Pinching Pennies--and Proud of It : O’Connor Spent Only $82,073 in Bargain-Basement Reelection

In the least expensive successful San Diego mayoral race in a decade, Mayor Maureen O’Connor spent only $82,073 in her June reelection victory, campaign finance reports filed Monday show.

O’Connor, who was reelected by a 3-to-2 margin in the June 7 primary, easily attained her oft-stated goal of keeping her spending total below $100,000 to demonstrate, in her words, “that you don’t have to spend a half-million dollars to get elected mayor.”

O’Connor received $92,038 in contributions and spent $82,073, reports filed with the city clerk’s office show. The campaign finance statement of former San Diego City Councilman Floyd Morrow, who was O’Connor’s only major opponent in the five-candidate June race, had not been received by the clerk’s office as of late Monday.

Less Than Most Council Races

O’Connor’s $82,073 expenditure is dwarfed by the multimillion-dollar races seen in mayoral contests throughout the 1980s, and, in fact, is considerably less than the amounts usually spent by City Council candidates.

“The money spent in some of those past campaigns was just crazy,” O’Connor said last spring. On that point, the mayor spoke from experience. In her unsuccessful 1983 mayoral race against Roger Hedgecock, O’Connor spent more than $780,000, including $560,000 of her own money.

When she was elected two years ago in the special 1986 election necessitated by Hedgecock’s felony conviction, O’Connor, adhering to another self-imposed limit, spent $268,000. The overall cost of that race, however, topped the $1-million mark, with former City Councilman Bill Cleator spending $607,414 and Morrow, who finished third, about $100,000.

‘Step in Right Direction’

However, with Morrow’s final spending total expected to be less than O’Connor’s, the cost of this year’s mayoral race should just barely surpass six figures--a development that O’Connor termed “a step in the right direction.”

In the primary, O’Connor carried every neighborhood throughout the city, most of them by large margins. While understandably proud of that impressive display of citywide strength, O’Connor said several days after the primary that she regarded her relatively low-cost campaign as an equally noteworthy accomplishment.

“When I look back at this campaign, those are the two things I’ll remember most,” O’Connor said at the time. “If future races are less expensive because of what we showed is possible if you rely more on hard work than all the glitz, I’d consider that a real lasting achievement.”