Rise and Fall of a Mayoral Candidate

One is the father figure, the 58-year-old Point Loma businessman whose high school and college chums have grown up to race yachts, manage banks and run the town. With their support, he became a San Diego City Councilman and the gregarious, avuncular head of a conservative fraternity in which loyalty among colleagues is cultivated through favors and friendship.

The other is the 39-year-old former cop from National City. He was the average guy who didn’t stand out in high school. When he decided to run for council as a Republican, most party members didn’t know his name. Many couldn’t pronounce it.

They are Bill Cleator and Ed Struiksma. For more than four years, they have played tag-team politics, working together to lead fellow conservatives on the City Council to shape development proposals, appointments and other municipal issues to their liking.

“Bill sort of treated Ed like a son,” said one council insider who asked for anonymity. “They were just like a father and son who had a good relationship. . . . There was always this tacit understanding that one of Ed’s primary loyalties was to Bill.”

But the relationship was breached--both Cleator and Struiksma wanted to be mayor. And their conflicting ambitions erupted into a public falling out and verbal warfare unusual for fellow Republicans.

For the moment, the conflicting ambitions of the two men seem to have been resolved with Struiksma’s withdrawal from the mayor’s race Thursday night. But the behind-the-scenes moves that led to Struiksma’s late-night announcement were the direct result of their collision.

“The only analogy I can use is, at this scale, it replicates the Greek schism. Constantinople versus Rome. When the Greek Orthodox Church split with the Roman Catholic Church,” Councilman Uvaldo Martinez said.

Added Struiksma: “I don’t envision if I asked him (Cleator) out for drinks that he will come along.”

During the month they campaigned against each other, Struiksma and Cleator clawed at each other over appointments to city boards and commissions. Struiksma implied that Cleator and his allies were behind news stories that prompted a district attorney’s investigation of his city business expenses during a 1984 East Coast trip. Cleator seized on the stories by demanding a special closed council session to see if Struiksma’s alibi--that the city auditor’s office advised him to fake numbers on the expense forms--was true.

How the feud began to flare is not only a story about loyalty and betrayal and honor, but it also includes the notion of what some people believe is the acceptable way to ascend to San Diego’s highest elective office.

“There is a very strong pecking order syndrome in the Republican organization,” said Martinez.

“It’s called ‘Pay your dues,’ ” he said. “Republicans are very big on that. The attitude is that Cleator has paid his dues and he deserves a shot at being mayor. Ed can wait his turn.”

Cleator’s ambition to be mayor has been an open secret, becoming more public as Roger Hedgecock’s legal woes dragged him into controversy and eventually expelled him from office.

A former president of TRE Corp. in Los Angeles, Cleator returned to San Diego in 1975 and waited four years before entering his first City Council race. The day he picked up his nominating papers from the City Clerk’s office was only the second time he had set foot inside of City Hall.

In previous interviews, Cleator said he thought City Hall would only be a part-time commitment, leaving him enough time to help run the furniture factory he started with his brother and nephew. His performance during council meetings has been marked by verbal bumbling, disjointed speeches and incomplete sentences. His questions and comments revealed that he was often unprepared for council discussions.

But his strengths of personal warmth and a network of powerful friends made him a behind-the-scenes leader. His supporters--mostly old high school and college chums--are some of San Diego’s most prominent people: Malin Burnham, chairman of the John Burnham & Co. insurance and real estate firm; Kim Fletcher, chairman of Home Federal Savings & Loan; W. Daniel Larsen, a contractor and a San Diego Unified Port commissioner.

Cleator tried and failed to become mayor in 1983, losing to Hedgecock. Yet he concentrated on extending a paternalistic influence among his younger conservative colleagues. His style has been to garner loyalties through favors, such as dispensing advice or raising campaign funds for fledgling politicians or younger colleagues he calls “The Kids.”

One of Cleator’s most notable beneficiaries is Martinez. He raised money for Martinez’s tough reelection fight in 1983. Although Martinez later snubbed him by siding with Hedgecock on some council committee assignments, Cleator helped the errant Republican late last year when the scandal broke about Martinez’s use of a city-issued credit card. Cleator suggested that publicist Don Harrison, one of his supporters, be hired to fend off press inquiries for Martinez.

“With me, it was the Prodigal Son returning. ‘Martinez has come back to his friends,’ ” Martinez said recently. “And he was right.”

From the beginning of their relationship, Cleator worked on making Struiksma a council fraternity brother.

Struiksma came from the other side of the bay, a product of the blue-collar suburb where he was an average student at National City’s Sweetwater High School.

