Local Elections : ‘Beach Boys’ Campaign : Five Youthful Candidates Compete in Crowded 6th Council District Race

Sometimes referred to as “San Diego’s playground,” the San Diego City Council 6th District includes some of the city’s most popular beaches and Mission Bay. And, fittingly enough, the five candidates seeking to become the district’s new council member have jokingly come to be known in political circles as “The Beach Boys.”

All five candidates on the Sept. 15 primary ballot are males. All five are single and range in age from their early 30s to early 40s. And all five agree that all the fun, fun, fun found in the 6th District has left the area in dire need of help--not from Rhonda, but from the City Council.

“The 6th District is every San Diegan’s ‘other’ neighborhood,” candidate Jim Ryan said. “This is where they come to have fun. So, the traffic and sewage and other problems found here aren’t just the 6th District’s problems--they’re the city’s problems.”

On a typical summer weekend, Pacific Beach’s 40,000 population is tripled by tourists and San Diegans who flock to the beach or the area’s nightclubs and new commercial centers, resulting in near-gridlock conditions on many of the beach area’s major streets.

Even after one battles through the traffic to reach the beaches, a day of pleasure is not guaranteed. Since 1980, sewage spills have closed parts of Mission Bay more than 27% of the time--prompting candidate Paul Johnsen to dub the bay, surrounded by some of the district’s most expensive homes, as “the place where the effluent meets the affluent.”

But the 6th District also includes Clairemont and other inland communities that appear to have little in common with the coastal strip and where far different problems are found. In Clairemont, which includes slightly more than half of the district’s 115,000 residents, people are more concerned about the general deterioration of their neighborhood, where abandoned cars dot narrow streets and perhaps the city’s highest concentration of methamphetamine labs has contributed to a growing crime rate.

“The beach and inland areas are so different that it’s almost like there’s a line through the district,” candidate Bob Ottilie said. “But the one thing that’s constant between the two communities is a certain amount of frustration with City Hall.”

Leadership Credentials

Not surprisingly, each of the five contenders who hope to succeed retiring Councilman Mike Gotch have spent most of the campaign promising to end that frustration in the 6th District, which, in addition to Pacific Beach and Clairemont, also includes Mission Beach, Morena, Bay Park, Sail Bay, Crown Point, Rose Canyon and parts of Linda Vista and La Jolla.

“Leadership is what this race comes down to,” said Ottilie, a 32-year-old lawyer in his first political race. “Because of a lack of leadership, we’ve been too complacent about a lot of issues and have been lurching from crisis to crisis in this city.”

While such pronouncements hardly rank as a courageous or innovative political stand, each candidate typically devotes much of his standard stump speech to trying to establish his leadership credentials, in part because none has a public record.

Ottilie, for example, argues that his various policy positions, which differ in some key areas from those of his opponents, “show that I have a willingness to tackle the tough issues.” Lawyer Bob Glaser cites his longtime activism on environmental issues as evidence of his leadership, while Johnsen, the publisher of a monthly magazine, does the same with his years of community service in Pacific Beach.

Ryan, an executive search consultant, tells campaign audiences that, as a former aide to Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), “I’m already familiar with the problems and have been working on the solutions.” And lawyer Bruce Henderson points to the flurry of specific proposals that he has offered during the campaign, ranging from the need for more police helicopters to ways to improve the traffic flow in Pacific Beach, as proof that he is “someone who initiates rather than just reacts.”

Disqualified Candidates

The 6th District field shrunk considerably last month when three of the eight candidates who had filed nominating petitions in the race were disqualified for failing to secure sufficient valid signatures of registered voters. One of them, design consultant Robert McCullough, a distant also-ran in last year’s mayoral race, says that he intends to run as a write-in candidate, but is expected to play only a negligible role.

The issue that drew many of the candidates into the 6th District race--the controversy over Gotch’s and the council’s support for a proposed restaurant and shopping complex at Belmont Park--continues to cast a large shadow over the campaign.

Although construction has already begun--much to the chagrin of those who favored preservation of the park’s historic Mission Beach Plunge Building--an initiative to stop the development will appear on the November ballot. While that initiative is now viewed as a largely moot point, given that a $20-million-plus buyout of the developers appears to be the only way that the city could halt the project, the issue still is an important litmus test for the candidates.

While the vote on the initiative may be simply a symbolic gesture, its approval, Johnsen argues, would “send a strong message to City Hall . . . that the community’s viewpoint should not be taken so lightly.” Ottilie and Ryan concur, noting that the project also could exacerbate the area’s existing traffic problems.

Henderson and Glaser, however, oppose the initiative. Henderson emphasizes that the Plunge’s pool will be preserved and says that tax revenues from the development could help solve some of the district’s transportation problems. Describing the initiative as “a false hope and nothing more,” Glaser says that the most effective course of action at this point is to “hold developers’ feet to the fire” to ensure that the city receives about $5 million in public improvements included in the development agreement.

Disagreement on Ordinance

There also is disagreement among the candidates over the council’s recent approval of a tough Interim Development Ordinance (IDO), which sets limits on residential development pending revision of the city’s 1979 growth-management plan. With voter turnout expected to be only about 20% in the primary, that issue, too, is a critical one that, in Ottilie’s words, provides “a real easy way for voters to size up candidates” in the environmentally-conscious 6th District.

