4 Incumbents Joined by 9 Challengers in City’s 1st District-Only Vote

Thirteen candidates, led by four incumbents seeking reelection in San Diego’s first district-only City Council elections, filed candidacy petitions for this fall’s campaign by Friday’s deadline.

With half of the council’s eight seats at stake in the September primary, nine challengers joined incumbents Abbe Wolfsheimer, Gloria McColl, Ed Struiksma and Judy McCarty in filing required signature petitions with the city clerk’s office, according to city election officials.

Struiksma, who is seeking a third four-year term representing the council’s 5th District, will face four opponents, while Wolfsheimer and McColl each face two challengers in the 1st and 3rd districts, respectively. McColl, who was appointed to the council in 1983, is seeking a second full term that, if completed, would give her a decade of service at City Hall. Wolfsheimer is running for her second term.

McCarty Has Best Chance of Winning Outright

In the 7th District race, McCarty, who also is running for a second term, will face a single challenger. As a result, McCarty appears to have the best chance of any of the four incumbents of winning the election outright in the primary by receiving more than 50% of the vote.

Under the district-election plan narrowly approved by San Diego voters last November as Proposition E, if no candidate receives a majority of the primary vote, the top two vote-getters will compete in a November runoff. The district-only system will replace the two-tiered method featuring district primaries and citywide general election runoffs between the top two finishers in each district.

To qualify for the ballot, council candidates are required to collect at least 200 valid signatures of registered voters within their individual districts. The county registrar of voters’ office is expected to verify whether each of the candidates met that standard on their petitions by early next week.

Here is a list of the candidates:

- District 1: Wolfsheimer; University City community activist Harry Mathis and Bob Trettin, a former county supervisorial and councilmanic aide.

- District 3: McColl; real estate broker John Hartley and small businessman Charles Ulmschneider.

- District 5: Struiksma; lawyer and former City Councilman Floyd Morrow; lawyer and county planner Mike Eckmann; educational marketing official Bob Switzer, and former Wolfsheimer staffer and land-use planner Linda Bernhardt.

- District 7: McCarty and retired San Diego firefighter Kenneth Key.