Also-Rans Make Mayoral Contest a Horse Race

“I’m not your average homogenized candidate,” Loch David Crane said at one recent mayoral candidates’ forum. After Crane proceeded to quote Mr. Spock of “Star Trek” fame, call for the preservation of the Mission Beach Giant Dipper roller coaster “as a symbol of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and, finally, set off a puff of flash powder in his hand, no one in the audience disputed his point.

Candidate John Kelley, meanwhile, passed out free Bibles while saying, “You’ll get more truth out of this . . . than a whole stack of campaign leaflets.” Minutes later, Vernon Watts Jr., an unemployed carpenter who wants to get back in the job force as mayor, introduced himself to the crowd as “one of those crazy guys you see hanging off the side of a building yelling at women.”

And Rose Lynne, the City Hall gadfly now in her third--and, she says, last--campaign for mayor, told anyone who would listen to her: “Please don’t vote for me.”

Welcome to the unusual, often humorous, never boring world of the 10 long shots in Tuesday’s mayoral primary--an amalgam of well-intentioned if often offbeat political alternatives and sheer comic relief that can be viewed either as democracy in its rawest form or simply as a traveling political sideshow.

Their styles and campaign platforms are nothing if not colorful, and, to put it diplomatically, unorthodox. One candidate is a former horse racing jockeys’ agent who wants to jump in the saddle at City Hall but, after getting kicked out of the building several times recently, is having trouble getting out of the starting gate. Another is convinced that the Saudis would love to finance construction of a monorail in San Diego. One wants to build a floating tuna museum, while another, angered over not being invited to a candidates’ forum in Normal Heights, recently compared the organizers of the meeting to Nazis.

While the three major candidates in the race--Councilman Bill Cleator, former Councilman Floyd Morrow and former Councilwoman Maureen O’Connor--appear in newspapers and on television almost daily, either in news stories or via paid advertising, the 10 long shots labor in relative obscurity with, in most cases, little money and few volunteers.

Perhaps the most telling demonstration of the frustrations faced by the long shots was experienced by candidate Mary Christian-Heising, who received calls from both the Cleator and O’Connor campaigns asking for her support.

“I let them make their little pitch before I told them I was a competitor,” she said. “It actually was pretty funny, I guess.”

Not invited to many candidate forums because, their protestations notwithstanding, they are not regarded as serious candidates, the long shots’ comments at the meetings to which they can wrangle invitations attract snickers and confused stares more often than applause. Two write-in candidates, Gladwin Salway and Armand Benjamin Jr., also are competing in the race.

In their more candid moments, the lesser-known candidates will concede, as Kelley did at the Normal Heights forum, that, “The only way I can get elected mayor is if (the three major candidates) simultaneously drop dead. I don’t think it’s going to happen. They look too healthy.”

More often, however, they concur with environmental designer Robert McCullough’s explanation of what motivates people to run in a race--and, more importantly, spend $500 to get their name on the ballot--in a race that all logic seems to dictate they cannot win.

“I’m looking for a political miracle,” McCullough said. “Upsets happen all the time in politics, and this is going to be one of the biggest. I think the people are looking for a change, something totally different from what they’ve been getting at City Hall.”

“We have something to contribute to the dialogue of the campaign,” added Warren Nielsen, now in his second consecutive mayoral race after receiving about 4,300 votes, or 2% of the total, in 1984. “Our ideas can have an impact on the race.”

Most political observers, however, argue that the long shots’ likely impact on Tuesday’s election, if any, is limited to the possibility that the votes they receive could deny one of the three leading candidates a majority vote. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in the primary, the top two will compete in a June 3 runoff.

Although they are diverse in their personal backgrounds and political philosophies, the 10 share one common lament: They could win, or at least be taken seriously, if only the news media and public would pay more attention to them.

“How much money you have, instead of what you say, determines if you’re called a major or minor candidate,” Kelley complained. “Heck, I could be a major candidate, too, if I did what Dick Carlson did and married a soup heiress.” Carlson, whose wife is an heiress to the Swanson frozen food fortune, spent $498,000 of his own money in his 1984 loss to former Mayor Roger Hedgecock.

Calling O’Connor, Cleator and Morrow “the big moons that block the little satellites” in the race, Crane, a teacher and professional magician, said that he had to “resort to magical effects to get any attention at all.”

“Unfortunately, that trivialized the campaign,” Crane said. On the other hand, he noted, it also got him several bookings as a magician from people who appreciated his act, if not his politics.

