Candidates Flocking to ‘Wide Open’ Council Race

Among politicians, the prospect of an “open seat” election--one in which there is no incumbent on the ballot--produces roughly the same effect as tossing a bloody chunk of meat to a school of hungry sharks.

And the sharks are already circling round the San Diego City Council 8th District seat.

In a race that is shaping up as the most wide-open, crowded, competitive council election in recent history, nearly a dozen potential candidates are aggressively pursuing the 8th District seat--months before council contenders normally surface.

“It’s a very early start for a council race but the circumstances are unusual, too,” political consultant Jim Johnston said. “Open seats don’t come along that often. Some people realize this is probably going to be their best shot in a long time.”

Jockeying in the race began nearly a year ago, predicated on the widespread belief within political circles that then-Councilman Uvaldo Martinez would either vacate his seat or be too weak to successfully defend it because of felony charges stemming from his misuse of a city-issued credit card for personal expenses.

As part of a plea-bargain arrangement, Martinez pleaded guilty to two felony counts last September and resigned from the council in November. Lawyer Celia Ballesteros, who narrowly lost to Martinez in 1983, was appointed by the City Council to succeed Martinez. As a condition of her appointment, however, she agreed not to run for the post this fall.

The council’s insistence that Ballesteros not use the appointment to try to get a leg up on potential opponents in this year’s September primary set the stage for the first race for an open seat in the district since the 1971 victory of now-Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego). The three other council members who have held the seat in the intervening years--Martinez, Lucy Killea and Jess Haro--all were initially appointed, giving them a significant edge over future challengers in the district, which stretches south from Hillcrest, through downtown to Otay Mesa and San Ysidro.

“It’s a wild free-for-all open to all comers, and from the district’s standpoint, it’s about time,” said Neil Good, administrative assistant to county Supervisor Leon Williams and one of the leading candidates in the race. “The district is finally going to get a chance to pick its own representative, rather than just anointing someone appointed by the council.”

A trio of formidable candidates--Good, lawyer Michael Aguirre and former school board member Bob Filner--are generally regarded as the early, early front-runners in what is likely to be a crowded field by the July 17 filing deadline. All three are well known to political and civic leaders, have varying degrees of name recognition among the public at large and substantial fund-raising ability. Both Aguirre and Good have officially announced their candidacies; Filner is expected to do so in about a month.

The next tier of candidates--starting the race with less impressive political credentials but clearly with the potential to catch up to the lead pack--includes land-use planner Gail MacLeod, former investment broker Ty Smith, city planning commissioner Henry Empeno and businessman Bob Castaneda Jr.

Potential long shots, meanwhile, include former TV news reporter Jesse Macias, San Ysidro community activist Paul Clark, frequent candidate John Kelley and Danny Martinez, a former City Hall aide who is not related to Uvaldo Martinez.

After evaluating their chances--and concluding they are exceptionally slim--some of the potential candidates now in the trial-balloon stage probably will decide not to enter the 8th District contest. Most of the major candidates, however, say they expect new names to replace those that disappear, keeping the field, to use Aguirre’s description, “definitely in the double digits.”

The bloated size of the field, combined with the traditionally low voter turnout in the heavily Democratic district, creates the potential for even minor candidates to become major power brokers this fall. Indeed, almost no candidate can be discounted in a district in which only about 9,800 voters cast ballots in the last councilmanic primary four years ago.

With the September primary turnout expected to be somewhere between that 1983 figure and the approximately 20,000 8th District ballots cast in last June’s special mayoral race, several thousand votes could be sufficient to become one of the top two vote-getters who will qualify for the November citywide general election.

“Anyone with a little neighborhood support could be a major player,” consultant Johnston noted. “One hard-working guy, even if he doesn’t have a lot of money, can go out and shake 3,000 hands.”

Moreover, in a tight race, the votes drawn by the minor candidates could dramatically shuffle the finishing order of the leading contenders. Because a distant also-ran’s few hundred votes could make the difference between one of the front-runners getting into the November runoff or being eliminated, Aguirre predicted that there will be “plenty of clawing and fighting for every single vote.”

“It’s going to be like the New Hampshire primary--every voter probably will see each candidate at least twice,” Filner joked. “We’ll be standing in line outside people’s houses.”

Aguirre’s announcement last June that he intended to enter this year’s election regardless of the outcome in Martinez’s case also accelerated the timetable for the other potential candidates.

“Mike was a pace-setter who put a lot of resources and energy in early, forcing others to do the same to not fall too far behind,” Good explained. “I didn’t anticipate being this active this early.”

Recognizing that the political arithmetic of the race puts a premium on organization, Aguirre and the other leading candidates have focused most of their efforts to date on developing central campaign teams and fund-raising.

A 37-year-old lawyer known for his often brash, combative style, Aguirre sent out about 10,000 mailers announcing his candidacy, has been mailing several thousand fund-raising letters targeted to various groups weekly and plans to begin walking door-to-door next weekend.

A longtime Democratic activist running in a nominally nonpartisan race, Aguirre also recently held a breakfast meeting with a small group of Republican movers and shakers “to open a dialogue and try to show them that I’m not the enemy, but somebody they could work with.”

