemont and Pacific Beach--precisely the people whose lives could be most affected by developments like La Jolla Valley.

Election returns Wednesday showed solid victories for Proposition A in those key northern precincts. In areas of Pacific Beach, the initiative won with 54%, while it garnered 57% of the vote in some areas of Clairemont and nearly 64% in neighborhoods on the fringe of La Jolla.

The victory began with the outrage of environmentalists and slow-growth advocates who vowed to start a political revolution after an emotional September, 1984, City Council vote, to permit immediate development of the La Jolla Valley project in the northern part of the city. The project is to go in the “future urbanizing zone,” roughly 52,000 acres concentrated in San Diego’s northern tier and designated by the 1979 Growth Management Plan as off limits to development until 1995.

If any political brilliance could be attributed to the coalition’s strategy, it was a decision in late 1984 to position Proposition A for the November ballot.

Had the measure been pushed back to the 1986 election, it could have been lost among the high-profile state races, such as the gubernatorial campaign. Qualifying for the 1985 ballot, however, would mean Proposition A would dominate media and voter attention in an otherwise bland local election, said Bob Glaser, the coalition’s consultant.

“We needed this ballot so we could be the issue and could be discussed thoroughly,” Glaser said.

Attaining that goal required coalition members to submit valid petition signatures six to eight weeks earlier than the legal deadline called for, Glaser said.

Positioning the initiative in November was also the best chance for the coalition to maintain the political momentum it had gained by backing Hedgecock for mayor in 1983, a victory its members said opened access to power at City Hall.

That power lifeline was subsequently threatened by Hedgecock’s legal problems.

The gamble was bold. Proposition A sought to reverse the La Jolla Valley vote and wrest control of future individual development decisions in the urban reserve from the City Council.

The initiative, considered the most far-reaching growth measure in California and possibly the country, qualified for the ballot on June 24 when the coalition submitted 75,000 signatures--20,000 more than needed.

Developers, mounting a campaign against the initiative, learned very early how difficult their task would be. A private poll taken in June showed that 81% of San Diegans would vote for the measure, 14% would vote no and only 3.8% were undecided.

The sample was significant, Meadow said, because it showed that rabid, anti-growth sentiment was alive in the otherwise conservative San Diego electorate.

“Usually, you get 30, 40, 50% undecided because (voters) . . . simply don’t know who the candidates are,” Meadow said. “In the case of ballot propositions, they are very complicated and people can’t understand them. Sometimes you get undecided in the 60 to 65% range.”

That wasn’t so in San Diego, where concern for the environment helped elect Pete Wilson in 1971 and Hedgecock in 1983. Developers did not have to simply tip the undecided voters to their side; they were saddled with the task of converting voters, trying to convince them that a vote against Proposition A was actually a vote against growth.

To do that, anti-A forces mounted a campaign that raised objections from proponents because it appeared to steal the environmentalist slogan and mimic warnings about “Los Angelization,” the popular symbol for crowded neighborhoods, urban sprawl and evils of a growing population.

The No-on-A campaign was fueled by more than $600,000--the most money every committed to a San Diego initiative campaign. Two-thirds of the money came from two organizations with the most to lose: A Campus Crusade for Christ subsidiary, which as co-developer of La Jolla Valley donated $217,000 in non-ministry funds, and Pardee Construction Company, which owns 2,000 acres in the city’s urban reserve and gave $195,000.

The money paid for $200,000 in mailings to 150,000 households of “proven” voters; $40,000 in radio ads; $40,000 in billboards, and $65,000 in telephone calls, said David Lewis, political consultant for anti-A forces.

But money proved no match for what turned out to be the environmentalists’ brilliant second stroke: the language of Proposition A itself. It simply asked: “Shall the City of San Diego Progress Guide and General Plan be amended by adding restrictions requiring that land areas which are designated as ‘future urbanizing’ not be redesignated without voter approval?”

“One of the things our data showed all along,” said Meadow, “was the last sentence was devastating to the no position: ‘without voter approval.’ There was nothing to lose. There is no more powerful right that people like to preserve than the right to choose.

“It was not a very complicated proposition, it was only one sentence and it was the only one on the ballot. It was out there naked.”

The idea was so powerful that it even overcame the coalition’s sometimes stumbling campaign, which ultimately raised $50,000.

“I think the Yes on A won in spite of itself,” said Tom Shepard, Hedgecock’s former political consultant and current co-defendant who helped the coalition with some direct-mail advertising and radio spots.

Tuesday’s victory now guarantees that Hedgecock’s ghost will loom in City Hall, even if he is expelled from office. In the waning days of the Proposition A campaign, Hedgecock set aside his own legal misfortunes and took up the coalition’s cause as its major spokesman in public debates.

“His participation at the end of the campaign in debates signified in a sense that regardless of the outcome of all his legal proceedings, he wanted a last hurrah,” said Meadow, who once was Hedgecock’s pollster.

“If I’m leaving, leaving this behind is a good feeling,” Hedgecock said Wednesday. “Of course, I have no intention of leaving.”

But Proposition A may carry some fatal flaws. There appears to be concern about how long Proposition A would be valid. Would these public votes be required indefinitely, or would they end in 1995 when the Growth Management Plan is due for an update?

These are the questions--along with the propriety of canceling the La Jolla Valley decision retroactively--that seem natural in the wake of Proposition A’s victory, said Charles L. Koon, president of the Building Industry Assn.

Koon also said that developers, who suffered a black eye in the campaign because they were accused of being the villains, must regroup and take steps to repair their public image.

“I think the bottom line is that we consider ourselves in the industry a very, very large group of experts and we take exception to being painted as wearing black hats,” Koon said.

“Developers don’t create people,” he added. “We accommodate them.”

With Proposition A slowing development in a prime area perfect for expensive housing, and increasing inner-city demand for lower residence density, growth evidently will be diverted from San Diego to other communities in the county, such as Escondido.

“It’s wherever you can find land to build,” said Koon, who owns a construction company that builds condominiums in the Mid-City area. “How are you going to treat the 40,000 to 60,000 people a year who are coming to San Diego County? It doesn’t take a big calculator to figure out there is a tremendous need. And homes are going to have to be built someplace.”

Tuesday’s vote appears to show that most San Diegans want those new homes to be built someplace else.