Here, then, are the 10 candidates who are hoping that a political miracle lifts them to the 11th floor of City Hall:

- Mary Christian-Heising, a longtime Democratic activist who has run unsuccessfully for various local offices over the last 15 years, has emphasized growth-management and called for the reopening of Ocean Boulevard in Pacific Beach to vehicular traffic. Her other priorities include “housing, transportation, displaced job programs and wholesome activities for our youth and handicapped.”

“We really have to think about what kind of city we’re going to leave behind to our children and our children to come,” the former honorary mayor of Pacific Beach said.

Now pursuing a master’s degree in political science at San Diego State University, the 56-year-old Christian-Heising says that O’Connor, Cleator and Morrow “couldn’t solve the problems when they were in office, so why should we reward them with a higher office?”

“It’s time to retire the Tweedledee and Tweedledum candidates of yesteryear,” she said.

Undeterred by being largely ignored in the race, Christian-Heising said that she expects to seek public office again in the future.

“I’m glad to live in a country where you have the privilege and prerogative to run for office,” she said. “The way I feel is, they can cross you off the TV, but they can’t cross you off the ballot. You’re only defeated when you quit.”

- Crane, who uses the stage name of Captain Kirk and owns a three-wheeled motorcycle that he calls the Star Trike, has proved to be one of the most colorful long shots, thanks to his magic tricks and clever one-liners.

“I’ve been fooling the public for 20 years visually instead of financially,” the 37-year-old Crane says in his standard stump speech. “This vocation has brought me income and enjoyment, not indictments and indignation. I feel that the public would rather be fooled by a magician than by a dishonest politician. Remember, not another politician, you need a magician!”

A part-time instructor at National University who currently is tutoring the child star of a movie being filmed in Julian, Crane also has a long list of proposals, including the creation of commuter lanes to ease highway congestion; restoration of the Belmont Park roller coaster; implementation of Proposition A; a requirement that individuals perform public service work in return for welfare benefits, and relocation of the central library to the soon-to-be vacated Sears building in Hillcrest, with the current downtown library being used to help the homeless.

Crane, who last week sealed his prediction on the race’s outcome in a capsule to be opened Tuesday night, recently performed his rendition of Houdini’s bullet-catching trick, but says that he has an even bigger trick planned for Election Day: “Winning.”

- Arthur F. Helliwell, a 71-year-old retired jockeys’ agent, is perhaps the longest of the long shots. He has not attended any candidate forums and, when asked this week what he had done in his campaign, replied: “Not a damn thing, really.”

In the voter information booklet distributed to voters, Helliwell describes himself as a World War II veteran on a disability pension and writes: “Stepped out of (horse) racing when ran into trouble with the racing authorities when they thought I might reveal where the ‘bodies’ were buried . . . in 1951.”

To reduce the city’s budget, Helliwell says that he would cut the police force in half “so the cops don’t make a lot of arrests just to justify their existence.” He also favors expanding the San Diego Trolley throughout the entire city and cutting trolley fares.

Although he hopes to occupy the 11th floor at City Hall, Helliwell has had trouble getting past the ground-floor door lately after recently being ordered out of the building for allegedly unruly behavior.

“They’ve got me banned from City Hall,” Helliwell complained. “The police say I bother people, but I think there’s a little conspiracy to keep me out of City Hall because they . . . don’t want an honest man elected. It’s a terrible thing to have happen in America. Here I am running for mayor and can’t even get in City Hall.”

- Kelley, a 67-year-old Golden Hill resident, is a twice-unsuccessful mayoral candidate who has pledged to “apply Christian principles to government.”

“The people are tired of all the hanky-panky at City Hall and they want it stopped,” said Kelley, who passes out free New Testaments to anyone who promises to read them.

Kelley’s standard speech also includes perhaps the most tongue-twisting line delivered by any candidate in the race: “The vast social, political and economic problems confronting us today, with their various repercussions and ramifications and idiosyncrasies, are tremendous, but they can be solved if we go about them in a realistic, pragmatic way.”

Calling himself a moderate on growth, Kelley explains his growth-management philosophy thus: “I say don’t get in the right ditch or the left ditch. Either way, you’re in a ditch.”

If elected, Kelley has pledged to donate one-fourth of his salary to charity.

“Politicians are geniuses when it comes to spending the public’s money, but they’re tighter than the Kalamazoo High School drum when it comes to spending their own money,” he said.

- Rose Lynne, who bills herself as “San Diego’s watchdogging conscience,” has long been a fixture at local government meetings. She consistently badgers public officials to sign up for her two-hour training course on “ombudscience,” which she defines as “the study of how and why people resist new ideas and how to overcome that resistance.”

A 71-year-old retired science teacher from New York City, Rose Lynne often passes out new pennies to help illustrate her contention that “99 cents out of every tax dollar are being wasted because people at City Hall stonewall new ideas.”

