Runoff Is Big Question as Mayor’s Race Nears Finish

After a generally lackluster campaign that became acrimonious in its last week, the major question remaining as the San Diego mayoral primary enters its final three days is whether voters will know Tuesday or have to wait 3 1/2 months to learn who their next mayor will be.

With recent polls showing front-runner Maureen O’Connor steadily moving toward the 50% mark needed for outright victory Tuesday, the former San Diego city councilwoman and her two major opponents are bombarding voters with 11th-hour pitches. And their campaigns are launching get-out-the-vote blitzes that could determine who serves the remaining 2 1/2 years in the term of former Mayor Roger Hedgecock, who resigned last year after his felony conviction.

While the O’Connor camp strives for a decisive victory that once appeared both mathematically and politically improbable in the 13-candidate race, San Diego City Councilman Bill Cleator and former Councilman Floyd Morrow find themselves in the political equivalent of a last-minute goal-line defense--fighting not so much for their own benefit as to deny victory to their opponent.

“The stakes are very different,” said Dick Sykes, O’Connor’s consultant and a partner in the New York-based firm of Dresner-Sykes. “For us, the worst thing that could happen is that we end up in a runoff. That’s not like facing the possibility that your political career might self-destruct in your face. We have a chance to win it and the best they can do is temporarily stop us.”

Newspaper and television polls released within the past week show O’Connor ahead of Cleator by a 2-to-1 margin with between 43% and 49% of the vote, with Morrow running a distant third and enough undecided votes to push her over 50%. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote Tuesday, the top two vote-getters will compete in a June 3 runoff.

Determined not to repeat a cardinal error from her unsuccessful 1983 mayoral campaign--when she spoke glowingly of her prospects for outright victory in the primary and then fell embarrassingly short--O’Connor persistently downplays her chances of surpassing the necessary 50% margin.

“I still think it’s very doubtful,” said O’Connor, who would be the city’s first woman mayor. “I don’t believe polls. I’m almost afraid to believe them. I’m waiting for the poll on Feb. 25.”

Sykes also noted that the 10 long shots on the ballot will “drain away” votes from the major contenders, increasing the difficulty of attaining a 50%-plus victory. Two write-in candidates also are competing in the race. In addition, the name of acting Mayor Ed Struiksma also will appear on the ballot, even though he withdrew from the mayoral race amid controversy over his filing of inaccurate city-reimbursed expense accounts.

Cleator and Morrow, meanwhile, claim that their own private polls show a much closer race and insist that, in Morrow’s words, “this thing is still up for grabs--you betcha!” However, in contrast to O’Connor’s outside chance at complete victory Tuesday, her two competitors have to be content with the more modest goal of simply hoping to qualify for a runoff so that they can survive to fight another day.

“I really think the final 72 hours are going to be critical,” said Cleator, who finished third behind O’Connor and Hedgecock in the 1983 mayoral primary to elect a successor to Pete Wilson. “A lot’s going to happen during that time.”

In their final major joint appearance of the campaign, the three leading candidates will participate in an hourlong forum to be televised live at 6 o’clock tonight on KCST-TV (Channel 39). Two previously taped forums also are scheduled to be shown on KPBS-TV (Channel 15) tonight and Monday; in the first, the three major candidates will appear in a one-hour program at 7 o’clock tonight, while nine of the 10 long shots on the ballot will join them in a 90-minute show at 10 p.m. Monday.

Amid projections of a very low voter turnout and polls showing a large percentage of undecided voters, the candidates and their top strategists agree that the televised forums, combined with the effectiveness of their respective get-out-the-vote efforts, could have a dramatic effect on the race’s outcome.

“Those TV debates could really swing the (vote) numbers around,” Morrow said. “I think a lot of people who haven’t paid much attention to the race up to now are going to make their decisions based on those shows.”

An equally important factor, the candidates acknowledge, will be how well their staffs execute one of the fundamental parts of any political campaign--getting their respective supporters to the polls on Tuesday.

“Get out the vote--that’s the name of the game now,” the 39-year-old O’Connor said. “This is one of those elections where every single body, every one of them, is important.”

City election officials have predicted that only about 25% of the city’s nearly 485,000 registered voters will cast ballots Tuesday. Some of the candidates’ top aides and other political observers, however, believe that the turnout may be even lower, noting that the mayoral race, to vastly understate the situation, has failed to capture the public’s imagination.

“I think we might be looking at a record low turnout for a mayor’s race,” said Robert Schuman, chairman of the San Diego County Republican Party. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see it end up under 20%.”

The most common theories advanced to explain the apathy point to the absence of major divisive issues among the candidates, disenchantment over recent City Hall scandals and simple boredom attributable to the fact that this race is the city’s third mayoral election in less than three years.

“You hear a lot of people say, ‘Another mayor’s election?’ ” said Nick Johnson, a top local consultant to Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy. “The public’s just tired.”

Motivated by the knowledge that the expected low turnout means that a swing of only a few thousand votes could be critical--most notably in determining whether anyone reaches the 50% mark--the major candidates’ staffs already have begun tackling the crucial task of trying to ensure that their supporters do, indeed, vote.

Between now and the time that the polls close Tuesday, hundreds of volunteers in each of the three major candidates’ campaigns will have telephoned or knocked on the doors of thousands of previously identified supporters, encouraging them to vote and, in some cases, offering transportation to the polls if necessary.

“A strong get-out-the-vote effort really can make the difference in a low-turnout election,” said Byron Wear, who is directing Cleator’s effort. “This race is going to be decided over the (next) three days.”

