In San Diego Elections, It’s the Checkbook That Pays Off

Gail MacLeod entered last year’s San Diego City Council 8th District campaign idealistic enough--and, she now admits, naive enough--to believe that she had a serious chance to win.

Bright, articulate and attractive, MacLeod is a 38-year-old land-use expert and longtime Golden Hill community activist who had an impressive resume for a first-time candidate. She had done her homework and offered thoughtful insights on a number of issues. Being the only woman in a nine-candidate primary didn’t hurt. Hard-working and energetic, she covered most of the district on foot before Election Day.

In an ideal world, perhaps, Gail MacLeod would be a model citizen-politician. But in the real world of politics, where she says, “the size of your checkbook . . . is more important than what you have to say,” MacLeod never had a chance.

“In retrospect, I say to myself, ‘Gail, how could you have been so naive?’ ” MacLeod recalled. “I thought that in terms of background and education and community involvement and issues, I could compete with anyone in that race. But I couldn’t compete when it came to money. My checkbook wasn’t as big as my opponents’. And that made all the difference.”

An Expensive Lesson

The lesson that MacLeod learned about the pivotal role that money plays in politics, though hardly a new discovery, was accentuated by the release of campaign finance reports last week showing that a record $2.2 million was spent in last fall’s four San Diego City Council races. Of that amount, nearly $1.8 million was spent by the eight finalists for the $45,000-a-year council posts.

“The amounts of money spent were absolutely obscene and are indicative of a real serious illness we’ve got in our campaign structure,” said J. Michael McDade, a lawyer and longtime Republ1768120686cure is, but when you see this kind of money being spent in a local race, it shows that we need a comprehensive overhaul of the system.”

Campaign finance records filed with the city clerk’s office show that the price tag of council campaigns has nearly tripled in the 1980s. Only a small portion of that increase can be attributed to inflation, because the Consumer Price Index has risen by only about 30% during the same period.

In 1981, council candidates spent a total of $802,504 (less than the cost of last year’s District 8 race alone), with the most expensive single campaign being the $144,260 race of then-Councilman, now-Municipal Court Judge Dick Murphy. Two years later, when there were five council races as opposed to the normal four biennial contests--the extra campaign was the result of a vacancy being filled via an appointment--the overall spending level rose to $1.3 million, with four candidates surpassing the then-shocking $200,000 figure.

With two incumbents facing only token opposition, council campaign spending dropped to $1.1 million in 1985, when a new individual spending record was set by Abbe Wolfsheimer who spent $313,099 in unseating Councilman Bill Mitchell. Then, with 28 candidates scrambling for four open council seats last year--the first time in the City Charter’s 56-2036687218reelection--the council races’ price tag ballooned to the $2.2-million mark.

New Records Set

Another dubious distinction to last year’s campaign is that three candidates eclipsed Wolfsheimer’s record. They were led by college professor Bob Filner, who spent $404,846, more than half of it--$237,000--his own money in his successful 8th District race. Architect Ron Roberts, who won the 2nd District race, spent $336,341 (including $50,000 in personal funds), and lawyer Michael Aguirre, who lost to Filner, spent $215,141 of his own money and $324,536 overall.

In the 6th District, victor Bruce Henderson loaned his campaign $44,135 but still was outspent by fellow lawyer Bob Ottilie, $202,237 to $158,899--making him the only one of last November’s four winners who spent less than his opponent. And in the 4th District, lawyer and former county supervisorial aide Wes Pratt spent $144,259.12, twice as much as his opponent, the Rev. George Stevens, an aide to Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego).

With six-figure council campaigns now commonplace and with those races increasingly being underwritten by wealthy candidates’ personal funds, council members, political consultants and others worry that average-income candidates with limited fund-raising ability are close to being priced out of the political arena.

“More and more, people of fairly substantial means are the only ones able to effectively compete in these races,” consultant David Lewis said. “Well-qualified people without well-qualified bank accounts increasingly are being left behind.”

“Anyone who can write himself a check for $50,000 to $100,000 has instant credibility,” added MacLeod, who spent $26,177--including $7,300 in personal funds--in her fourth-place finish in the 8th District primary. “If that’s what it takes to be considered a serious candidate for even a City Council seat, we’re going to end up with royalty, not representation.”

Friends Suggested Borrowing

During her campaign, MacLeod said that some of her advisers encouraged her to “mortgage everything I own” in order to supplement her relatively meager campaign treasury, but that she persistently rejected that advice.

“It’s foolish to even think of doing that,” MacLeod explained. “I have some property and could have gotten my hands on $50,000 or more. But I’m not sure how I would have paid it off after the election. I can’t imagine spending that much money on a campaign even if I had it.”

As last November’s campaigns illustrate, however, many candidates with personal wealth at their disposal increasingly do choose to pump tens of thousands of dollars of their own money into their races--a trend widely viewed as more alarming than even the overall growth in campaign spending in terms of what it portends for local politics.

