San Diegans Vote to Elect City Council by Districts

It wasn’t until John Hartley read the morning newspaper Wednesday that reality sank in. After almost two decades and five tries, supporters of district-only elections for the San Diego City Council had finally won.

“It’s just a shocker. I’m just beginning to wake up to it,” said Hartley, a neighborhood coordinator and one of the leaders of Neighborhoods for District Elections, the group behind Proposition E, which mandates that council members be elected within individual districts rather than citywide.

Officially, the tally won’t be finished until today, when the registrar of voters counts the last of about 20,000 absentee ballots submitted by city voters. And, although a reversal of the outcome is still possible, both supporters and opponents of Proposition E said Wednesday that they consider it extremely unlikely.

With all but the last absentee ballots counted, the measure had 163,758 votes in favor (51%) and 156,754 votes in opposition (49%), a winning margin of just more than 7,000 votes.

Despite the closeness of the election and the prospect that Proposition E could lead to a significant and fundamental change in local politics and in the city’s future, the aftermath was almost anti-climatic. Certainly it was nowhere near resembling the emotional and acrimonious environment that both preceded and followed the four other districting measures, which go back to 1969.

Yet, both sides said it was that very low-key, low-cost approach, in large part dictated by the attention and resources riveted by the development industry on four growth-control propositions that also shared the ballot, that cleared the way for districting to win. Until this year, the opposition to districting had relied heavily on developers, who helped underwrite anti-districting campaigns. But, this year, they were diverted.

“The growth industry was totally consumed with the the growth issues. All their attention and money went there,” Hartley said. “I think that helped us a lot . . . made it lucky in a lot of ways. If they had focused (on districting), they would have knocked us out.”

Just So Much on Ballot

Mark Nelson, executive director of San Diego County Taxpayers Assn. and a key member of Citizens for Voter Rights, the predominantly business-oriented group formed to defeat Proposition E, agreed that the lack of developer help hurt but said it wasn’t the sole reason his campaign failed.

“There was just so much on the ballot,” Nelson said. “Clearly the four growth-control measures surely diverted a lot, but there was also the presidential race, the Senate contest and statewide ballot propositions, too, and you can’t forget the civilian review board. There was a lot of competition for a few dollars.”

“I’m disappointed the opposition didn’t have the opportunity or financial ability to get the word out,” he added. Former Councilman Bill Cleator, a chief spokesman for anti-districting campaign, estimated that his group spent $10,000 in the campaign. In contrast, the builders spent about $2 million to defeat the growth control measures.

But to describe the victory of Proposition E simply in terms of what the developers did not do would only tell part of the story.

Supporters say their campaign, although unlikely to have spent more than $50,000 from the start of gathering initiative petition signatures to the end of a modest media campaign, was well organized and tireless.

“The time had come,” said Ruth Duemler, co-chairman of Neighborhoods for District Elections, the group supporting Proposition E.

“I think people all over San Diego were unhappy about the way the council has been conducting its business.

“The feeling of citizens is that the council isn’t behind them, that developers and big donors come first,” Duemler said. “They were ready for a change. People felt they were not being listened to. That’s the major reason we won.”

Broad Base of Support

Neighborhoods for District Elections based its strategy on strong grass-roots contacts in the communities, working, in some cases since 1984, to forge broad support. The group was composed of environmentalists, an array of Latino and black leaders, the Sierra Club, Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) and the League of Women Voters. And the main members of the organization had not been involved in previous district-election efforts, the last of which occurred in 1981.

Some, such as Hartley, believe the key difference between 1980-’81, when the last two districting proposals were defeated, and 1988 is that neighborhoods have become more politicized, more aggressive about what they want, and more cohesive, a change he says started with former Mayor Roger Hedgecock.

Jess Haro, a former councilman and chairman of the Chicano Federation of San Diego County, believes districting will “open up the process to people who have been previously shut out.”

“You’re going to have a different City Council,” he predicted. “The terms of admission will change. While money and name recognition will still be factors, it will be easier to have a grass-roots campaign . . . people will know where the outside money is coming from.”

Haro’s organization filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the city, claiming that San Diego’s use of at-large, citywide elections and its inequitable distribution of council districts have disenfranchised Latino voters.

He contended that the specter of the lawsuit and the issue of minority voting rights had more to do with Proposition E’s approval than anything else, a suggestion not embraced by other supporters of the measure.

“It’s not a minority issue,” said Alice McCauley, president of the San Diego League of Women Voters. “It’s about people concerned with good government” and getting more people involved in local government, she said.

Two Other Goals

In any case, Haro said the Chicano Federation will continue to pursue two other elements of its lawsuit: expanding the council from eight members to 12, and realigning the boundaries of the districts, which Haro says have been gerrymandered, so that the city’s Latino population is not politically weakened by being unfairly divided.

He also said that, now that districting has been approved for the City Council, his group will seek to have the system adopted for the election of trustees to the San Diego Unified School District, who stand for election citywide. An attorney for the school district said Wednesday that the only way to do that is by changing the City Charter, which would require voter approval.

Opponents of Proposition E said Wednesday that they have no intention of challenging the measure by introducing a new initiative, at least not until there is evidence that districting is not working. And some, such as Cleator and Mayor Maureen O’Connor, say they still fear the worst--that the city’s overall best interests will be subservient to provincial neighborhood politics.

“There’s no question that they’re going to be focusing on their district,” said O’Connor, who along with several other council members opposed Proposition E. “Hopefully, they will continue to represent the entire city.”

“At this juncture, I think it’s probably best to sit back and see how it works,” Cleator said. “Hopefully it will, but my feeling is it won’t.”

Proposition E’s backers are well aware that the pressure is on the new system, and many say they can’t just sit back now as if Tuesday’s election were the end of the battle. “The charge is on us to make sure district elections work,” said Hartley.

The first district-only election will occur next September, when four council members, Ed Struiksma, Abbie Wolfsheimer, Gloria McColl and Judy McCarty, are up for re-election.

Under the new system, any candidate who receives more than 50% of the vote in the September primary will automatically be elected to the council. If no candidate receives more than 50%, the top two vote-getters will compete in a district-only runoff.

Four members of the current City Council would not have fared well under the new system, as they were second-place finishers in their individual districts but were victorious in the citywide runoff. They are Wolfsheimer, McColl, Wes Pratt and Ron Roberts.

“The council members who are in touch with their districts will probably remain,” said Howard Wayne, an attorney and official of Neighborhoods for District Elections, interviewed late Tuesday night as returns were showing Proposition E edging ahead.

“Those who are the figments of the developers’ imagination will be struck out of office,” he said. “Council members will need to get more in touch with their districts to survive.”