Politics : Prop. A Camp Holds Chips in Mayor’s Race

On Thursday, San Diego City Councilman Mike Gotch is scheduled to meet with mayoral hopeful Maureen O’Connor for the express purpose of cutting a political deal.

Gotch will be negotiating with O’Connor, not as the Pacific Beach councilman, but as the informal envoy for the group of neighborhood interests and environmentalists who won an impressive victory in November with the passage of Proposition A, the slow-growth initiative. His mission: find out what O’Connor will give in return for the group’s support during the mayoral race.

“No candidate will be elected mayor in this city in 1986 unless they embrace the Prop. A coalition,” Gotch predicted. “Right now, we’re in the bargaining position. There are certain things we want. The reward is election to the mayorship.”

Those are bold words, but they are just one indication of how the angry anti-growth, anti-government spirit of Proposition A promises to haunt the current sprint for San Diego’s highest municipal office.

At the very least, that spirit has already forced mayoral front-runners O’Connor, acting Mayor Ed Struiksma and Councilman Bill Cleator to publicly vow to enforce the measure and thus acknowledge that “the people have spoken,” campaign consultants and observers say.

But supporters of Proposition A believe the initiative can be parlayed into more meaningful political gains, forcing at least Cleator and Struiksma--both perceived as pro-development councilmen who opposed the initiative--to become “born-again” politicians eager to appease San Diegans who are disgusted with crowded streets, overtaxed schools and inner-city canyons threatened by development.

“I really see it (Proposition A) as this large shadow looming over all the candidates,” said Bob Meadow, a pollster working in Struiksma’s campaign. “They’re going to have to look back, they’re going to have to look at the shadow and say ‘This is something I’m going to have to do something about.’

“Candidates know it is not a ghost, it is not a myth. It is something real. They’re going to have to figure out how to deal with it.”

Proposition A was sponsored by San Diegans for Managed Growth, a loose coalition of environmentalists, slow-growth advocates, neighborhood groups and gay activists. The measure was a sharp rebuke to the City Council and the powerful development industry, which pumped $721,894 into a media drive to defeat the initiative.

The measure wrested control from the council by throwing open for public vote any development proposed for the “future urbanizing zone,” about 25,000 acres that the city’s Growth Management Plan says should be off limits to construction until 1995. Council approval for several projects in the area, especially a 5,200-acre development called La Jolla Valley, precipitated the measure.

Coalition leaders also said the initiative was meant to register disgust over how the development industry appears to influence council decisions. Proposition A received 56% of the vote in November on the strength of overwhelming anti-growth sentiment in neighborhoods north of Interstate 8.

“The voters have spoken, and they spoke fairly emphatically,” said Jack Orr, a political consultant. “Therefore, what it does to a public official is send them a message. . . . That has an influence on the thinking of any responsible officeholder.”

Struiksma, Cleator and O’Connor now have to publicly embrace Proposition A, but the initiative will not become a central issue in the campaign because none of the major candidates--who were either silent or against the measure--can use it against the others, said Orr.

Consultant Tom Shepard, who worked on behalf of Proposition A, agreed.

From “what I’ve seen so far, and that’s limited to the quotes in the newspapers, it sounds to me that Proposition A has made growth management an apple pie and motherhood issue,” he said. “All the candidates are going to give lip service to it, but I don’t see any substantive discussion of growth management occurring.”

Cleator said the effect “will be that the candidates--and I haven’t heard any of them disagreeing about it--will say they are going to make it work. And I think that’s very positive.”

“I think that this is the sentiment of the city, and to get the city at least moving in the same direction, not only do the potential candidates have to listen to the people, I think that the people have to have the feeling that the candidates are going to listen,” Cleator said. “How can that be interpreted any other way than being positive?”

Since declaring his candidacy, Cleator has called on his council colleagues to consider forming a task force to study how the city can purchase more land for open space. He has also used his position on a council committee to revive a dormant proposal to purchase for open space or a possible park a 7.5-acre parcel in the 34th Street canyon of Golden Hill.

At a press conference Thursday, O’Connor told reporters that, even if the measure is defeated in the courts, she will make sure as mayor that the spirit of the initiative lives on at City Hall through other ordinances.

The wealthy O’Connor may try to exploit Proposition A’s anti-growth sentiment to deflect any criticism she could receive for lending her campaign money, Shepard said. He sees O’Connor’s statement that she will “not take money from developers” as her justification for using her own money in the campaign.

Struiksma, too, has stressed slow-growth themes by touting his work on the Mission Valley community plan, which he says will “harness” development and preserve hillsides in the booming area of his district.

In his State of the City address last week, Struiksma also invoked the spirit of Proposition A by warning about the “Manhattanization” of inner-city neighborhoods. His new phrase was copied from the cries about “Los Angelization” that served as the rallying point for pro-A forces last year.

Struiksma said later that he does not believe November’s vote will be a determining factor in the mayoral contest.

“What the people want to know or hear from their candidates is that they will be sensitive and abide by the will of the public. Beyond that, I think there are hundreds of other issues that the people of San Diego are concerned about,” he said.

Yet others assert that Proposition A will yield more than hot air.

They say the initiative has already shown substantial results by softening the hearts of development-eager conservatives and giving greater clout to the still-active San Diegans for Managed Growth.

