Disenchanted San Diego Voters Spurn Mayor Race

Initially billed as a campaign to restore normalcy to City Hall after nearly two years of turmoil caused by the indictment and subsequent conviction of former Mayor Roger Hedgecock, this city’s third mayoral campaign in less than three years has produced a lackluster race.

Opinion polls and political pros here say public disenchantment over City Hall scandals, the most recent of which forced the current acting mayor to withdraw from the contest earlier this month, has combined with an absence of major divisive issues among the three major candidates to result in a campaign marked by voter apathy and a prediction of a low turnout.

Indeed, the major question remaining as this city’s 7 1/2-week mayoral primary election campaign enters its final three days appears to be whether voters will know Tuesday or will have to wait 3 1/2 months to learn who will replace Hedgecock.

With recent polls showing former San Diego City Councilwoman Maureen F. O’Connor moving steadily toward the 50% mark needed for outright victory Tuesday in the 13-candidate race, her two major opponents--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 campaign 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, who, if elected, will become the city’s first woman mayor, ahead of Cleator by a 2-1 margin with between 43% and 49% of the vote, with Morrow running a distant third and enough undecided votes to push O’Connor 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. The victor will serve the remaining 2 1/2 years of Hedgecock’s term. Hedgecock resigned last December after his felony conviction on charges stemming from illegal contributions to his 1983 mayoral campaign.

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

“I still think it’s very doubtful,” she said. “I don’t believe polls. I’m almost afraid to believe them. I’m waiting for the poll on Feb. 25.”

Could Prevent Victory

Sykes also noted that the 10 long-shot candidates on the ballot “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.

Cleator and Morrow, meanwhile, claim that their own private polls show a much closer race and insist that, in Cleator’s words, “the final 72 hours are going to be critical.” Cleator finished third behind O’Connor and Hedgecock in the 1983 race to succeed Pete Wilson when he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

(A fourth major candidate in the current race, City Councilman and Acting Mayor Ed Struiksma, withdrew from the race earlier this month amid controversy over whether he falsified city reimbursed expense accounts. The district attorney’s office is investigating the matter.)

City election officials have predicted that only about 25% of the city’s nearly 485,000 registered voters will cast ballots on Tuesday. Some of the candidates’ top aides and other political observers, however, believe that the turnout may be even lower.

“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%.”

Leadership Issue

O’Connor and Morrow are Democrats and Cleator is a Republican, but the mayor’s office is nonpartisan and partisanship has played less of a role in this campaign than in past ones. Throughout the brief campaign, the major candidates’ leadership styles overshadowed policy issues.

Cleator, a wealthy 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.”

O’Connor also sought to make her differences with Cleator over development a focal point of the race. The growth-management issue traditionally has dominated elections in environmentally conscious San Diego, a trend that was enhanced by voters’ passage last fall of Proposition A, which requires public approval of new developments in areas in the northern sector of the city and elsewhere.

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 but is considered a moderate on environmental issues, hastened to join him in pledging to strongly enforce the measure.

Slow-Growth Attitude

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 supports . . . the message of Proposition A,” the 58-year-old Cleator strove to recast his image in a more environmentally sensitive manner. An O’Connor television ad, however, noted that more than one-third of Cleator’s campaign contributions came from development interests, while O’Connor herself refused to accept donations from developers.

O’Connor faced an image problem of her own, which she sought to dispel by running a campaign dramatically different from her 1983 race. Often criticized as an elitist and aloof since her 1977 marriage to multimillionaire businessman Robert O. Peterson, founder of the Jack in the Box fast-food chain, 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 O’Connor and Morrow plan to end up spending about $100,000 each in the primary, while Cleator expects to spend about $250,000 by Tuesday.

Morrow, meanwhile, entered the campaign’s final three days still laboring to overcome the same obstacle that confronted him at the race’s outset--the perception that he has no chance to win, but could serve as a spoiler who could attract enough votes to force a runoff.

Could Be Harmed

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 O’Connor.

“People’s hearts and minds are telling them different things,” said former San Diego City Councilman Jess Haro. “Their hearts may be with Floyd (Morrow), but in their minds, they’re thinking that maybe Maureen (O’Connor) 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 that 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 seems to be whether the final chapter in that history is written on Tuesday or in June.