“What it means is that you can end up with candidates playing on a field that isn’t level,” said Mark Nelson, executive director of the San Diego Taxpayers’ Assn. and chairman of a task force that recently conducted an exhaustive review of local election laws.

The city’s current $250-per-person contribution limit, Nelson and others argue, exacerbates that inequity and favors wealthy candidates in two important ways. Because of their social or professional status, well-to-do candidates are more likely than those of moderate means to be associated with or at least have greater access to people easily able to give the maximum $250 donation. Second, by spending his own money in excess of the $250 limit, the wealthy candidate can exploit a loophole not available to moderate-income candidates.

“If the rules allow one candidate to simply reach into his own pocket while his opponent has to spend hours trying to raise money from hundreds of contributors, you’ve in essence penalized candidates for not being rich,” Nelson argued.

Efforts to limit candidates’ personal expenditures or to counterbalance the impact of those funds, however, generally encounter legal obstacles stemming from a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that equated spending personal money in a political campaign with free speech.

In its controversial 1976 Buckley vs. Valeo decision, the Supreme Court ruled that, under certain circumstances, controls on the amount of money spent in political campaigns represent an unconstitutional restriction on free expression. Among other things, the court stated that a candidate could spend as much of his own money in his campaign as he desires.

Lifted Spending Limit

While that decision stymied any attempts by Nelson’s task force to minimize the effect of candidates’ personal wealth in city elections, San Diego County last year took a step in that direction. Last July, the Board of Supervisors lifted the county’s $250-per-person contribution limit for candidates whose opponents spend more than $25,000 of their own money--despite concerns by the district attorney’s office that the action is unconstitutional.

Supervisor John MacDonald, who proposed the measure, argues that it would give “a little better break” to candidates running against wealthy opponents. But officials in the district attorney’s office contend that the ordinance could be construed as an unfair “penalty” on wealthy candidates that infringes on their First Amendment rights--making a legal challenge likely if any candidates in this year’s supervisorial elections attempt to take advantage of that provision of the new law.

“This whole area of campaign finance is like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike,” Nelson said. “Whenever you do something to try to plug up one leak, two more start.”

Similarly, other oft-debated campaign reform proposals--raising the $250 limit, putting an overall cap on campaign spending, imposing restrictions on the amount of costly TV and radio ads that candidates can buy--also face a daunting array of practical, philosophical and legal questions.

For example, an increase in the $250 limit could ease the burden of fund-raising by allowing donations to be solicited in larger increments. Others, however, warn that such an increase might simply spur a more rapid proliferation in campaign spending while doing nothing to prevent wealthy candidates from continuing to rely on their own money.

Supporters of district elections, meanwhile, argue that elimination of the current citywide at-large races could, by reducing the overall cost of campaigning, curtail the amount of personal money spent in the contests. Skeptics, however, question whether district elections actually would enhance the potency of candidates’ personal wealth by enabling them to focus their money on a more compact geographic region.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor and other candidates have adhered to self-imposed campaign spending ceilings, though they generally have had little success in getting their opponents to go along with the voluntary restrictions. Moreover, the limits of such self-policing methods can be seen in what Filner himself described as the “arms race” that occurred between himself and Aguirre in the 8th District race.

Spending Frenzy

Although both Aguirre and Filner repeatedly expressed interest in limiting campaign expenditures--and, in particular, the amount of personal money spent--the two could never agree on specifics. With each blaming the other for the continually escalating cost of the campaign, they embarked on a spending frenzy unprecedented in council politics that, by race’s end, resulted in the two spending more than $452,000 of their own money and more than $729,000 overall.

“It’s like the U.S. and Russia--you expect the worst of each other and act accordingly,” Filner said. “You think he’s going to do a lot of TV and radio in the final days, so you do it too. Maybe he was never planning to do it, but after you go ahead, so does he. Then you go through another round, and it keeps going back and forth.

“I’m not proud that I spent that much. But in a competitive situation, you do what you have to do to stay in the ballgame. When you’ve already spent $150,000, you don’t want to risk losing because you didn’t spend another $25,000. The problem is, it never stops. Now, we’ll be doing four years of fund-raising to try to get rid of this debt.”

MacLeod, meanwhile, said that while her first campaign has altered her perceptions about politics, it has not soured her on the idea of perhaps running for office again in the future.

“I know now that candidates like me are always going to face a real Catch-22,” MacLeod said. “You don’t get treated seriously by the press unless you have a lot of personal money or can raise a lot of money. But people don’t want to give you money unless the press pays attention to you.

“So, I’m a lot smarter about the process now. If I ran again, I’d have a lot more help with fund-raising nailed down before I ever started. Either that, or I’d have to win the lottery.”