“I knew Ed somewhat, but not all that well,” said John C. Hlawatsch, Sweetwater’s student body president in 1964. “Ed, as far as I know, was pretty low-keyed in high school. I don’t remember him being in any athletics or him being in student government or anything. That’s just about all I can tell you.”

Struiksma was a Marine who became a San Diego city cop and then transferred to work as an investigator in the city attorney’s office. When he surfaced on the local political scene, he was still an enigma to many. He decided to run for the District 5 seat in 1981 when the only other conservative Republican, attorney Dan Stanford, bowed out.

“Ed Struiksma was a terribly weak candidate for City Council,” the City Hall insider said. “He was the classic nice guy who didn’t know anything about city government, wasn’t polished. . . . The only reason he ran was he really wanted to be a city councilman. Desire goes a long way in this world, but that’s all he had.”

It was Cleator and his circle of friends who helped provide some of the connections. Struiksma’s first political consultant was Jack Orr, the man who ran Cleator’s campaign three years earlier. And Cleator became active in the Struiksma campaign by shepherding the would-be legislator through the office suites of San Diego’s Republican establishment.

“Bill called up the good old boys and said, ‘I’ve got this new kid Struiksma and I’d like you to donate to him,’ ” the insider said. During the hard-fought campaign against Democrat Phil Connor, Cleator solicited hundreds of supporters for Struiksma campaign funds.

Cleator’s efforts helped offset Struiksma’s low name recognition, a decided political liability. For instance, when consultant Orr sent out the first fund-raising letters, he expected $20,000; he received only $70.

“I started to call some of the people that I knew very well on that list of contributors to ask why they did not make a contribution,” Orr said. “The unanimous response was ‘Who the hell is Ed Struiksma?’ and ‘How do you pronounce it?’ Some people said, ‘What is an Ed Struiksma?’ ”

Struiksma won by only 16 votes. But it was a victory, and Cleator had a new ally.

“He acted as sort of Ed’s mentor,” said the insider. “But he didn’t order him around. Whenever there was a vote, he didn’t get on the phone and say, remember, I raised money so I want you to vote yes on Item 22.

“He (Struiksma) was as loyal a person as Cleator could want for the first four years,” the insider said. “It (the relationship) was built on mutual need. Ed knew his loyalty would some day help him.”

Struiksma benefited when Cleator was named deputy mayor and ran council business after Pete Wilson left city government to become California’s junior U.S. Senator in 1983. Cleator would farm out many of the ceremonial duties--ribbon cuttings, speeches--to his protege in District 5.

In return, Struiksma signed Cleator’s 1983 mayoral campaign material. One mailer, designed to look like official city stationery, shows Struiksma’s signature on a letter praising Cleator’s “effective and compassionate leadership.”

When Struiksma later put together a community plan for Mission Valley, the booming commercial area in his district, it was Cleator, said Martinez, who helped sustain the votes by winning support from Councilwoman Gloria McColl, a longtime Cleator friend whose mid-city district includes the valley’s southern slopes.

Cleator and Struiksma would routinely make and second the motions for pro-growth development projects. They publicly snubbed Hedgecock in late 1983 by overturning his recommendations for council committee assignments and electing their own slate of colleagues.

And the fraternal spirit extended outside of the office as well. Although the Cleators and Struiksmas did not travel in the same social circles, Cleator helped Struiksma become involved in the local chapter of the United Cerebral Palsy Assn. Cleator was the charity’s telethon chairman in 1982 and ‘83; Struiksma assumed the title in 1984. Both serve on the association’s board of governors.

While some characterized the men as father and son, J. Michael McDade, Hedgecock’s former chief of staff, said he detected little “personal warmth” between them. “Many times, I think the thing that brought them together was their mutual distaste for Hedgecock,” he said. “Now that he’s gone, it’s a whole new ball game.”

A streak of independence became evident when Struiksma bucked the Republican establishment and voted against the controversial La Jolla Valley project in Sept. 1984.

And during his reelection campaign, which featured heavy media advertising despite only token opposition, Struiksma used some of his radio time to promote Republican hopeful Jeanette Roache for the District 7 seat. Cleator was an early supporter and fund-raiser for Republican Judy McCarty, Roache’s opponent and the eventual winner.

But the ultimate break came after Hedgecock was expelled from the mayor’s office on Dec. 10. On the strength of the conservative fraternity’s vote, Struiksma had been named deputy mayor just eight days earlier.

Cleator and other council members have said they agreed to give Struiksma the post after he strongly implied he would not use it to run for mayor. Martinez said Struiksma answered him this way when he asked if a mayoral campaign was in the offing: “Where would I get the money to run? I couldn’t get 15 cents.”

