SAN DIEGO ELECTION : Low Voter Turnout Is Anticipated After Lackluster Campaign : Down-to-Wire Hustling Planned by Candidates Vying in 4 Districts

Six months ago, political activists all but salivated over the prospect of this fall’s San Diego City Council elections.

With departing incumbents creating four open council seats on the primary ballot--a political first in the 56 years since the city charter was approved--the campaigns could be expected to generate a compelling dialogue on the city’s future among candidates with widely divergent personalities, styles and philosophies.

Now, two days before San Diegans go to the polls in the first stage of a process that will culminate in a 50% turnover on the council, the same activists--as well as the candidates themselves, consultants and others--agree that the primary campaign fell far short of its billing.

“The concept was exciting but the reality has been damn boring,” said well-known political consultant David Lewis.

Campaign strategists and election officials forecast that Tuesday’s voter turnout will be only about 20%, with some glumly suggesting that the figure could even dip below the 16% record worst turnout mark set in the 1985 council primary.

The most common theory advanced for the projected dismal turnout is that with only a single council race on the ballot in each of the four districts, there is little to draw voters to the polls.

Some argue that the messages of would-be council members, in the words of consultant Nick Johnson, “all sound pretty much the same and don’t exactly make you bolt out the door to go vote.”

Moreover, with 27 candidates on the ballot and two write-ins competing in the four races, voter confusion and frustration have been the natural byproduct. The top two vote-getters in each district primary will face each other in the November citywide runoff for the $45,000-a-year council job.

The outcomes may well turn, strategists say, on the candidates’ execution of such nuts-and-bolts components as targeting supporters and get-out-the-vote strategies. Grass-roots organization, always important, is particularly critical in light of the leading candidates’ belief that the difference between advancing to the November runoff and being eliminated on Tuesday may be as slim as several hundred votes.

“It all really comes down to execution--elections can be won or lost from this weekend through Tuesday,” said political consultant Rick Taylor, whose clients include San Diego city school board President Kay Davis in the 2nd District, former City Hall aide Marla Marshall in the 4th District and food supply distributor Bob Castaneda in the 8th District.

The major candidates have spent the final days before the primary crisscrossing their respective districts with dozens of volunteers and mailing out a flurry of brochures. Meanwhile, their top strategists continue to fine-tune Election Day plans in which the candidates’ identified supporters will be exhorted in telephone calls and personal visits to go to the polls.

While almost no candidate can be discounted in an election in which several thousand votes could be sufficient to secure a spot in the November runoff, a handful of front-runners has emerged in each of the four primaries. However, 8th District candidate Gail MacLeod expressed the hopes of other candidates who, like herself, face better-financed and better-known opponents by saying: “Anyone with a good pair of walking shoes can win these races.”

In the 2nd District race to succeed retiring Councilman Bill Cleator, the leading candidates appear to be school board head Davis, architect and former city planning commission Chairman Ron Roberts and public relations consultant Byron Wear.

Four other candidates--financial consultant Ron Schneider, pharmacist Raffi Simonian, clinic administrator Frank Gormlie and magician Loch David Crane--also are on the ballot in the 2nd District, which includes Point Loma, Loma Portal, Mission Hills, Ocean Beach, Old Town, Middletown and parts of Hillcrest.

Davis, now in her second term on the school board, emphasizes 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.

8 Vie for Single Seat

Eight candidates, two of them write-ins, are competing for the 4th District seat being vacated by Councilman William Jones, who chose to attend the Harvard Business School rather than seek re-election. The 4th District includes Southeast San Diego, Paradise Hills, Logan Heights, Emerald Hills, Skyline and parts of Encanto and Golden Hill.

The focal point of the 4th District race has been Marshall, a Republican who has drawn strong criticism as a “carpetbagger” since moving into the heavily Democratic district early this year to satisfy political residency requirements. Backed by politically prominent business leaders, Marshall has raised more than $100,000, more than the seven other candidates combined.

