Big Hurrah Planned for Mayor Koch

It’s not every mayor in America who is the inspiration for a Broadway play. Nor do many have the audacity, hucksterism and guts to write a tell-all, best-selling autobiography--while still in office. And few invoke the fascination that lands them a spot on the couch for the Johnny Carson show.

But then, not every mayor is Edward I. Koch, the most polished politician in the Big Apple and the grandest municipal pooh-bah in the land.

Next week Mayor Koch is coming to San Diego and local civic leaders, in a strong showing of local pride, are preparing a welcome fit for a potentate or pontiff, as well as a pooh-bah.

The main reason for Koch’s two-day visit, which begins at 4 p.m. Tuesday, is to tour the Mexican border near San Ysidro, and perhaps even walk through the infamous Soccer Field, where undocumented workers gather before making the nightly trek into the United States.

However, he’ll also be feted at a private dinner for 30 and will be the main guest at a sold-out luncheon for 600 at the U.S. Grant Hotel. The luncheon is being given by the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, which is paying Koch up to $5,000 for travel expenses.

Koch will also tour Horton Plaza and the San Diego Rescue Mission, hold a City Hall press conference, appear with Mayor Maureen O’Connor on her KFMB radio talk show and answer listeners’ phoned-in questions, and tape a guest appearance for the local “Newsmakers” television program.

He’ll leave San Diego Wednesday afternoon by plane for Burbank and an appearance on NBC’s “Tonight” show.

The commotion over his visit even resulted in a press conference on what he’ll eat. Involved in that effort are local culinary luminaries such as George and Piret Munger, and two purveyors of “authentic” Mexican cuisine, Jerrie Strom and Fran Jenkins.

But His Honor won’t be biting into any burritos, enchiladas or tacos.

Instead, Koch will dine on such traditional Mexican items as avocado and seafood cocktail with miniature tortillas, fruit salad with pomegranate dressing, roasted chiles stuffed with machaca, tomato soup, sauteed chayotes, green chile sorbet, as well as Mexican rice, flan and shortbread cookies.

And instead of quaffing a Tecate-with-lime or a bottle of Corona, Koch will be served wines from the San Pasqual Winery and Fallbrook’s Culbertson Winery, which will provide its Cuvee de Frontignan, which has been served at two state dinners at the White House.

“The mayor (O’Connor) wanted to show what we could do in San Diego,” George Munger said. “What we really want to do is feature San Diego people and foods.”

Among those expected at the dinner for 30 at the private Tambo de Oro Club, on the 11th floor of the California First Bank Building downtown, are City Council members; City Manager John Lockwood; City Atty. John Witt; Ted Geisel, author of the Dr. Seuss books; San Diego Union publisher Helen Copley and her son, David; Herb Klein, editor-in-chief of Copley Newspapers; Union Associate Editor Peter Kaye; George Dissinger, managing editor of the Tribune; Bill Furlow, opinion page editor for the San Diego County Edition of The Times; Bill McGill, former UC San Diego chancellor; George Gildred of Gildred Development Co.; Willie Morrow of XHRM-FM; Lee Grissom, chamber president, and Robert O. Peterson, Mayor O’Connor’s husband.

For all the press conferences, talk shows, fancy dinners, downtown tours and the rest, there is also a serious side to Koch’s visit.

In August, when Koch invited many big-city mayors to an anti-drug conference, he supported an effort to place armed troops along the border to repel drug smugglers.

“It was part of the push he thought was needed to get the federal government to do something against drugs, since the bulk of the problem, heroin and cocaine, is imported,” Leland Jones, Koch’s assistant press secretary, said in an interview Thursday.

But O’Connor, who found the idea repugnant, told Koch that the vast majority of the people entering illegally through San Diego from Mexico are not drug smugglers but “honest people trying to find a job to send money back to Mexico,” said her press secretary, Paul Downey.

To prove her point, O’Connor invited Koch to San Diego to see the situation for himself.

And that’s what he’s going to be doing from about 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, as he tours the border with O’Connor, members of the San Diego Police Department’s southern division and the Border Patrol.

“We want to him to see that not all the people are gun-toting smugglers . . . prove to him that putting Marines around the border is not the best thing to do,” Downey said.

Accompanying Koch will be Jones and another aide whose expenses are being paid by the chamber. The tab for two bodyguards who are traveling with the mayor is being picked up by the New York City Police Department.