Political Spat Erupts, City Boycott Urged : Controversy Over King Vote Deepens

The controversy over last week’s citywide vote that removed the name of Martin Luther King Jr. from a major downtown street deepened on two fronts Tuesday, as a national civil rights organization encouraged its members to boycott San Diego and a political spat developed between the city and county over how a new memorial for King should be decided.

Calling the Nov. 3 vote “a major step backward for social justice,” Lynora Williams, executive director of the Atlanta-based Center for Democratic Renewal, said Tuesday that letters being mailed out this week to the group’s 11,000 members will ask them to honor San Diego Urban League President Herb Cawthorne’s call for a boycott of San Diego as a convention site.

Meanwhile, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, acting one day after the San Diego City Council established its own commission to review new ways to honor the slain civil rights leader, proposed the creation of a joint city-county panel to study recommendations for a new King memorial. Top city officials, however, greeted that proposal with skepticism.

Though reluctant to characterize the procedural dispute as a battle over political turf, several supervisors admitted that they felt snubbed by the council’s decision Monday to set up a city commission to examine possible new ways to honor King.

“We wanted to go at this in a joint, cooperative way, but the city’s reaction has been, ‘Back off--this is a city problem,’ ” Supervisor Susan Golding said.

2 Viewed as Potential Rivals

Another layer of political intrigue stems from the fact that two key players in the budding dispute--Golding and San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor--are viewed as potential rivals in next year’s mayoral election. Both denied Tuesday, however, that political motivations played a role in the actions that set their respective legislative bodies on a potential collision course.

Neither the city’s nor the county’s actions, however, appeased the Center for Democratic Renewal, which monitors, by its own description, “hate-group activity” throughout the nation.

“Any actions that the council or the county take would be welcomed,” said Doug Seymour, the center’s assistant director. “But there’s a lot of closet racism in San Diego that comes out only in the voting booth, and there’s nothing to say any new memorial ideas would not be voted down next time unless there’s some other incentive to make sure it’s not voted down.”

Seymour said he is uncertain whether the boycott will affect any already scheduled conventions or other meetings, or whether its impact might remain more potential than fact at this point.

“But with 11,000 members, I’m sure it’s going to be felt,” he said.

Local tourism officials said Tuesday that they could not assess the potential impact of the group’s action, partly because of their unfamiliarity with the Center for Democratic Renewal.

‘No Way of Assessing Damage’

“We’re always distressed when anybody considers boycotting San Diego, but we really have no way of assessing the potential damage because we don’t know anything about this group,” said Al Reese, a spokesman for the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau.

In announcing her group’s plan to support Cawthorne’s proposed boycott, Williams described last week’s 60%-40% vote in favor of the restoration of the name Market Street as “a message . . . that one of the nation’s foremost leaders of justice is not worthy of recognition.

“In a city where violence is a grave problem, the decision can be read as a signal that the rights of blacks and other people of color need not be respected,” Williams added.

Those comments provided a bleak backdrop for the city-county dispute over how King ought to be honored in the wake of voters’ approval of last week’s Proposition F, which changed the name of Martin Luther King Way back to Market Street.

The political maneuvering that underlies that dispute began on election night, when Golding and Supervisor Leon Williams urged creation of a joint city-county commission to develop new ideas for honoring King in order to “move quickly to restore the dignity of San Diego and salvage the respect we may have lost in the eyes of the nation.”

Top city officials, however, saw that election-night proposal as political grandstanding--”It would have been nice if they’d waited until the polls closed,” one remarked caustically--and said privately that they had no intention of allowing county officials to muscle in on what, to them, is a city issue.

‘City Initiative, City Problem’

Though trying to couch her comments in diplomatic terms, O’Connor said as much Tuesday in the wake of the supervisors’ action.

“We can talk back and forth, but the bottom line is, it’s a city street, it was a city initiative and it’s a city problem,” the mayor said. “But I’m sure (the mayor’s) black advisory board will take input from whomever is voluntarily giving it.”

At Tuesday’s board meeting, Golding and Williams initially proposed creation of the county’s own commission to develop new ideas for honoring King, hoping to help quell anger in the black community and quickly repair any damage that the voters’ decision last week may have done to the city’s reputation.

Supervisor George Bailey, however, complained that separate city and county commissions would duplicate efforts and might result in conflicting recommendations on how to honor King, thereby creating the possibility of a new wave of public backlash. Bailey’s colleagues shared that concern, and with Supervisor Brian Bilbray calling for a “regional approach to the problem,” Golding and Williams amended their proposal to call for a joint city-county organization.

Under Tuesday’s unanimous board vote, city officials were asked to notify the county within the next week whether they would consider setting up such a joint group.

O’Connor said later, however, that the supervisors are unlikely to get an answer to their question that quickly, and reiterated her belief that the city should take the lead in developing new ideas on possible King memorials. Suggestions to date have included the waterfront convention center now under construction, a proposed downtown government center, the Coronado Bridge, the Cabrillo Bridge in Balboa Park and other streets.

Plans to Appoint Committee

will look at them won’t even be in place by then,” said O’Connor, who plans to appoint a 10- to 15-member committee, based on the advice of her black advisory board.

“There’s a real feeling in the black community that they’re hurting, they’re grieving right now, and they want to spend some time to figure out where they want to go from here,” O’Connor said. “So I’m not going to rush them. Now, if the supervisors want to name something in the county after Dr. King, that’s terrific. Then there would be two memorials to Martin Luther King. But the reality is, this is a city issue, and when you’ve got the jurisdiction, you’ve eventually got to assume responsibility for solving the problem.”

The supervisors insisted that their action Tuesday was not intended to be confrontational. Rather, they said, it reflected their belief that any process leading to new proposals to honor King would be flawed unless it was a countywide, and not simply citywide, effort.

Michel Anderson, co-chairman of the group that favored retention of the name Martin Luther King Way in last week’s election, expressed confidence Tuesday that the move to find a new honor “won’t get caught up in a political squabble.”

Finding Appropriate Memorial

“Everybody wants to find an appropriate memorial to Dr. King, and I have every reason to believe that the city and county will get together on this,” Anderson said.

Golding, meanwhile, stressed that political considerations had “nothing at all to do” with her push for a county role in developing any new King memorials. Golding said that while she intends to seek reelection rather than run for mayor next year, she has not ruled out the possibility of a race for the city’s top elective post.

“This is the last issue on which politics should come into play,” Golding said. “I just think it makes obvious sense to have the county involved in this process.”

O’Connor, for her part, completely sidestepped questions about whether politics might ultimately influence how King is to be honored and who should make that decision.

“I’d just say that the county has its problems and the city has its problems,” the mayor said. “And no matter how you want to look at it, this is a city problem.”