THE THIRD : A Test Case of New System’s Impact

Before deciding to run for office, most candidates carefully assess their own strengths and weaknesses, gauge their opponents’ potential liabilities, ponder issues and total up myriad other subjects on a kind of political balance sheet.

John Hartley, a real estate broker who hopes to unseat San Diego City Councilwoman Gloria McColl, spent weeks going through that mental exercise before entering the 3rd District race. However, even earlier, Hartley focused his energies on another endeavor more integral to his chances in the Sept. 19 primary: He changed the rules of the game, helping to create a new election system that significantly improves the chances of any challenger.

Having led last fall’s successful battle for district-only council races, Hartley now hopes to capitalize on that critical structural change in the city’s elections in his campaign against McColl and businessman Charles Ulmschneider.

Perhaps more so than any of the three other council races on this month’s ballot, the 3rd District contest is widely regarded as a case study of the political impact of the switch from the city’s former two-tiered election format, in which district primaries were followed by citywide runoffs between the top two vote-getters.

Unassailable in Citywide Race

In form and content, the campaign in McColl’s Mid-City district features many elements that will provide a practical political test of the questions debated in theory during last fall’s Proposition E campaign on the relative merits of district and at-large elections.

With the considerable name-recognition and fund-raising advantages that come with 6 1/2 years of incumbency, the 58-year-old McColl probably would be politically unassailable in a citywide contest, her opponents concede.

However, in a district election, a candidate’s dogged persistence can effectively compensate for a lack of funds and a well-known name. A tireless door-to-door campaigner, Hartley hopes to prove an argument commonly offered by proponents of district elections--namely, that, in a district geographically compact enough to be covered by foot in a six-month campaign, an aggressive grass-roots organization, combined with simmering neighborhood discontent, can be more potent than 30-second TV and radio ads and a huge campaign bankroll.

“This race really lays all those pro and con arguments about district elections on the line,” said Hartley, a 46-year-old Normal Heights resident who lost to McColl in a 1983 council race. “When this is over, the political analysts will have a field day.”

For Hartley, the challenge posed by the primary is whether, having changed the rules governing council elections, he can now win the game.

As the coordinator of Neighborhoods for District elections, he led the fight that resulted in last November’s razor-thin 51.1% approval of the district-only ballot proposition.

‘New Breed of Challengers’

“If that hadn’t passed, John still might have run, but he wouldn’t have been a viable citywide candidate,” said Tom Shepard, Hartley’s campaign consultant.

However, the visibility that Hartley gained in last fall’s campaign, combined with years of activism in a wide range of business and community groups within the district, has caused him to be perceived--partly through self-promotion of the image--as a standard-bearer for what he himself describes as “a new breed of challengers” emboldened by the city’s new election system.

McColl, though, has also quickly adjusted to the changed political realities. Since being appointed to the seat in 1983, she has compiled a long list of accomplishments--ranging from community cleanup programs and acquisition of 100 acres of parks to a well-publicized crackdown on prostitution on El Cajon Boulevard--in neighborhoods throughout the district, which includes East San Diego, North Park, Kensington, Normal Heights, University Heights, City Heights, Oak Park, North Encanto, Rolando, Redwood and Chollas.

Indeed, even before the advent of district-only elections narrowed council members’ perspectives to their own districts, McColl boasted of her success in guaranteeing that the 3rd District consistently received its fair share of city services and funding. At candidate forums, she proudly notes, her district was untouched during recent budget cuts at City Hall, and she emphasizes that its share of federal redevelopment funds increased from 1% to 33% during her tenure.

In a citywide election, sidewalk repairs in one neighborhood or sprucing up the business district in another would be relatively minor factors. But, in a district race, such accomplishments in one’s own political back yard become pivotal, and dozens of them have left McColl with strong backing from many community leaders throughout the district.

The change to district-only races, however, also brings with it some potential liabilities for McColl, who failed to carry her district in her 1983 citywide victory over Bob Filner--a race in which Hartley finished a distant third with only 9.5% of the vote. In particular, Democrats hold a commanding 55%-33% registration edge in the 3rd District, a significant concern for Republican McColl in a race against Democrat Hartley that is nonpartisan more in theory than in fact.

Although she exudes serene confidence, McColl has waged an aggressive, at times bare-knuckles campaign laced with personal attacks on Hartley. Although her campaign manager, Marla Marshall, argues that the no-holds-barred style is indicative of nothing more than the fact that “Gloria always runs scared,” others have suggested that McColl’s renewed vigor stems from unpleasant memories of a bitter 1988 loss to Carol Bentley in a state Assembly race that she had begun as a prohibitive favorite.

In a campaign in which the front-runners’ mutual disdain has never been disguised, one of the few areas of agreement between McColl and Hartley is that the election is likely to be settled in the primary, with the victor surpassing the 50% margin needed to avoid a November runoff. With Ulmschneider, a long shot who received only 3.6% of the vote in last year’s mayoral race, expected to draw a similarly negligible share of the primary vote, a conclusive win by either McColl or Hartley appears statistically and politically probable.

Crime the Chief Concern

From the beginning of the campaign, the candidates have spent much of their time debating whether crime, which polls confirm as 3rd District voters’ chief concern, and growth problems have worsened or been reined in during McColl’s 1 1/2 terms at City Hall.

From Hartley’s perspective, the 3rd District is a “less safe, more congested, more troubled” community than it was before McColl took office, an argument that he supports by pointing to Police Department figures showing that crime there has increased at twice the citywide rate since 1983.

