Effect on Election? It’s Anybody’s Guess

San Diego City Councilman Ed Struiksma’s withdrawal from this month’s mayoral race has posed more questions than it answered for the remaining candidates, who on Friday began to ponder how to capitalize on the unexpected plot twist.

Amid all the guesswork about how Struiksma’s demise might benefit or damage the other contenders--or possibly allow a candidate to win outright in the election on Feb. 25 by topping 50% of the vote--perhaps the most honest assessments came from the two candidates most likely to be affected by Struiksma’s withdrawal only 2 1/2 weeks before Election Day--Councilman Bill Cleator and former Councilwoman Maureen O’Connor.

“It’s really bizarre, but as far as what it means, who knows?” O’Connor said. “It’s all guesses and theories.”

Cleator’s answer when asked how Struiksma’s decision might affect the race was, “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

Although other political observers could speak with no greater certainty, they put forth an abundance of possible scenarios Friday on how the mayoral campaign might evolve. While those theories often conflicted, several common themes emerged, including suggestions that:

- The chance of any candidate topping 50% in the primary remains slim, even with Struiksma out of the race. With three major candidates and 10 long shots remaining in the race, most observers agree that the primary is unlikely to end in what political consultant Jack Orr calls “a knockout blow” for any candidate.

- Cleator could attract the bulk of Struiksma’s support, primarily because both are Republicans--a major consideration in an election that is nonpartisan more in theory than in fact. However, the animosity between the two Republicans that developed during the campaign leaves Cleator facing the task of trying to overcome any resulting political damage in only 18 days.

Struiksma’s reason for dropping out of the race--the fact that the district attorney’s office has launched a full-scale investigation into his expenses on a city-paid trip to the East Coast in 1984--could be viewed by voters as simply another in a series of recent City Hall scandals, a perception that could damage Cleator and conceivably provide a boost to “outsiders” O’Connor and former Councilman Floyd Morrow.

“I think (Struiksma’s) problems end up painting everyone on the City Council with a pretty ugly brush,” said political consultant Nick Johnson, a top local adviser to Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy. “By this time, people have a ‘What’s next?’ attitude about City Hall.”

“This is a further tarring of all council members,” Morrow added. “This is a bad, bad time to be an incumbent.”

Despite the fact that there are now only three, rather than four, major contenders in the mayoral race, most political observers doubt that Struiksma’s withdrawal alters the electoral arithmetic enough to permit a 50%-plus primary victory for any candidate.

In the wake of Struiksma’s decision, Tom La Vaut, chairman of the San Diego County Democratic Party, called that development “a real shot in the arm” for O’Connor, the front-runner in various public and private polls.

“I think it gives Maureen a really strong chance to go over the top in the primary,” La Vaut added.

La Vaut’s opinion, however, is a minority one on that point. Indeed, the consensus among political observers is that a June runoff between the top two vote-getters in the primary will still be needed to determine who serves the remaining 2 1/2 years of former Mayor Roger Hedgecock’s term.

“The problem is that there are so many minor candidates chipping away at the vote that it will be very difficult for anyone to get 50%,” said Struiksma pollster Bob Meadow. “Each of them may only get a half of 1% or 1%, but when you add that up, you’ve taken 10% or so away from the major candidates.” In the June, 1984 mayoral primary, for example, seven minor candidates received 15.3% of the vote, forcing a runoff between Hedgecock and challenger Dick Carlson.

“No matter how you slice the pie, it’s hard to get 50% plus one vote for either Cleator or O’Connor,” Orr added. “The numbers just don’t fall that way.”

Under Orr’s scenario--similar to that of other local campaign strategists--the minor candidates could receive a total of about 10% of the vote, with Morrow, whose name recognition is considerably lower than either O’Connor’s or Cleator’s, polling about another 10%.

And because the primary ballots have already been printed, Struiksma’s name will still appear in the voting booklets at the polls on Feb. 25. Based on similar instances involving withdrawn candidates, Struiksma may still draw 5% or more of the vote--an amalgam of ballots from die-hard Struiksma supporters, protest votes and ballots cast by voters unaware of Struiksma’s withdrawal.

If those ballpark estimates prove accurate, that would leave only about 75% of the vote to be divided between O’Connor and Cleator, meaning that the victor would need to out-poll the second-place finisher by a 2-to-1 margin to win in the primary.

“I don’t think either (Cleator or O’Connor) can beat the other one that badly,” Orr concluded.

The outcome of the race, however, could turn on which candidate Struiksma partisans choose to support. Widely divergent opinions were expressed on that question Friday, with the theories generally appearing to stem more from the political biases of the persons expounding them than from hard facts or neutral analysis.

Many Republicans, for example, theorized that most of Struiksma’s support will go to Cleator, arguing that shared party labels will help to heal whatever political wounds developed between the two Republicans during the mayoral race.

“This is going to assist in unifying the party behind Bill,” said Byron Wear, vice chairman of the San Diego County Republican Party. “There are some wounds, but I think they’ll be healed before the primary.”

Democrat O’Connor initially felt the same way, but said Friday that “after sleeping on it,” she believes that she could attract substantial support from past Struiksma supporters on ideological grounds.

“A lot of Struiksma’s support came from moderate Republicans concerned about growth-management,” O’Connor said. “I’m closer to them than Cleator is on that issue.”

Pollster Meadow, however, said that Struiksma’s support is “totally up for grabs,” partly because of Struiksma’s success in positioning himself as the moderate between O’Connor on the left and Cleator on the right.

“Right now, there’s no reason to think that Struiksma’s support is going to fall predominantly into either O’Connor’s or Cleator’s camp,” Meadow said. “It depends on how each of them go after that vote and on how Struiksma supporters re-evaluate the race.” Struiksma, who declined to comment on the race Friday, has not said whether he will endorse any of the candidates.

Morrow argues that he could pick up a sizable portion of Struiksma’s support because he represented the same council district for three terms in the 1960s and 1970s. However, most political observers, noting the heavy turnover in San Diego’s population since Morrow was on the council, view that more as wishful thinking on his part than a realistic expectation.

“Morrow is a person from the past,” Meadow said. “The people he represented in the 1970s live somewhere else, and the people living there now don’t know him.”

Both Cleator and O’Connor say they anticipate no major strategic changes during the campaign’s closing days because of Struiksma’s withdrawal.

“We have decided to do just exactly what we’ve been doing--we’re going to take this campaign to the neighborhoods,” Cleator said. “In a campaign like this, you just go out and do the best you can.”

Saying that it is “too late to start doing things differently now,” O’Connor added that she intends to “stick to the same game plan” until the primary, including adhering to her pledge to spend less than $150,000--about $100,000 less than Cleator plans to raise--in the primary.

“My attitude is, I’ll either get those votes (from former Struiksma backers) or I won’t, in the same way I’ll get other votes--by being out in the neighborhoods, at the shopping centers, on the streets,” O’Connor said. “All this does is make things a little crazier.”