Henderson is the only major 6th District candidate who opposes the measure, which he often describes as “a case of the blind leading the blind . . . that won’t take a single car out of Pacific Beach.” The others, however, support the IDO, which Ryan likens to “hitting a mule with a two-by-four to get its attention.”

“It’s not the long-range answer, but it’s needed as a stopgap,” Ryan added. “Just about everyone agrees that something needs to be done about growth.”

The candidate perhaps best positioned to capitalize on the politically volatile growth issues is Glaser, one of the city’s leading environmental activists. A 33-year-old Pacific Beach resident, Glaser served on the special mayoral task force that drafted the IDO and was a leading advocate in 1985 of Proposition A, which requires public approval for development of certain property throughout San Diego.

Glaser also led the recent drive to place an initiative aimed at scaling back the controversial SANDER trash-to-energy project on the November ballot--a battle that environmentalists won before the election when the New Hampshire firm planning to build the plant withdrew its plan this week in the face of strong public opposition.

The name recognition that he has gained from those and other environmental battles, Glaser hopes, will compensate for the larger amounts of money being spent by most of his major opponents. While Glaser, like Johnsen, hopes to spend about $20,000--and has raised only about half that much to date--Ottilie and Henderson expect to spend about $60,000, and Ryan, $30,000.

Slight Front-Runner

“None of us may have a record in public office, but I certainly have a proven track record of accomplishments,” said Glaser, whose campaign slogan is “Performance, Not Promises.”

Endorsed by fellow Democrat Gotch, Glaser also has pledged to attempt to rescind offshore drilling rights for a tract situated off Mission Beach--a topic that he has tried, without much success, to transform into a major campaign issue.

Ottilie, meanwhile, has gradually come to be viewed as a slight front-runner, partly because he has received the largest amount of campaign contributions ($40,830 as of Aug. 1), but also because, more than any other candidate, he has been singled out for criticism from several of his opponents--most frequently, Henderson.

Henderson showed up at one forum with a “carpet bag” to draw attention to Ottilie’s recent move into the district, criticism that Ottilie deflects by noting that he formerly lived just outside the district’s boundary. At another meeting, Henderson publicly questioned Ottilie about his involvement in a 1982 voter registration dispute, but failed to mention that the district attorney’s office had investigated the case and filed no charges.

Often critical of what he terms “the mush at City Hall,” Ottilie--who tries to remind voters how to pronounce his name with “It Oughta Be Ottilie” buttons--has suggested that the creation of a city ombudsman office could both improve City Hall’s response to citizen complaints as well as enhance the council’s performance.

“If councilmen sit in meetings for three days a week and handle citizen complaints the two other days, as they do now, when do they have time to give serious thought to issues like the sewage crisis?” Ottilie asked rhetorically. “Unfortunately, as things are now, the real important issues often come last.”

A veteran of many past local Republican campaigns, Ottilie also emphasizes his opposition to any waiver of the Gann limit, a measure that restricts government spending which some city officials argue is too stringent. Noting that voters can approve spending for specific purposes above the Gann limit, Ottilie said: “If we lift Gann, government, not the public, decides how much more money to spend and where to spend it. That would be a failure to remember why we passed Gann in the first place.”

Oldest Candidate

Henderson, at 44, is the oldest of the five major candidates, a fact that he sometimes mentions in campaign speeches in an effort to convince voters that “I have a little more experience than some of these other young fellows.”

Although Henderson describes himself as en environmentalist, Ottilie has called him “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” in part because of Henderson’s opposition to the IDO growth limit.

A strong proponent of water reclamation programs, Henderson has been sharply critical of the council’s decision to build a $1-billion-plus secondary sewage treatment plan to meet federal clean water standards. While Ottilie stresses that further delays could simply result in an even higher price tag for the project, Henderson warns that financing the plan is “a recipe for economic disaster” for the city and argues that the money could be better spent on reclamation programs.

A Pacific Beach resident, Henderson also has called for the city to stagger work hours for its employees to “set an example” in the hope that private companies would follow suit, thereby relieving rush-hour traffic congestion.

“I don’t mean to say that my ideas are particularly unique,” said Henderson, a Republican. “But what I do offer is the assurance that I won’t just sit back and watch today’s problems become tomorrow’s crises.”

Despite having worked for Lowery for 3 1/2 years as the congressman’s constituent service representative, Ryan, 35, has not been endorsed or directly assisted by his former boss in his campaign. With three GOP contenders in the primary, Ryan said, Lowery was “in an awkward position.”

“Basically, he said, ‘Good luck, Jim, but you’re on your own,’ and I understand that,” Ryan said.

Some of the city’s current problems have developed, Ryan argues, because city leaders have been “too preoccupied with big-ticket items and allowed other things to slide.”

“Some people may think leadership involves things like the America’s Cup and Horton Plaza,” Ryan said. “But if you can’t find a place to park and if the sewers spit up your sewage, those other things don’t matter that much.”

Johnsen, meanwhile, is the publisher of Calendar Magazine, a monthly publication distributed free, and the past president of the Pacific Beach Town Council.

Pointing to his participation in a wide variety of Pacific Beach civic affairs over the past decade, Johnsen, 40, describes himself as “a candidate who knows this community inside out, not outside in.”

“I’m a known figure in this district,” Johnsen said. “I think that’s going to cause some surprises for the (candidates) who are spending a lot more money in this race.”