Marshall’s campaign team--pondering how to capitalize on the anticipated low turnout--placed a heavy emphasis on absentee ballots, distributing more than 1,100 absentee applications throughout the heavily minority district. While a person who received an absentee ballot application from Marshall conceivably could vote for another candidate, consultant Taylor said that, based on past patterns, Marshall likely will receive almost all of those absentee votes.

“In a low turnout election, any candidate would love to have 800 to 1,000 votes locked up before the polls open,” consultant Lewis said.

The other candidates generally regarded as having the best chance to qualify for the runoff are the Rev. George Stevens, an aide to Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego), and Wes Pratt, now on leave from his position as executive assistant to County Supervisor Leon Williams.

Stevens, associate pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, has been endorsed by nearly 50 ministers, traditionally a major political force in the black community. Pratt, meanwhile, argues that his campaign is “peaking at the right time” after an inauspicious beginning that saw him disqualified from the ballot for failing to secure enough valid signatures on his nominating petitions. A judge restored Pratt’s name on the ballot last month, ruling that he had “substantially complied” with the signature requirement.

Two other candidates who fell short of the signature requirement--businessman Richard (Tip) Calvin and radio broadcaster Gloria Tyler-Mallery--lost court requests to be placed on the ballot, leaving both facing admittedly uphill write-in campaigns.

The 4th District field is rounded out by community activist De De McClure, U.S. postal worker Robert Maestas and Warren Nielsen, a property manager and frequent unsuccessful candidate.

In the beach-oriented 6th District, five candidates--jokingly known as the “Beach Boys” because all are single males ranging in age from their early 30s to early 40s--are competing for the seat of retiring Councilman Mike Gotch.

Although lawyers Bob Ottilie and Bruce Henderson have heavily outspent the others, all five have significant followings and have waged strong door-to-door campaigns in the district, which includes Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, Clairemont, Morena, Bay Park, Sail Bay, Crown Point, Rose Canyon and parts of Linda Vista and La Jolla.

With no public record to cite, each of the five has tried to establish his leadership credentials. Henderson, for example, often describes himself as “someone who initiates rather than just reacts”--a claim that he supports by pointing to myriad proposals that he has offered to deal with problems ranging from traffic and sewage to police protection and budgetary concerns.

Ottilie, a veteran of many past local GOP campaigns, has pledged to eliminate “the mush at City Hall,” while Jim Ryan, an executive search consultant, argues that his former job as constituent service representative to Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) familiarized him with the district’s problems.

Glaser, a lawyer, cites his longtime activism on environmental issues as evidence of his leadership, and Paul Johnsen, the publisher of a monthly magazine, does the same with his years of community service in Pacific Beach.

Experienced Campaigners

The 8th District campaign for the seat now held by appointed Councilwoman Celia Ballesteros has attracted eight candidates, led by lawyer Michael Aguirre, former city school board President Bob Filner and county supervisorial aide Neil Good. All three are Democrats who have run for office before and entered the race with substantially higher name identification than the other contenders.

Filner, Good and Aguirre each plan to have hundreds of volunteers in the field this weekend and will fill district mailboxes with tens of thousands of mailers before Tuesday.

Businessman Castaneda and land-use planner MacLeod, both Republicans, also have waged aggressive campaigns. Their hopes are based largely on the possibility that Good, Aguirre and Filner will split the Democratic vote in the heavily Democratic district, which stretches south from Hillcrest through downtown to Otay Mesa and San Ysidro.

Paul Clark, the executive director of the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce, securities broker Ty Smith and frequent candidate John Kelley also are in the 8th District race. A ninth name, that of former City Hall aide Danny Martinez, also will appear on the ballot, but Martinez recently withdrew from the race and endorsed Aguirre.

Given the volatile nature of the campaigns, the frenetic closing days of the primary race mark what 6th District candidate Ottilie termed “paranoia time” for the major candidates, most of whom confess to battle fatigue yet dearly want to earn the right to engage in seven more weeks of politicking.

“You worry about whether you’re doing enough at the same time you worry about what your opponents are doing,” Ottilie said. “But you keep going because you know that the last 48 or 72 hours are probably as important as everything you’ve done up until then. So, I don’t think that any of us will be watching much football this weekend.”