Local Elections : Diverse 2nd District Draws Its Equivalent in 7 Council Hopefuls

From the old money and mansions of Point Loma and Mission Hills to the strip-show joints of Midway Drive, from the bikers of Ocean Beach to the yuppies of Hillcrest, from the transitory military enlistees to the generations-old family homes common in many of its neighborhoods, the San Diego City Council’s 2nd District encompasses one of the most diverse, eclectic regions in the city.

That diversity is mirrored in the varied backgrounds of the seven candidates competing in the Sept. 15 primary for the right to succeed retiring Councilman Bill Cleator.

The would-be council members include a former lifeguard who now is a partner in a public relations-political consulting firm, an architect, a community clinic administrator, the president of the city school board, a pharmacist, a financial consultant and, finally, one candidate who bills himself as a magician-teacher-property manager, though not necessarily in that order.

“It’s like a picture of the district,” said political consultant Dan Greenblat, who is managing the campaign of San Diego school board President Kay Davis. “This is not a homogenous district. It’s not a bedroom community that stretches for miles. There’s a little of everything in the 2nd. The winner will be the one who can best tap into that diversity.”

Main Contenders Are Davis, Roberts and Wear

Barring a major upset, the top two vote-getters from the district primary who will go on to compete in the citywide November general election likely will come from a lead pack that includes Davis, architect and former city Planning Commission Chairman Ron Roberts, and public relations consultant Byron Wear.

The four other candidates on the ballot--financial consultant Ron Schneider, magician Loch David Crane, pharmacist Raffi Simonian and clinic administrator Frank Gormlie--are likely to be heavily outspent, out-manned and, ultimately, outpolled by the three front-runners. A recent poll conducted for Davis showed that the four combined were known by only about 1% of the registered voters surveyed.

Each of the three major contenders in the nominally nonpartisan race for the $45,000-a-year job is a moderate Republican. And, while there are some policy differences among them, they are in general agreement on most major district and citywide issues.

In the absence of divisive, high-profile issues, the focus of each candidate’s campaign has been to find a political niche that can be used to distinguish him from his opponents.

For Davis, now in her second term on the school board, that has meant emphasizing that she is the only candidate with experience in elected public office, with “a track record of being able to move the bureaucracy.” Roberts counters by telling campaign audiences that, during his five years on the Planning Commission, he cast nearly 2,300 votes on land-use matters--one of the council’s primary tasks. And Wear, who grew up in the district, argues that his longtime activism in a wide range of community groups “has given me the best feel for the diversity and needs” of the district.

But in the end, the primary may turn not so much on issues or the candidates’ backgrounds as on such basic political factors as name-identification and get-out-the-vote efforts.

Low Turnout Predicted

With only the council race on the primary ballot, the major candidates and their strategists predict that voter turnout will be only about 20%--putting a premium, they say, on the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of identifying supporters and making sure that they get to the polls.

Davis’ handlers believe that the race’s low profile could work to her benefit, largely because her 70% name-recognition dwarfed the 20% cumulative figure for Wear and Roberts in her recent poll. That factor looms as all the more significant in light of the fact that Davis’ school board district largely overlaps the 2nd District.

“The basic difference is that people know me from seeing me in the district over the past six years--they’re not seeing me for the first time,” said Davis, 42, who lives with her husband and three teen-age daughters in Point Loma.

Roberts and Wear, though, note that their respective campaigns are only now hitting full stride, and say they expect their name-identification to rise dramatically in the race’s final six weeks as they blitz the district with mailers and step up their door-to-door politicking.

During her tenure on the school board, Davis originated the Adopt-a-School program, in which more than 125 local schools receive financial assistance from businesses that have “adopted” them, and Project EXCEL, which rewards teaching accomplishments.

“I’ve handled complex issues, had to deal with never having enough money to do what needs to be done, and hung on to my integrity in the process,” Davis said. “Neither of my (major) opponents has any idea what that really entails. . . I know how to build a consensus to get things done.”

Throughout the race, Davis has called for the creation of new Neighborhood Watch groups to combat crime in the 2nd District--a proposal that she and her supporters promote as they campaign door to door. Another issue that she has injected into the campaign focuses on her proposal to renovate the vacant Dana Junior High School site in Point Loma for use as an America’s Cup operations center.

Her opponents, however, quickly noted that Davis’ plan hinges on many “ifs”--if the 1991 America’s Cup defense is staged in San Diego, if the estimated $2 million-plus in public and private funds needed for the renovation is forthcoming, and if that option would be viewed as financially and aesthetically preferable to other alternatives available to the school board, which would make the final decision on leasing the facility.

Dismissing Davis’ proposal as “a harebrained scheme,” Roberts also argues that the plan is inappropriate for a residential neighborhood and would worsen the area’s already serious traffic congestion problem. Concurring with Roberts, Wear added: “I think Kay Davis’ proposal is pure sham--political hype at its highest.”

Strength States

Wear, a resident of Point Loma for nearly 20 years and a veteran of many past GOP campaigns, has described himself as the “only candidate . . . who knows this district well enough to represent it”--a claim stemming from his involvement in myriad community and citywide organizations.

Pointing out that Roberts is an architect and that Davis’ husband is the president of a real estate firm, Wear also has tried to position himself as the only major candidate without ties to development interests.