As she has in her past two mayoral campaigns, Rose Lynne tells campaign audiences not to vote for her.

“Don’t vote for me--vote for who I endorse,” she says. While Rose Lynne has not made that decision, she has narrowed the field of prospective endorsees to “anybody but Cleator.”

In addition to calling for establishment of an inspector’s general office to reduce waste in local government, Rose Lynne also has encouraged voters not to support any mayoral candidates who refuse to take her course on “how to become a community genius.”

“If they don’t want to take training to listen better, for God’s sake don’t give them even a single vote,” she said at one recent forum.

- McCullough, a former Berkeley redevelopment planner who has lived here since 1965, says that he offers “a new, progressive vision for San Diego” that includes construction of a monorail system reaching to the city’s northern boundary. Saudi investors, he said, “would be happy” to finance such a project.

His first priority as mayor, McCullough says, would be to fire City Auditor Ed Ryan and to obtain the resignations of Councilmen Ed Struiksma and Uvaldo Martinez. Last year, he launched recall campaigns against Martinez and Hedgecock, but failed to gather the required number of signatures.

“I am San Diego’s last chance to clean up the problems of corruption, overspending and the ignoring of the will of the people at City Hall,” the 33-year-old McCullough said. “We need new blood at City Hall to clean up this city’s image and get on with the future.”

- Nielsen, another past unsuccessful mayoral candidate, has frequently appeared before local governments on a wide range of community projects.

Perhaps best known for his unsuccessful efforts to convince the Navy to build a new hospital in Helix Heights instead of Balboa Park’s Florida Canyon, the 61-year-old engineer and construction company owner says that he wants to “contribute creatively with solutions to San Diego’s opportunities to grow and improve for all its citizens.”

Describing himself as an “issue-oriented candidate with practical solutions” to city problems, Nielsen has tossed out dozens of proposals in his campaign, including calls for construction of a new international airport in Miramar, with Lindbergh Field being downgraded to a commuter airport; reductions in council staffs and budgets so that the council could be expanded by two positions, one for the South Bay area and the other in North City, and construction of a new freeway linking Interstates 5 and 805 in Southeast San Diego that would be named after the late civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Among Nielsen’s more unusual proposals are those calling for establishment of a “special graffiti police” detail, and, in a plan designed to aid the ailing tuna industry, a “floating tuna park” where the public could view tuna processing.

“Running for office is a good way to bring attention to your issues,” Nielsen said.

- Raymond (Gene) Peters, a 52-year-old quality assurance engineer, says that redevelopment in Southeast San Diego and the construction of additional downtown housing would be among his priorities.

“Seventy percent of the junkyards, welfare programs, hazardous waste and toxic dumps” are in Council Districts 4 and 8, in the southern half of the city, Peters said. “We need to do something more positive there.”

The former head of an airline charter company, Peters also has joined Nielsen in calling for construction of a new airport to avert possible disasters stemming from Lindbergh Field’s proximity to downtown.

Peters, who has run unsuccessfully for the San Diego and La Mesa City councils and the San Diego Community College Board, also has proposed establishment of a city lottery to help deal with the city’s budget problems.

- Nicholas Walpert, a 25-year-old San Diego native, said that “a fresh approach to leadership” is needed to “make San Diego the No. 1 city in the United States.”

“What is it about San Diego that prevents us from getting public officials who can provide real leadership?” asked Walpert, a charter pilot and past owner of fast-food restaurants.

Walpert has complained bitterly about the minor candidates’ exclusion from candidate forums, calling that practice “a disgrace to the American flag.”

“If I walked outside this door, I might as well be in the Soviet Union,” he said at one recent forum in Normal Heights where he was first denied, then finally given permission to speak briefly. “You people don’t believe in freedom of elections. You might as well fix the ballots. That’s what you’re talking about.”

To ensure that “something positive comes out” of the mayoral race, Walpert says, voters should “not elect anyone who has ever had a hand in this city’s government before.”

“It’s time for a change--a big change,” he said.

- Watts, a 32-year-old native of Coronado, is an unemployed carpenter who says that he sold his automobile so that he could spend about $900 on campaign literature in which he labels himself “The People’s Choice.”

As a “good-faith gesture,” Watts, who appears at most forums wearing a T-shirt, said that he is willing to serve his first year as mayor for free.

Many of San Diego’s problems, he says, stem from “greed (and) improper management, misinterpretation, misrepresentation, people passing the buck, power and monopolies controlling our lives.”

Calling himself a “good communicator with common sense,” Watts, a Bay Park resident, says he believes that “people would be more comfortable talking to me than some big bureaucrat.”

“I believe that I am the real change this city is looking for,” he said.