O’Connor Overcomes Aloof Image in Winning San Diego Mayor’s Chair

Maureen F. O’Connor’s election Tuesday as mayor of the nation’s seventh-largest city was a triumphant return to her own personal brand of grass-roots politics.

When O’Connor was first elected to the City Council here in 1971, she was a 25-year-old parochial school physical education teacher who as a political unknown rode into office on the strength of an army of volunteers and campaigning as the voice of the ordinary citizen.

Since then, the 39-year-old O’Connor, a Democrat, has served in two other public offices, married a multimillionaire businessman and moved into the circle of San Diego’s political and social elite. Three years ago, she pumped more than $560,000 of her own money and a total of $780,000 into a campaign for mayor, narrowly losing to Roger Hedgecock.

Labeled as Aloof

In the 1983 campaign, it was Hedgecock who marshalled the support of minorities, homeowner groups, gay activists and others who felt alienated from City Hall. O’Connor’s critics labeled her an aloof, detached rich woman who, through a kind of noblesse oblige, was trying to buy her way into the mayor’s office.

For this election--prompted by Hedgecock’s forced resignation last December after his felony conviction on campaign law violations stemming from the 1983 race--O’Connor returned to the kind of personal campaigning that brought her to political prominence 15 years ago. She spent a lot of time at shopping centers, supermarkets, factories and residences. She pledged that as mayor she would spend every other Saturday at City Hall, meeting with constituents on a first-come, first-served basis, and at least one day a month visiting neighborhoods throughout the city.

In addition, O’Connor, the wife of businessman Robert O. Peterson, a founder of the Jack in the Box fast-food chain, unilaterally imposed a severe spending limit on her own campaigns--$150,000 in the February primary and $175,000 in the runoff--a strategic gambit that she hailed as “a bold experiment . . . to end the craziness” of spiraling campaign costs.

While her opponent, City Councilman Bill Cleator, dismissed O’Connor’s spending limits as merely an attempt to make voters forget the financial excesses of her 1983 race, Tuesday’s results vindicated her strategy.

Gets 55% of Votes

Final unofficial returns gave O’Connor 110,268 votes (55.1%), to 89,915 votes (44.9%) for Cleator. O’Connor and Cleator had qualified for the runoff by finishing first and second in a 14-candidate Feb. 25 primary. The victory entitles O’Connor, who will be inaugurated on July 7, to serve the 2 1/2 years remaining in Hedgecock’s unexpired term.

From the beginning of the five-month mayoral campaign, it was apparent that, accurate or not, the claim that O’Connor had become remote from her constituents since her 1983 defeat was an obstacle in her second bid to become San Diego’s first woman mayor.

“One thing I’m not is aloof,” she insisted at one point in the campaign. “That’s an image created by my opponents and their consultants.”

However, much of the criticism of her aloofness came not from Republicans, but from members of her own party.

“The criticism you always hear about Maureen is that she’s invisible between elections,” said former Councilman Jess Haro. “It’s like, ‘Here I am running again and I want your support.’ But people in the party and the community want to know, ‘Where have you been lately?’ ”

Makes Courtesy Calls

Apparently trying to convince her future City Council colleagues that she will display a different style at City Hall, O’Connor spent much of Wednesday making courtesy calls on council members and other top city officials.

“I’m a team player,” she said outside the council offices. “I know how to build coalitions--that’s the only way to get things accomplished at City Hall.”

In her defense, O’Connor’s friends argue that her basic shyness can sometimes be mistaken for aloofness, and many of O’Connor’s former colleagues on various public agencies describe her as a warm, personable individual who gets along well with her associates.

“I think Maureen’s gotten a bum rap,” said Louis Wolfsheimer, a San Diego Unified Port District commissioner who had supported Cleator. “You can call her a lot of things, but aloof isn’t one of them. She’s truly a person of the people.”

Calling herself “a very family oriented person and private person,” O’Connor said, “That’s not something I feel I have to apologize for or that makes me less effective as a public official.”