To emphasize that point, Wear has pledged to limit developer contributions to his campaign to 10% of the total funds that he receives--a figure that reflects the development and building industry’s percentage of the local job force. In contrast, about two-thirds of the $39,866 that Roberts had raised as of June 30, and 20% of Davis’ $24,583 in donations, came from developers and real estate interests. Wear expects to spend about $50,000 on his primary campaign, about $20,000 less than Davis’ and Roberts’ targets.

The former vice chairman of the San Diego County Republican Central Committee, Wear, who is single and will turn 33 three days before the primary, has made the phrase “accountability at City Hall” a centerpiece of his campaign. Describing San Diego as “a city at a crossroads,” Wear has blamed the city’s overburdened sewer, water and street systems, as well as other growth-related problems, on ineffective performance at City Hall.

Another overriding issue that Wear and the other candidates have addressed involves the noise at Lindbergh Field, long a subject of controversy in the 2nd District, portions of which lie under the airport’s flight path.

The short-range answer to that problem, Wear argues, lies in lengthening existing late-night curfews, levying stiffer fines for curfew violations and permitting only newer, quieter aircraft to take off or land during evening and early-morning hours--steps also generally endorsed by Roberts and Davis. The long-term solution, they say, probably involves relocating the airport--an oft-discussed topic likely to receive added attention as the airport approaches its capacity in the mid-1990s.

First Race for Roberts

Roberts, meanwhile, readily admits that he clearly ranks as the political novice among the three front-runners. Not only has he never before run for public office, but he also has not even worked closely on other politicians’ past campaigns.

Still, Roberts, 44, argues that his Planning Commission service and land-use expertise is well-suited to the council’s major challenge of “not stopping growth, but managing it.” During his years on the commission, Roberts often was the lone vote against what he characterized as “insensitive development of canyons and hillsides.”

“We in San Diego . . . have perhaps the finest climate in the country, a very healthy economy and scenic wonders all around us,” said Roberts, who lives with his wife and three daughters in Mission Hills. “We have what most people want, and our challenge is not to lose it as we grow larger and older.”

Roberts’ chairmanship of Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s growth task force--and his leading role in the genesis of the tough Interim Development Ordinance (IDO) recently approved by the council--also could be an asset in his campaign. Under the ordinance, developers will be allowed to build only 8,000 residential units over a one-year period--a reduction of almost 50% from the 1986 total.

“You couldn’t ask to be positioned better on a bigger issue,” said Roberts’ consultant Dick Dresner, who also is O’Connor’s political adviser. Both Davis and Wear also have expressed support for the temporary development limit.

The candidates also concur on most other policy issues, including two major environmental topics. Each supports the council’s recent decision to build a $1-billion secondary sewage treatment plant rather than seek additional waivers of federal clean-water standards. In regard to the proposed SANDER trash-burning energy plant, Roberts and Davis have said that they are undecided pending completion of an environmental study. Though his rhetoric is stronger, there is only a shade of difference in the position of Wear: “It’s ‘no’ until someone proves to me that it’s absolutely safe.”

Four Other Candidates

Overshadowed by the three major contenders, the four other candidates in the race have had difficulty attracting much attention outside their respective neighborhoods and circles of acquaintances.

Schneider, however, bases his hopes for a major upset on Davis, Roberts and Wear “fighting over and splitting the same support,” while he targets a generally younger, more liberal segment of the district’s population. A 26-year-old financial consultant who is a partner, along with his brother, in a marketing and economic research firm, Schneider plans to spend about $20,000 on his race.

Billing himself as the most ardent environmentalist in the race, Schneider emphasizes that he is unalterably opposed to the proposed SANDER plant, which he calls “an environmental calamity and an economic absurdity.” Most of the city’s solid waste can and should be recycled, he said.

Gormlie, the administrator at the Beach Area Community Health Clinic, also has taken a strong pro-environmental stance in his campaign. He has called for a moratorium on construction “until public services and facilities can handle new development,” stiffer fines against industrial polluters to clean up Mission Bay and preservation of Formosa Slough as a natural wildlife habitat.

The publisher of a quarterly magazine called “The Whole Damn Pie Shop,” Gormlie, 39, also has called for the City Council to support a ban on nuclear weapons testing.

Simonian, 35, who draws chuckles from campaign audiences by telling them that his name rhymes with Deukmejian--as in Gov. George Deukmejian--said that he views the anticipated low voter turnout in the 2nd District race as an advantage, not an obstacle.

“Competitively, if I were allowed to meet every voter in a room with the six other candidates, I think I’d win hands down because I know how to sell myself,” said Simonian, a clinical pharmacist at UC San Diego who has lived in Hillcrest since 1979. “With so few people voting, I think I have an equal chance of attracting votes. Money becomes less important in this type of campaign.”

His background, Simonian argues, also makes him more qualified than the other candidates to deal with major health issues such as drug abuse and AIDS.

Perhaps the best known of the long shots in the race, Crane, a 38-year-old magician, attained some minor notoriety during last year’s mayoral race when he punctuated his campaign speeches by setting off flash powder in his hands.

“San Diegans would rather be entertained by prestidigitation than fooled by financial manipulation,” said Crane, who also teaches at National University and is a property manager.

This year, Crane is back on the ballot with a new stunt to spice up his campaign appearances. While lamenting the pollution of San Diego’s bays, Crane sips from a cup of coffee. Seconds later, a spoon stands straight up in the cup.

“Magic is a way of communicating and getting across my message,” Crane said. “If people will look past (my) long hair and magic and motorcycle, they’ll see some real quality of thought and ideas.”