Initially billed as a campaign to restore normality to City Hall after nearly two years of turmoil caused by the uncertainty over Hedgecock’s legal and political fate, the mayoral race evolved over the last seven weeks in a low-key fashion that saw the major candidates’ leadership styles overshadow policy issues.

Cleator, a wealthy Point Loma businessman, characterized himself as “a coalition builder” who could draw on his strong ties to the city’s Establishment to help minorities and neighborhood groups achieve their goals at City Hall. O’Connor pledged to “open up City Hall to the people” by spending every other Saturday in her office meeting individuals on a first-come, first-served basis. And Morrow promised to dramatically increase citizen involvement in city government through the creation of advisory panels “that wouldn’t just be window dressing.”

To a large extent, issues that were debated in the campaign surfaced not because the candidates initiated them, but rather via questions from the news media or voters at the various candidate forums. Each of the candidates spoke of the need to restore honesty and integrity to City Hall, and pledged to carry out the mandate of Proposition A, the growth-management initiative passed last fall that requires public approval of new developments in undeveloped areas in the North City area and elsewhere.

And, while differences did emerge on topics ranging from the site for a new main public library and district council elections to a police pay initiative and the city’s relations with Mexico, none of those issues emerged as an overriding factor in the race.

Although the major candidates maintained a generally positive tone throughout most of the primary, the race turned increasingly bitter in its final days amid a flurry of charges and countercharges.

Morrow, a 53-year-old lawyer and former three-term councilman, sought to distinguish himself from his two major competitors by drawing attention to their personal wealth--a tactic used earlier by acting Mayor Struiksma before he dropped out of the race. Cleator is a partner in a family-owned furniture business in Mira Mesa, while O’Connor is the wife of multimillionaire businessman Robert O. Peterson, founder of the Jack in the Box fast-food chain.

At a televised forum last week, Morrow characterized himself as a “working person” running against two millionaires, adding, “Millionaires . . . think differently than you and I do. They would spend our money differently than you and I would spend it. Millionaires have a different priority than most of us.” Morrow emphasized the same theme in radio ads, though his “working man” message was undercut by the fact that he spent $78,000 of his own money in the primary.

O’Connor, meanwhile, drew Cleator’s ire with a last-week television ad that emphasized her refusal to accept contributions from developers while claiming that more than one-third of Cleator’s donations came from “development interests.”

“Think about it. Who do you want to make development decisions that affect your future?” the O’Connor ad concluded.

Charging that the ad was “false and intentionally misleading,” Cleator called on O’Connor to withdraw the commercial, which he said inflated his developer contributions--he put the figure at less than 20% of the nearly $160,000 that he had raised as of Feb. 8--while glossing over O’Connor’s receipt of donations from individuals in development-related businesses. However, O’Connor, who acknowledged before the ad ran that about 6% of the $58,934 that she had raised as of two weeks ago came from “development interests” such as escrow officials and architects, stood by the ad.

In attempting to make her differences with Cleator over development the focal point of the race, O’Connor helped illustrate how the growth-management issue, traditionally a dominant one in local elections, cast an even larger shadow over this race in the wake of Proposition A.

At forum after forum, each of the major candidates took pains to align--or realign--himself with the public’s latest pronouncement on the volatile growth issue. Morrow was the only one of the three to endorse Proposition A last year, but Cleator, who opposed it, and O’Connor, who remained neutral, hastened to join him in pledging to strongly enforce the measure.

The public’s prevalent slow-growth attitude posed a particularly thorny problem for Cleator, who has compiled a strong pro-development record during his six years on the council. However, saying that he has “heard and strongly support . . . the message of Prop. A,” the 58-year-old Cleator strove to recast his image in a more environmentally sensitive manner--a strategy that the O’Connor ad aimed to foil.

O’Connor faced an image problem of her own that she sought to dispel by running a campaign dramatically different from her 1983 race. Often criticized as an elitist and aloof, O’Connor spent more time than any of the other major candidates campaigning in neighborhoods and at shopping centers, hoping to overcome what she called “an inaccurate . . . image created by my opponents.”

In addition, three years ago, the former two-term city councilwoman spent more than $560,000 of her own money in her narrow 52%-48% loss to Hedgecock, prompting accusations that she was attempting to buy the mayor’s office. This year, O’Connor imposed a $150,000 spending limit on her primary race in what she described as “a bold experiment . . . to end the craziness” of spiraling campaign costs and, to date, has not spent any of her own money. Both the O’Connor and Morrow campaigns plan to end up spending about $100,000 each in the primary, while Cleator’s campaign expects to spend about $250,000 by Tuesday.

Morrow, meanwhile, entered the race’s final three days still laboring to overcome the same obstacle that confronted him at the campaign’s outset--the perception that he could not win but could serve as a spoiler who could attract enough votes to force a runoff between two other candidates.

Although he is popular in Democratic circles and some minority communities, Morrow could be harmed by the oft-heard notion that a vote for him accomplishes little other than denying a possible primary victory to fellow Democrat O’Connor, thereby helping Cleator, a Republican.

“People’s hearts and minds are telling them different things,” said former San Diego City Councilman Jess Haro. “Their hearts may be with Floyd. But in their minds, they’re thinking that maybe Maureen can win it all in the primary, and that the more time you give Cleator, the more difficult it will be to beat him. Some people who planned to vote for Floyd definitely are rethinking things.”

Undeterred by such arguments or his poor showing in the polls, Morrow’s attitude in the race’s final days is perhaps best illustrated by one of his radio ads, which says: “This dark horse is going to sprint to the finish. . . . We’re about to make history.”

If the polls are accurate, however, Morrow seems destined to become only a footnote to the history of this mayoral election. Indeed, the only question is whether the final chapter in that history will be written on Tuesday or in June.