O’Connor Tops Cleator in Race for S.D. Mayor

Former City Councilwoman Maureen F. O’Connor, who rose from a Cinderella beginning in politics to become one of this city’s most powerful public figures, on Tuesday was elected San Diego’s first woman mayor.

A moderate Democrat perhaps best known for her key role in the development of the San Diego Trolley, the 39-year-old O’Connor became San Diego’s mayor-elect by defeating Republican Councilman Bill Cleator in a special race to replace Roger Hedgecock. The victory entitles O’Connor to serve the 2 1/2 years remaining in the term of Hedgecock, who resigned in December after his 13-count felony conviction on campaign-law violations.

Returns as of early today showed O’Connor, who narrowly lost to Hedgecock three years ago, running comfortably ahead of Cleator in the nominally nonpartisan race for the $50,000-a-year post in California’s second-largest city. O’Connor and Cleator qualified for Tuesday’s runoff by finishing first and second, respectively, 46% to 30%, in the 14-candidate Feb. 25 primary.

“The city is changing and the people are speaking here tonight,” O’Connor told a cheering crowd at her Election Night headquarters. “By electing Maureen O’Connor, they want change at City Hall.”

Cleator, meanwhile, admitted that he was “not jumping up and down” over the election results, but added that he believes he will be able to work well with O’Connor on the council.

Throughout the five-month mayoral race, O’Connor often told voters: “If you elect me, you’re not losing Mr. Cleator. He will still be on the council, and I’ll be at City Hall with him to work together on our city’s future.”

O’Connor’s political one-liner never failed to provoke laughter and applause at campaign forums. And, in Tuesday’s election, voters transformed O’Connor’s joke into political reality, capping a public career that had an improbable beginning 15 years ago--an origin that O’Connor recalled Tuesday by passing out small glass slippers to her precinct workers and labeling her campaign “Cinderella II.”

In 1971, O’Connor, then 25, shocked political oddsmakers by, running on a shoestring budget and aided by an army of volunteers from a Catholic girls’ high school where she taught physical education, becoming the youngest person ever elected to the San Diego City Council.

During her two terms on the council, O’Connor gained a reputation as a feisty advocate for the underdog, particularly the poor and senior citizens. In addition to sponsoring legislation that established a senior meals program and reduced senior fares on public transit, O’Connor spearheaded a low-cost housing program under which city land was leased to developers at reduced rates--a program that she hopes to expand as mayor.

Adhering to a pledge to limit herself to two terms, O’Connor stepped down from the council in 1979 but remained in public life when the council appointed her a commissioner of the San Diego Unified Port District. O’Connor also served from 1978 to 1983 on the Metropolitan Transit Development Board, where she played a pivotal role in, as she proudly reminded most campaign audiences, “bringing in the San Diego Trolley on time and under budget”--arguably the most impressive accomplishment in her public career.

In the 1983 race to elect a successor to Wilson after his election to the U.S. Senate, O’Connor narrowly lost to Hedgecock, 52% to 48%. Although she maintained a relatively low public profile after that loss, O’Connor generated frequent headlines last year with her strong criticism of the rising cost of the downtown convention center, a project that many experts estimate may cost nearly $60 million more than the $95-million figure cited when San Diegans approved it in a November, 1983, advisory vote.

A native San Diegan and an identical twin who is the 8th of 13 children in an Irish-Catholic family, O’Connor has been criticized throughout her public career as inaccessible except to a tight circle of family members and friends. Her defenders, however, argue that O’Connor’s basic shyness can sometimes be mistaken for aloofness, and attribute some of the criticism that she receives to simple jealousy over the wealth that followed her 1977 marriage to Robert O. Peterson, a multimillionaire businessman who founded the Jack in the Box fast-food chain.

Cleator, meanwhile, succeeded O’Connor on the council in 1979 and since has become recognized as the leader of the conservative coalition that dominates the council on most major issues. This also was the second mayoral bid for the 59-year-old Cleator, a Point Loma businessman who finished third behind O’Connor and Hedgecock in the 1983 primary.

Cleator’s strong pro-development record--which once prompted a council colleague to derisively label him “a cement mixer”--also proved to be a serious liability in the wake of voters’ approval last year of Proposition A. The measure strengthened the city’s 1979 Growth Management Plan by requiring voter approval of projects in undeveloped areas in the north part of the city area and elsewhere. Although Cleator sought to recast his image in a more environmentally sensitive manner, O’Connor’s more moderate stance allowed her to largely preempt the growth issue, traditionally a dominant political topic in environmentally conscious San Diego.

However, despite the clear philosophical differences between O’Connor and Cleator, the mayoral race was marked more by bickering over the accuracy of campaign ads and the candidates’ financial disclosure statements than by debate over substantive issues. In the absence of specific visions for the future from either candidate, normally noncontroversial topics such as where to locate a new central library also received inordinate attention at public forums.

Public apathy also was attributable, the candidates argued, to the fact that the race was San Diego’s third mayoral election (and, counting primaries, the sixth time voters have cast ballots for mayor) in the last three years, and to recent City Hall scandals--notably, Hedgecock’s conviction and the indictment of Councilman Uvaldo Martinez on charges stemming from alleged misuse of his city credit card.

Seeking to take advantage of that public resentment, O’Connor often pledged to “restore honor and integrity to city government” and waged a campaign based on her guiding tenet that City Hall has all but become the private province of moneyed special interests, particularly the development industry. To “return City Hall to the community,” O’Connor promised to spend every other Saturday in the mayor’s office meeting individuals on a first-come, first-served basis.

Reinforcing her campaign slogan, “Nobody’s Mayor But Yours,” O’Connor trumpeted her refusal to accept campaign contributions from developers as a means of ensuring that land-use decisions will be “based on the merits, not on who gave the most money to whom.” She also proposed that council members be barred from voting for one year on any development involving companies whose workers cumulatively donate more than $1,000 to them.

Another key--and equally calculated--element in O’Connor’s campaign was her adherence to a self-imposed $150,000 spending limit in the primary and a $175,000 ceiling in the runoff, which she hailed as “a bold experiment . . . to end the craziness” of spiraling campaign costs. The limits meant that O’Connor was outspent by Cleator by more than 2 to 1. But, more importantly, they enabled her to avoid the allegations that undermined her 1983 race, in which she was widely accused of trying to buy the mayor’s office after spending more than $560,000 of her own money and $780,000 overall. O’Connor did not spend her own money this year.

In contrast, Cleator dwelt on his business background while characterizing City Hall as essentially a $600-million-a-year business, with the council serving as the board of directors and the mayor as chairman of the board.

Trying to stake out his own turf on the integrity-in-government issue, Cleator released his net worth statement and income tax forms, and consistently chided O’Connor for, in his words, “not laying all the cards on the table.” In addition, Cleator accused O’Connor of not completely reporting her husband’s myriad business holdings on various financial disclosure statements--a tactic that backfired when Cleator was forced to concede that he, too, had erred on some of his own disclosure reports.

“I’d have to say that we haven’t gotten many breaks in this campaign,” Cleator campaign official Don Harrison lamented recently.