Morrow Tinkers With Semantics, Must Reword Ballot Description

Amid the reams of press releases, unrelenting verbal bombast, mailers, television ads and daily speeches that mark most political campaigns, four words--and rather innocent ones at that--normally reflect a mere microsecond of a race.

But because the San Diego city attorney’s office finds fault with two of the four words that mayoral candidate Floyd Morrow wanted to use to describe himself on the June primary ballot, those words have been upgraded to become, perhaps, a minor footnote in a race that, to date, has provided little else to report.

The genesis of the issue was Morrow’s preference to describe himself on the June 7 ballot with these four words: “Experienced: attorney, councilmember, businessman.”

Term Ruled Misleading

A city attorney’s opinion issued Monday, however, said that it would be misleading for Morrow, who served on the San Diego City Council from 1965 to 1977, to use the term “councilmember” without a qualifier such as “ex” or “former.”

In addition, city attorneys recommended that the city clerk’s office not permit Morrow to describe himself as “experienced,” saying that the word is an “evaluative term” prohibited under city election laws concerning ballot designations.

“I don’t see it as a big problem, but I’ll abide by the ruling,” said Morrow, who is Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s only significant opponent in this spring’s campaign. “I think I’d like to tinker with it a little bit and resubmit it.”

But officials in the city clerk’s office, noting that it was Morrow’s “tinkering” with his ballot designation that led to Monday’s legal opinion, said that the former councilman may be fairly limited in how he amends his occupational description at this stage.

Originally, Morrow requested that he be described in this way: “Educator, businessman, community leader.” After meeting with his campaign advisers, however, Morrow asked the clerk’s office to change the wording to, “Experienced: attorney, councilmember, businessman.”

Suspecting that Morrow’s second version posed some legal questions stemming from municipal codes governing candidates’ ballot designations, the clerk’s office last week asked City Atty. John Witt to review the matter.

In light of Monday’s opinion from Witt’s office, assistant city elections officer Mike Haas said that Morrow has several options: returning to his original wording, using the second version minus the two “offending” words, or perhaps following the city attorney’s advice by inserting either “ex” or “former” in front of the word “councilmember” and dropping the word “experienced.”

“The municipal code says you’re supposed to do this all at once,” Haas explained. “He’s already given us two versions. But if he wanted to use ‘ex’ or something like that, I suspect he could.”

Morrow said that he is troubled by the city attorney’s insistence that he drop the word “experienced” from his ballot designation, but added that he is not inclined to get into a protracted squabble over the matter.

“To me, that’s not too evaluative,” Morrow said. “Either I have the experience or I don’t. Clearly, I have experience as an attorney, on the council and as a businessman. And I have a lot more experience than Maureen, for example. But I’ll make any changes necessary.”

Morrow said he intends to amend the statement, which must be limited to four words, today.

In addition to O’Connor and Morrow, three long shots--semi-retired public relations official John Kelley, City Hall gadfly Rose Lynne and businessman Charles Ulmschneider--also are on the June ballot.