Struiksma, however, denies he told other council members that he would not run for the mayor’s seat. “I don’t think he made any promise to anybody,” said Burnham, a Cleator backer. “Certainly, he didn’t make any promise to me that he wouldn’t run.”

Meanwhile, Cleator was appointed chairman of the council’s Public Facilities and Recreation Committee, a visible post. “My colleagues thought I needed a chairmanship on some committee because I was running,” Cleator recently told a group of black community leaders. “It was purely political.”

Within weeks, Struiksma was to make a political decision himself that would upset Cleator. Buoyed by a poll that showed he was second in popularity to Democrat Maureen O’Connor, Struiksma decided to oppose his mentor, who had already announced his mayoral candidacy Dec. 19.

As a courtesy, Struiksma asked for a private meeting with his longtime friend to inform him of the decision before announcing it publicly.

The rivals met in Cleator’s City Hall office Dec. 31.

“We had quite a discussion,” Struiksma said. “I guess it was kind of different. We sat there and he came to the conclusion that I was going to run and he said the meeting was over with.”

Struiksma said Cleator warned him that as acting mayor he would get “nothing of substance” done before the election. He also said that Cleator mentioned possible embarrassing stories Struiksma might expect during the campaign about his 1980 divorce and a 1984 city business trip to New York City.

Cleator declined comment about his relationship to Struiksma or the meeting. But spokesman Harrison said Cleator never mentioned the trip during the New Year’s Eve talks, adding that it was Struiksma himself who brought up the “rumors that had been all over . . . for many, many months about his marital problems.”

The rumors concerned a claim by Struiksma’s former wife in divorce filings that Struiksma assaulted her on Christmas, 1978. The allegation was never pursued in the proceedings, and she never filed any criminal charges against him. She recanted her story when contacted several weeks ago.

The focus of the discussion, said Harrison, was “how disappointed he (Cleator) was that Ed went back on his word. The main subject was the fact that Ed had promised the City Council or members of the City Council that he would not run for mayor if they appointed him as deputy mayor.”

To some conservatives, Struiksma’s decision not only seemed like a personal betrayal of Cleator but a disruption of the team, on which younger, less experienced members are expected to defer their ambitions.

“You have to take your lumps,” Martinez explained. “It’s part of the maturation process. You don’t always get what you want, but you can disagree within the confines of the coalition.”

Since the Dec. 31 meeting, the words passing between the men have been tensely civil, at best.

Last week, Cleator walked into an elevator and found Struiksma and a reporter. During the awkward 10-story ride to the ground, Struiksma looked mainly at the floor and Cleator faced the door.

How deeply Cleator had been hurt by his former ally became clear when the Point Loma councilman appeared before the party’s central committee on Jan. 13. Asked if he would support Struiksma if the acting mayor won the primary, Cleator refused to answer.

More recently, Struiksma accused Cleator of grandstanding at City Hall, of trying to convene a “kangaroo court” by calling for a closed City Council session to examine Struiksma’s expense report for the New York trip. Cleator responded by accusing Struiksma of an “aggressive cover-up campaign” by “pointing the finger. . . . The only one that Ed Struiksma has to blame is himself.”

The reaction among Republican stalwarts against Struiksma has been “obvious,” said Martinez earlier this week.

“They’re all in Bill’s camp and Ed’s having a heck of a time raising money. It’s very difficult to run for mayor in San Diego without a half-million dollars . . . ,” he said.

Robert Schuman, chairman of the Republican Central Committee, said this kind of public warfare between Republicans, especially friends, is unusual. Both men feel “betrayed”--Cleator because he counted on Struiksma’s support; Struiksma because the hard-core Republican support is not “receptive or open-minded about his candidacy.”

“It’s kind of like brothers and business partners that got along for years and then something came up that broke up the partnership or turned brothers against each other,” Schuman said about the feud. “I think it’s the emotion of the moment and what’s at stake. I think after the smoke clears after Feb. 25 . . . they will get back together and put this behind them.”

Struiksma, however, was not so sure. He said Cleator made one thing clear New Year’s Eve during the last private meeting between the former friends.

“I couldn’t expect the relationship to be in the future what it was in the past,” Struiksma said.

Will Struiksma’s short mayoral campaign and feud with Cleator make him the new Prodigal Son in Republican circles and among his council colleagues?

There are those who, like developer Bill Nelson, believe that in politics at least, all things are possible.

Nelson, who serves on the boards of San Diegans Inc., a downtown businessmen’s organization, and the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, said he expects the bitterness to fade.

“People have kissed and made up before,” he said.