Somewhat Defensive

And while she sounds somewhat defensive on the topic, she is also able to joke about it: “When you come from a family as large as mine, it’s hard to be too aloof about anything.”

Indeed, any attempt to understand O’Connor or what motivates her must begin with her Irish-Catholic family. O’Connor and her twin sister, Mavourneen, were born July 14, 1946, in San Diego, the seventh and eighth of 13 children--Maureen was eighth--of Jerome and Frances O’Connor. Twelve of the children are still alive and all but one live in San Diego.

A one-time boxer, Jerome O’Connor ran a combination convenience-liquor store that provided barely enough money for what Maureen O’Connor terms “a pretty no-frills life.” One Thanksgiving, for example, the family could not afford a turkey, so one of O’Connor’s six brothers molded hamburger into the shape of one.

Taught by their father, the seven O’Connor sisters became excellent rough water and precision swimmers, winning more than 1,000 individual and team medals and trophies. In 1964, the “Swimming O’Connor Sisters” were part of a nationwide traveling show called “The Wonderful World of Sport.”

Frances O’Connor, a nurse, also introduced her children to community service by having them teach patients with multiple sclerosis how to swim. The lessons she learned growing up in a large family, Maureen O’Connor said, helped shape her concern for the disadvantaged and an abiding desire for public service.

‘Sense of Responsibility’

“At a very young age, you had a sense of being responsible for someone other than yourself, or working for the good of the group,” O’Connor said. “Public service is a natural outgrowth of that.”

After graduating from Rosary High School, she worked her way through California State University, San Diego, in the late 1960s with odd jobs that included being a store cashier, bank teller, telephone operator and a city recreation program swimming instructor. In 1970, she received a special bachelor of arts degree in psychology, sociology and recreation, returning to Rosary High School to teach physical education.

O’Connor’s entry into politics occurred in 1971, the result of her anger over being ignored when she went to City Hall to complain about what she felt were poor pay and shabby treatment received by a troupe of Mexican Indians who participated in San Diego’s bicentennial celebration.

Exasperated, she launched a campaign for a council seat. Written off as a hopeless long shot by political “experts,” O’Connor capitalized on her anonymity by quietly building an army of about 700 volunteers, many of them Rosary High School students.

Backed by this “Maureen Corps,” she finished second in a four-candidate primary, then defeated businessman Lou Ridgeway in the general election--a victory that led local newspapers to dub her a “Cinderella candidate.” Four years later, she won reelection by again defeating Ridgeway.

‘Cinderella’ Image

Despite the personal wealth and political clout that later came her way, O’Connor still frequently invokes that “Cinderella” image, as in Tuesday’s election, when she passed out small glass slippers to her precinct workers.

O’Connor and three other Democrats on the council in the early 1970s usually gave Republican Mayor Pete Wilson, who also was elected in 1971, the votes he needed to enact most of his major programs, including a tough law limiting campaign contributions--the law that Hedgecock was convicted of violating--and a growth management plan aimed at focusing urban development in previously built-up areas of the city.

Many of O’Connor’s achievements on the City Council involved the creation of programs aimed at helping senior citizens and the poor. She sponsored legislation to establish a seniors’ meals program, reduced senior fares on public transit, allowed senior citizens free use of city recreation facilities and permitted them to work for the city after age 65.

Keeping a campaign pledge to limit herself to two terms, O’Connor retired from the council in 1979. She remained in public service, however, when the council appointed her as one of the city’s three representatives on the San Diego Port Commission.

Pushed for Trolley

She also served from 1978 to 1983 on the Metropolitan Transit Development Board, where she led the fight for development of the San Diego Trolley.

Throughout this year’s race, however, O’Connor was forced to strive as much to show voters what she is not as what she is, as she tried to dispel the aloofness image.

If she were really aloof, O’Connor observed, she would never have jumped into the mayoral race after Hedgecock’s resignation.

“I could travel a lot and live a very enjoyable personal life,” she said. “But I’d rather spend my time at City Hall. I think that’s proof of my commitment. It goes back to my Catholic background. It’s called the call to service.”