Mayor Files Paper Work for Reelection

Confident that her 21-month record and limited opposition in the June primary will produce an easy reelection campaign, San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor on Thursday formally announced her candidacy to retain the city’s top elective office.

Acting every bit the self-assured front-runner, the 41-year-old O’Connor filed her nominating petitions with the city clerk’s office, proudly citing the more than 5,000 signatures on them--4,700 more than needed--as evidence of her “support across the board in all neighborhoods.”

At a brief news conference, O’Connor also positioned herself as the “neighborhoods’ advocate” in the June 7 race and brushed aside questions about her unwillingness to engage in campaign debates, saying simply: “I believe in promoting Maureen O’Connor, and that’s what I’ll be doing.”

Eight Other Candidates

Eight other candidates filed nominating petitions in the mayoral race by Thursday’s deadline. But only one of them--former three-term San Diego City Councilman Floyd Morrow--is viewed as a significant opponent in O’Connor’s bid for a full four-year term to the office she won in a special June, 1986, election. That election was necessitated by Roger Hedgecock’s forced resignation in the wake of his felony conviction on campaign-law violations.

With the mayor holding a huge lead in current polls, most political observers predict that, barring any major blunders, O’Connor should easily receive more than 50% of the vote in June, thereby precluding the need for a November runoff. But O’Connor, who committed the classic political gaffe of overestimating her finish in her 1986 victory and narrow 1983 loss to Hedgecock, tried to avoid repeating the same error Thursday.

“I’m not out to predict when I will be reelected,” O’Connor said. “I would like to take it in June. I’m not predicting that. . . . But if it’s November, it’s November.”

Only One Debate

However, O’Connor finds herself in a comfortable enough position to lightly dismiss Morrow’s challenge to participate in at least a dozen debates. Noting that she ran against and debated Morrow and several of the other minor candidates in her previous mayoral campaigns, O’Connor said she would “conceptually agree” to only a single debate with all of this year’s candidates.

“I’ve run against all of these people before; we have been through this process,” O’Connor said. “It’s not new. They have not been elected mayor. I have. . . . We’ll all be out there as candidates promoting ourselves. That’s the kind of style of campaign I’ve run in the past.”

O’Connor’s willingness to meet her opponents only once, however, reflects a break from the tradition of recent mayoral races and her own behavior in those campaigns. In each of the past three mayoral contests--two of which included O’Connor--the leading candidates met in several dozen debates and forums, with O’Connor often hailing the frequent head-to-head encounters as an essential component of the campaigns.

Thursday she sought to dispel Morrow’s charge that she is displaying the “arrogance of incumbency” by refusing to agree to multiple debates this year, and she insisted that her campaign will not be the mayoral equivalent of a Rose Garden strategy.

“I don’t think that’s necessarily fair in the sense that I’m out in the community,” O’Connor said. “I am promoting my candidacy and I will be out there . . . talking to groups. I will be speaking in shopping centers and swap meets. I’ve been out there all the time. Of all the candidates, I’ve been the most accessible to the community in the last 21 months.”

But Morrow, who coincidentally filed his nominating papers at the same time as O’Connor, repeated his charge that the mayor is “refusing to discuss the issues.”

“I’d expect her to show up at major forums,” said Morrow, who finished third with 19% of the vote in the 1986 election. “If she does not show up at those major forums, I think the public can only gather one thing: that she doesn’t care to let the public know where she stands.

Same General Themes

“She has everything to lose if she shows up and debates, because she really has nothing to debate,” he said. “She has done nothing. She’s indicated no vision. Frankly, I wonder why one would want to be a leader unless they’re able to articulate their position.”

O’Connor said her reelection campaign will focus on many of the same general themes she emphasized two years ago, calling for an “even stronger voice for neighborhoods at City Hall” and tougher growth controls. In addition, she portrayed her mayoralty as a “restoration of stability” to City Hall following years marked by Hedgecock’s resignation and several other major scandals.

The mayoral field also features seven minor candidates, including:

- Loch David Crane, 39, a magician and property manager who has run unsuccessfully for mayor and City Council.

- John Kelley, a 69-year-old frequent candidate and semiretired public relations official.

- Rose Lynne, 73, another perennial candidate who describes herself as a “trainer of community geniuses.”

- Robert Maestas, a 40-year-old U.S. Postal Service worker.

- Ray Monroe, 50, a social scientist.

- Ronald Spangler, a 44-year-old security officer.

- Charles Ulmschneider, 33.

Over the next week, the San Diego County registrar of voters office will verify whether each of the candidates submitted the 300 valid signatures of registered voters on their nominating petitions needed to qualify for the mayoral race.

In the city attorney’s race, incumbent John Witt was the only candidate to file, meaning he will be automatically reelected in June.