Eastwood Asks Carmel to Make His Day, Elect Him as Mayor

Imagine the campaign poster: The unmistakably angular face, the bone-chilling scowl, the trademark squint.

Below, a terse, menacing slogan: “Make My Day.”

No such poster exists yet, but that image soon is likely to cross the minds of at least a few residents of scenic Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Clint Eastwood is running for mayor.

Eastwood, who has made a career portraying steely existentialist heroes for whom the only law was their own personal sense of right and wrong, on Thursday declared his candidacy for chief executive of the picturesque town on the Monterey Peninsula about 80 miles south of here.

Shortly before the deadline to declare his intentions, Eastwood, fresh from his opening round in the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am golf tournament, dropped by City Hall with his nominating petition, signed by the requisite 20 voters.

Three other mayoral candidates also submitted papers to run in the April 8 election. Among them is incumbent Mayor Charlotte Townsend. She declined to comment on her glamorous rival.

True to his laconic screen image, the actor had nothing to say as he tossed his Stetson in the ring. Earlier Thursday, however, the local newspaper, The Carmel Pine Cone, ran an interview in which Eastwood, a 14-year resident of Carmel, explained that he saw current city leaders as divisive and unwilling to tackle major issues.

“One of the themes (of his campaign) is that I just want to go back to old-fashioned logic to try to solve some of these problems,” he told the paper, citing the eternal Carmel issues of parking, traffic and a shortage of water.

“There used to be a great deal of camaraderie, a great spirit in this community,” he was quoted. “Now there is such negativity. I’d like to see that (old) spirit come back here, that kind of esprit de corps.”

He added that he also is tired of Carmel’s stodgy image.

In particular, the paper said he was unhappy with a story in The Times last year that headlined the prim tourist mecca as “Scrooge City” for trying to ban take-away ice-cream stands. Some residents considered such snacking to be undignified.

“I don’t need this to bring attention to myself,” Eastwood is quoted in Thursday’s Pine Cone. “I’m doing this as a resident. This is where I live; this is where I intend to spend the rest of my life. I have a great affinity for this community.”

And, some might add, considerable enmity for its elected leaders.

Eastwood, his former wife and another partner sued the style-conscious city last year when it blocked their plans to build a two-story commercial building next to the actor’s popular restaurant, the Hog’s Breath Inn.

The city sniffed that the building would sit too close to the sidewalk and that its exterior contained too much glass and not enough wood. In their suit, Eastwood and his partners complained that city regulations on the subject were “vague, subjective, ambiguous, unintelligible and obscure.”

The two sides settled out of court last November, and Eastwood will be permitted to construct the building--with a modified design.

Since his birth in San Francisco 55 years ago, Eastwood has played many roles in real life--logger, furnace-stoker, soldier, actor, director, restaurateur, real-estate developer--but local opinion apparently is split over his chances to add mayor to that list.

“One side of the community says he’s a shoo-in,” said a reporter for the Pine Cone, “while the other thinks Charlotte will beat the pants off him.”