GOP’s Cleator Endorsed by Former Top Democrat

Saying that fellow Democrat Maureen O’Connor would be a “divisive, reclusive mayor,” the former chairman of the San Diego County Democratic Party on Wednesday endorsed City Councilman Bill Cleator, a Republican, in next month’s mayoral primary.

Calling Cleator the mayoral candidate who “can best unite this city and move it forward,” former Democratic Central Committee Chairman Phil Connor joined several other prominent local political figures in endorsing Cleator at a news conference in Balboa Park.

The other Cleator backers included former San Diego Mayors Frank Curran and John Butler; former City Councilman Bill Mitchell, and Robert Thornberg, the former head of the San Diego County Republican Party.

Connor’s endorsement of Cleator, however, coupled with his caustic remarks about O’Connor, was the most surprising of Wednesday’s developments, and served to refocus attention on a criticism that has plagued O’Connor throughout her public career--the contention that she is aloof and regarded as inaccessible even by top officials in her own party.

In the special 1983 mayoral race, then-Democratic Chairman Connor endorsed O’Connor, and the party “worked very hard” to try to get her elected through a get-out-the-vote plan and other efforts, Connor said.

However, after her narrow loss to Roger Hedgecock in May, 1983, O’Connor “dropped out of sight” and did not actively participate in the party’s subsequent fund-raising efforts and other long-range programs, Connor said.

“There aren’t a lot of (Democrats) that feel close to Maureen,” Connor said. “To kind of sum it up . . . we passed our partisan test in 1983, and Maureen failed hers.”

Late Wednesday, O’Connor dismissed the former Democratic official’s comments as “just a recycled campaign issue from ‘83, and it’s no more accurate now than it was then.”

“My support has always been based in the neighborhoods, not at party headquarters,” O’Connor said. “I’ve been out meeting hundreds of people every day at shopping centers and in the neighborhoods. They don’t think I’m aloof. Mr. Connor and I simply view history differently, but it’s not worth getting into a big argument over this. I say, congratulations to Mr. Cleator. He got two votes today and I got 50 at the shopping center.”

A lawyer and former unsuccessful council candidate, Connor resigned as the county’s party chairman in November, 1984, partly out of frustration over intra-party squabbles and the difficulty that he experienced in attempting to persuade O’Connor and other prominent Democrats to take a more active role in party affairs. (At the time of his resignation, however, Connor’s leadership was under fire within the county’s Democratic Central Committee, and, had he not resigned, he might have been forced out, party officials said.)

At Wednesday’s news conference, Connor said that he had not talked to O’Connor since “the day of the election” in 1983, charging that, over the last 2 1/2 years, “dozens of calls” that he placed to O’Connor seeking financial support and other assistance for the local party went unanswered.

“Maureen swoops in and out of the political process to the extent that she’s unreachable,” Connor said.

O’Connor, however, disputed Connor’s version of events, contending that the two have “had several conversations, and he’s been invited to a couple of thank-you parties.”

Connor said he felt he “would have more access and (be) able to communicate” his views to Cleator if he had done nothing rather than “gone out and sweated blood for Maureen in this (election).”

While Connor argued that some rank-and-file Democrats feel “the same way I do” about O’Connor, Democratic Party leaders sought to downplay the significance of his endorsement of Republican Cleator.

“Phil Connor can deliver only one vote--his own,” said Tom La Vaut, who succeeded Connor as Democratic county chairman. “He has no real power in the party. Cleator’s campaign must really be in trouble when he has to go to a nonentity for support. Most Democrats who I talk to don’t share Phil Connor’s opinion about Maureen O’Connor or much else.”

There also was an inherent irony in Connor’s position: While faulting O’Connor for her inactivity in partisan affairs, he also explained his endorsement of Cleator by saying he believes that “political campaigns for nonpartisan office have been too partisan.”

Nevertheless, complaints about O’Connor’s reputed inaccessibility have been widespread within political circles since the latter stages of her 1971-1979 service on the City Council. Tim Fields, a San Diegan who is a member of the state Democratic Central Committee and who has also endorsed Cleator, charged Wednesday that O’Connor would be “an unmitigated disaster as mayor” because of her “systematic exclusion of any opinion . . . that comes from outside her little inner circle of advisers.”

Seeking to rebut that allegation, O’Connor pointed out that she has pledged, if elected, to spend every other Saturday at City Hall meeting with anyone “on a first-come, first-served basis,” and to conduct what she describes as “little City Hall” excursions into neighborhoods once a month.

“Pretty aloof, huh?” O’Connor said. “And if Mr. Connor and some of his friends feel that I’m inaccessible, you can tell them to give me their phone numbers and I’ll spend an extra hour at City Hall on Saturday just to talk to them.”

Meanwhile, several other Democratic officeholders adopted a middle ground between Connor’s and Fields’ acerbic criticism and La Vaut’s support of O’Connor.

“I think Maureen probably has to work on being a little more accessible,” said Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego). “I can’t say that I’ve had personal problems with her, but a lot of other people say they do.”

“Sometimes the sense of her inaccessibility and her pattern of sort of going off on her own path has raised questions in my mind,” added Assemblywoman Lucy Killea (D-San Diego). “At the same time, she’s a doer--her record . . . shows that. It’s really a question of style. That’s not the most important thing in politics, but it’s important. It’s an image problem she probably needs to try to correct.”