Local Elections : Cleator, O’Connor Setting the Stage for Nasty Final Week of Mayor Race

Kicking off what could be an acrimonious final week in San Diego’s mayoral race, City Councilman Bill Cleator and former Councilwoman Maureen O’Connor clashed Wednesday over a Cleator television ad charging that O’Connor had “one of the worst attendance records ever recorded.”

The two mayoral candidates repeatedly traded verbal jabs throughout a Mission Valley luncheon forum, with Cleator arguing that the ad, which began airing this week, uses “a little fun . . . to show that there are differences” between how he and O’Connor approached their council duties. O’Connor, however, said that the ad is both inaccurate and unfair, and has produced a TV ad of her own implying that Cleator is making “false (and) misleading statements.”

“It’s going to be a wild last week,” said Dick Sykes, O’Connor’s campaign consultant. “I’m sure we’re going to see a lot more of this stuff before we’re through.”

The ad in question attempts to draw attention to O’Connor’s relatively low attendance record during her final two years on the council in 1978 and 1979. That issue, which also has been raised in O’Connor’s past campaigns, is cited by Cleator campaign strategists as evidence supporting their contention that O’Connor, if elected, might prove to be a “part-time mayor.”

The 30-second commercial opens with a shot of an empty desk that has O’Connor’s nameplate on it. A woman’s voice, responding to a ringing telephone, says, “Maureen O’Connor. No, I’m sorry, she’s not in right now.”

A male announcer’s voice then says, “As a member of the San Diego City Council, Maureen O’Connor had one of the worst attendance records ever recorded. In 1978, she missed more than 30% of the votes.”

“Have you tried the lodge in Mendocino?” asks the woman, playing the role of O’Connor’s office secretary. (O’Connor’s husband, businessman Robert O. Peterson, owns a hotel in Mendocino that the couple occasionally visits.)

After the narrator points out that O’Connor missed nearly 40% of the council votes in 1979, the woman asks, “Have you tried the place in New York?” (Peterson also formerly owned a New York City apartment, but sold it before the mayoral race.)

Alluding to Cleator’s oft-stated charge that O’Connor has received preferential treatment from the San Diego Union newspaper because of her friendship with publisher Helen Copley, the announcer then concludes, “Let’s not let the San Diego Union make an empty chair our next mayor.” At that point, the desk chair turns around, revealing a stack of newspapers in the chair.

As the commercial ends, the telephone again rings and the woman says, “Office of Maureen O’Connor. I’m sorry, she’s not in right now.”

At Wednesday’s forum, O’Connor did not specifically question the accuracy of the figures cited in Cleator’s ad, but contended that former Mayor Pete Wilson, not she, had the council’s worst 1979 attendance record.

Noting that she had an overall 86% attendance record during her eight years on the council, O’Connor also argued that Cleator’s ad unfairly “leaves you with the impression . . . that Maureen O’Connor is not going to be mayor full time.”

“And that’s false,” O’Connor added.

Cleator said his overall attendance record during his 6 1/2 years on the council is about 90%.

Reiterating an explanation that she has used when the issue has been raised in the past, O’Connor said Wednesday that most of her missed council votes occurred while she was representing the city on other public boards, including the Metropolitan Transit Development Board and the California Housing Finance Agency. O’Connor is particularly proud of her service on the MTDB, where she played a key role in development of the San Diego Trolley.

However, Dan Greenblat, Cleator’s campaign manager, said that attendance figures for those two agencies show that O’Connor missed 40% of the MTDB votes and about 45% of the housing agency votes.

Sykes responded: “Most of the work she did wasn’t actually at the board meetings. On the trolley, she had to go to Sacramento, Washington and Tijuana, and spent a lot of time negotiating the deal outside the meetings. Attendance at the board meetings is not necessarily critical. The point is that she was working hard for the city.”

O’Connor conceded that she also sometimes missed council votes while on vacation, but pointed out that the council during Wilson’s era was “a 52-week-a-year job” without the occasional holiday breaks now built into the council’s schedule.

Cleator said the ad “fairly compares . . . our attendance records.”

“I think there’s a little fun in that commercial,” Cleator added. “I hope everyone would see it that way.”

Sykes, though, noting that Cleator has missed more than 1,700 council votes himself over the years, characterized the ad as “a case of the pot calling the kettle black.”

Greenblat, however, stressed that the attendance figures “show that Bill Cleator missed less votes in his worst year than Maureen O’Connor did in her best year.”

“The question we’re putting to voters is this: If you told your boss you were only going to be on the job about 60% or 70% of the time, like Maureen O’Connor was, would you get hired?” Greenblat added. “My guess is the answer is no.”

In response to Cleator’s ad and other recent attacks by her opponent’s campaign, O’Connor has begun airing a TV commercial of her own that emphasizes her pledge to wage a clean, high-road campaign free of personal criticism.

“When I started this campaign, I signed a ‘fairness pledge,’ ” O’Connor says in the ad. “I promised not to personally attack my opponent or his family. I promised not to make false or misleading statements in my literature or commercials.”

An announcer then says: “Maureen O’Connor believes San Diego deserves fair, clean campaigns. Councilman Cleator was asked to sign the same pledge but he refused. If you’ve seen his commercials lately, you know why.”

“We don’t want to get caught in a cycle of responding to every charge they throw out, so we’re just going to use this as a sort of generic response,” Sykes said.

Greenblat, however, stressed that the O’Connor ad will not discourage the Cleator camp from focusing on the attendance issue in other ads and mailers during the race’s final week.

“There’s a lot more to be said about her attendance and I’m going to do my best to make sure voters learn about it,” Greenblat said.