As a practical effect, Proposition A has also revived the network of interest groups that placed Roger Hedgecock in office. Many of the same individuals and groups--the Sierra Club, gay political organizations, neighborhood groups fighting to preserve open space--that were pillars in the Hedgecock camp also worked on behalf of the measure.

The first change of the post-Proposition A era came almost immediately for Cleator, whose district includes the pristine canyons of Hillcrest, Mission Hills and related neighborhoods.

The neighborhood planning group called the Uptown Planners had been trying to stave off proposed development on the canyon slopes by rewriting the community plan. But Cleator pushed an amendment through the council that gutted the proposal and effectively raised the limit on condominium and apartment units that could be built on the slopes.

That happened less than a month before Proposition A. Two weeks after the passage of the initiative, when the effects of Cleator’s plan were addressed in a full council meeting, Hedgecock accused him of trying to take “revenge” for the measure. Angered, environmentalists, through Gotch, quietly threatened to pass yet another initiative, dubbed “Son of Prop. A,” to protect all city canyons.

After being swayed by what friends said was both public and private pressure, Cleator abruptly switched his position. The Uptown Planners and canyon preservationists were delighted when he pushed through a new measure that will keep everything but the barest of development out of canyons in Hillcrest and Mission Hills.

Consultant Meadow said such changes should be expected after the “cataclysmic event” in November.

“In a sense, there’s nothing wrong with being ‘born again’ if someone has seen the light--the light being the light of slow growth, orderly growth in San Diego,” he said.

“It would be inappropriate to sell any public official short by saying, ‘Look, this person has staked out a position and he can’t change.’ I’m saying that the nature of leadership is such that change is possible, that people can take cues from voters to reevaluate their positions. It doesn’t mean that the change is a false one,” Meadow said.

Meanwhile, pro-Proposition A forces are working to use the November victory to increase their political leverage. Like the Building Industry Assn. and other special-interest groups, San Diegans for Managed Growth is planning to quiz the candidates and then issue an endorsement in the race.

“I think we’re definitely in a position to do some bargaining,” said Diane Barlow, an aide to San Diego County Supervisor George Bailey and a member of the group’s steering committee.

“I think a lot of the voters who voted for Prop. A are going to look to San Diegans for Managed Growth for some guidance in terms of evaluating the candidates on the priorities that were embodied in the proposition,” she said.

There also have been benefits from Proposition A for gays, said Susan Jester, president of the Log Cabin Club, an organization of gay Republicans.

“If nothing else, it (Proposition A) has given us access to candidates that in the past would never talk to an environmentalist, or a minority or a person other than the big-money developers,” Jester said.

She said she and other gay leaders were invited to Cleator’s home Wednesday morning to spend two hours talking with the mayoral candidate. She attributed the wooing to the fact that Hillcrest and Mission Hills, bastions of the gay community, voted 60% for Proposition A and were strongholds for Hedgecock.

“We are a viable minority in San Diego, and people have to deal with us if they want to get elected citywide,” she said. “We’ve proven that we can raise money and we can deliver votes, and that’s what it is all about.”

Gotch will be carrying much the same message when he meets with O’Connor this week.

Besides Hedgecock, Gotch--who, with William Jones makes up the council’s liberal, Democratic minority--was the most visible public official to advocate Proposition A, and his decision not to enter the mayoral race was a disappointment to proponents of Proposition A.

But Gotch says he will be taking on a new role for the coalition--that of informal power broker. Several members of the San Diegans for Managed Growth steering committee said the group has not asked Gotch officially to make the overtures, but another person associated with the Proposition A campaign said it was “generally understood” that the councilman would do so.

Gotch said he will be meeting with O’Connor, and has already held a brief discussion with Cleator, to see what kinds of concessions he can wrangle in exchange for support from slow-growth and neighborhood activists.

“Those of us who live and breathe political activism are going to demand a greater input in the daily activities of the city,” Gotch said.

“We don’t expect any depth of commitments from these nouveau environmentalists,” he said, adding, “We’re not demanding control over the next 10 development votes or a pledge to buy 50% more open space. We’re asking for altering the basic political structure in San Diego, how people get elected.”

Gotch also said the groups will want to play a role in selecting a successor to Cleator or Struiksma if either is elected mayor. For instance, Cleator said that Gotch has already indicated a preference for filling a vacant council seat through a special election, rather than the appointive process.

“The lesson of Prop. A was that the electorate is a lot more savvy than politicians give them credit for,” Gotch said. “What they want is a voice in government, they want environmental protection, and they want power. They want input.”

To insure that input, Gotch said, he will be looking to “cut the best deal in advance” by asking candidates: “What input can we have in your appointments? Is it worth reevaluating your position on district elections because the common man can’t get elected in the city?”

Whether the spirit of Proposition A will convince the candidates to give the right answers to Gotch and friends is still uncertain.

But Struiksma pollster Meadow said that “any candidate who doesn’t speak with those groups, who doesn’t get a sense of what their agenda is, is making an enormous mistake.”

“I think slow growth, planned growth is also going to have to be reckoned with,” Meadow added. “The old theories under which people were operating, which is essentially that developers could get their way, is going to have to go.”