As that remark indicates, Aguirre is aware that his political and legal activism has left him with some major fences to mend. Notably, Aguirre has worked hard to overcome lingering resentment from Bates and his backers--a potent force in the local Democratic Party--stemming from his 1982 congressional primary battle against Bates. An endorsement letter signed earlier this year by Bates and former Rep. Lionel Van Deerlin (D-San Diego) demonstrates Aguirre’s success in ameliorating that relationship.

“I have to change the way some people perceive me,” said Aguirre, who already has spent more than $20,000 of his own money in his campaign. “I’m trying to shift from being an adversarial type, which you are as a lawyer, to the more conciliatory style that’s important in politics. But if people think of me as aggressive and a fighter, that’s a positive.”

Good, meanwhile, in his effort to distinguish himself from the pack, has stressed that he has the broadest governmental experience of any of the major candidates. In addition to his current role as Supervisor Williams’ top aide, the 39-year-old Good also worked for Williams during his earlier tenure as a San Diego city councilman and as administrative assistant to state Sen. Jim Mills (D-Diego) in the 1970s.

Former chairman of the San Diego County Democratic Party, Good also is president of the California Structural Pest Control Board, which regulates the pest control industry. Good was appointed to the board in 1977 by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

The first openly gay council candidate since the late 1970s, Good, who describes himself as “a candidate who happens to be gay, not a gay candidate,” said he doubts that his sexual preference will be a major issue in the race. The gay community, however, is among the most politically active in the city, a fact that could prove to be a major asset in Good’s campaign.

“Being gay’s a fact, but I don’t think it’s going to be an issue,” Good said. “If someone tries to inject it into the campaign, I’m not even going to respond. They’ll be talking to the wind. I think people are tired of seeing the bashing of any other segment.”

The self-imposed $75,000 spending limit that Good has pledged to abide by in the primary means that he likely will be outspent by both Aguirre and Filner, both of whom plan to spend about $100,000.

Filner’s imminent entry in the race comes after supporters of both Good and Aguirre encouraged him not to run for fear of further splintering the Democratic vote, thereby enhancing GOP prospects by decreasing the likelihood of a one-two finish by Democratic candidates in the primary that would guarantee the election of a Democrat in November.

Downplaying that concern, Filner argues that the Democrats’ 52%-35% registration edge means that “there’s room for more than two” strong Democratic contenders. Furthermore, even if it were politically advisable for one of the Democrats to drop out of the race, says Filner, that candidate should not be him.

“I think I’m in the lead and that I’m the strongest candidate,” Filner said, noting that he is the only one of the three major contenders who has served in elective office and that he has run in the district on three occasions--twice in his successful 1979 school board race and in his narrow 1983 loss to San Diego City Councilwoman Gloria McColl.

During his four years on the school board, including one year as its president, Filner’s persistent and often acerbic criticism of school policies led to development of a mandatory homework policy, tougher graduation requirements, stricter discipline and attendance regulations, and a streamlining of the district’s administration.

A 44-year-old history professor at San Diego State University, Filner has assembled a strong central campaign staff, led by Jim Cunningham, who managed the November, 1986, reelection campaign of Assemblywoman Lucy Killea (D-San Diego). His staff also includes Nancy MacHutchin, considered perhaps the top political fund-raiser in San Diego, and widely respected pollster Robert Meadow, who, like MacHutchin, worked on the successful mayoral campaigns of former Mayor Roger Hedgecock.

Two other Democrats--planning commissioner Empeno and former TV broadcaster Macias--also are exploring possible candidacies. Of the two, Empeno, a 34-year-old former deputy city attorney who unsuccessfully sought the 8th District appointment that went to Ballesteros last December, has been the more politically active in recent years and is regarded as potentially a serious contender.

A native of the Philippines whose family moved to this country when he was 3 years old, Empeno views the large Filipino-American population in the 8th District as his political base.

Meanwhile, Macias, who worked in Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s victorious 1986 campaign and for former San Diego City Councilman Bill Mitchell in his failed bid for Congress last fall, hopes that name recognition from his years as a reporter for KFMB-TV (Channel 8) would boost his candidacy.

Despite the hopes of some local Republican leaders that a single GOP candidate behind whom the party could unify would emerge in the 8th District, it appears that there also will be several Republican contenders.

Smith, who took a leave of absence from his job as an investment counselor with Dean Witter Reynolds for the campaign, entered the race in January, and businessman Castaneda also has met with local GOP organizations attempting to line up support.

A 34-year-old downtown resident in his first race for public office, Smith has pledged to “personally strive to build cooperation between the factions of City Hall and restore the credibility and effectiveness that were tarnished by recent events”--a reference to Martinez’s resignation and other scandals that have rocked City Hall in recent years.

Like Aguirre and Good, Golden Hill activist MacLeod, who is not aligned with either major party, has been plotting her candidacy for nearly a year.

The planning director of the Rancho Santa Fe Assn., MacLeod emphasizes her land-use expertise and years of community activism, but believes that two other factors--her gender and nonpartisanship--could draw more attention to her candidacy.

“We’re all going to be looking for ways to not get lost in the pack,” said MacLeod, 37. “I think those two things will help me to stand out a bit from the crowd. With all of the people who are talking about running, that’s what the primary is going to be all about.”