“It’s reached an epidemic stage where people literally are afraid to go out of their homes, especially at night,” said Hartley, who has called for a drug and gang hot line, expansion of the Neighborhood Watch program and more youth recreational services to help combat the problem. “And it’s not just older people who feel that way. Beyond all the usual stuff--vandalism, break-ins, muggings--there’s growing drug and gang problems. McColl pretends that the problem doesn’t exist or is getting better, but the statistics show that’s not so.”

Disputing her opponent’s claims as “evidence that, once again, Mr. Hartley is ill-informed,” McColl counters by citing another statistic showing that crime in her district decreased 8% from 1988 during the first half of this year.

“Yes, there was a time when crime was increasing faster here than the rest of the city,” said McColl, whose endorsement by the Police Officers Assn. allows her to bill herself as “Law Enforcement’s Choice.”

“But now we’ve hired more police and created more programs, and that trend has been reversed,” said McColl, who chairs the council’s Public Services and Safety Committee, a post she claims has helped her gain the ear of Police Chief Bob Burgreen. “For this man to suggest otherwise is an insult to me and the community.”

‘Part of the Bulldozer Brigade’

On growth, Hartley has caustically characterized McColl as “part of the bulldozer brigade,” calling her “one of developers’ best friends on the council” and contending that nearly 90% of the $168,000 she had raised as of last month, more than four times his own contribution total, came from development interests.

In response, McColl emphasizes her success in down-zoning areas throughout the district in an effort to preserve single-family neighborhoods and to ensure that multi-unit projects are concentrated along major transportation corridors.

“District 3 was a victim of the city’s growth-management plan of the 1970s because it encouraged in-fill in existing, Mid-City communities,” McColl said. “We were park-deficient and infrastructure-deficient. But that, too, is no longer the case. Now the district is getting the services and funding it needs. As with so many of his other charges, my opponent seems to be wrong or living in the past on this issue.”

In attempting to deflect Hartley’s criticisms on the growth issue, McColl has also received some unexpected help from Ulmschneider, who notes wryly, “It seems a little strange to me for someone who’s a real estate broker to point a finger at someone else over too much development.”

As those comments indicate, even when the candidates debate issues, the dialogue has had a tendency to turn personal in the 3rd District race. That has been particularly true of the McColl campaign, which, in seeking to raise questions about Hartley’s character while simultaneously turning the crime issue back upon him, sent out a mailer last month stating that Hartley broke the law “three times . . . in less than one year” in the early 1980s.

Deliberately Vague About Infractions

Although photocopies of Hartley’s citations were printed on the cover, descriptions of the specific infractions were deliberately vague, as in: “Candidate Hartley is cited for a criminal violation, code 33 1402.” Marked in bold red ink, the mailer concluded: “We can’t afford to have a lawbreaker be a lawmaker. Say NO to candidate Hartley.”

What the mailer did not specify is that the “crime” for which Hartley had received minor fines involved selling lobsters from a pickup truck without proper permits, an offense that one police spokesman dismissed as “less important than a parking ticket.” The citations occurred while Hartley worked for a fish company, one of several part-time jobs he held during downturns in the real estate market.

In response to another McColl offensive questioning his academic credentials, Hartley was forced to acknowledge that he had changed his name from Bill Terry Glendenning to John Terry Hartley in 1973. Hartley insists he changed his name “not because there’s something sinister in my past I’m trying to hide,” but rather to honor his maternal grandfather, who died of cancer that year. McColl’s strategists, however, have done their best to raise eyebrows over that explanation.

“The issue isn’t lobsters,” McColl said when asked why such questions have been injected into the campaign. “The issue is a person’s willingness to follow the laws of the land. This goes to the question of character. We look to our public officials to set examples. But what kind of example can someone who breaks the law himself set?”

When not laughing off McColl’s criticisms, Hartley optimistically points to them as “signs of serious desperation” on her part. However, he concedes that some voters might regard name changes and lobster-selling convictions as, if nothing else, rather quirky inclusions on a candidate’s resume. In his defense, though, Hartley paints himself as a kind of political Everyman and, in the process, takes another swipe at McColl.

‘I’m Not Perfect’

“I guess, if it shows anything, it shows that, like most people, I’m not perfect,” Hartley said. “I’m a fairly typical, middle-class, working-class type of person. I’ve had my share of problems. But life is how you deal with those problems, and I’ve never given up.

“In that regard, I think I’m a lot closer to the people in this district than McColl. She lives in a big house on the most exclusive street in Kensington behind a private security fence. Maybe the reason she doesn’t think crime is such a big problem is that she doesn’t have the same kind of experiences the rest of us do.”

Ulmschneider, meanwhile, has been treated as little more than a political footnote in the contest. While he complains that his opponents largely ignore him as “a minor nuisance,” by conventional political yardsticks, there appears to be little reason to assign Ulmschneider any greater significance.

Labeling himself “the populist alternative,” he acknowledges that his $6,000 campaign budget means he will be heavily outgunned by both of his opponents--an all but insurmountable financial disadvantage even in a district race.

“It is a little tough being a candidate, campaign manager, political consultant, treasurer and public relations director all wrapped up in one,” Ulmschneider conceded.

A 35-year-old North Park newspaper distributor, Ulmschneider says that what most distinguishes him from Hartley and McColl is that “I’m not receiving a dime from any special interests.”

Unfortunately, as far as Ulmschneider’s admittedly slim chances are concerned, that situation is not entirely of his own making, being more a reflection of his long-shot status than a deliberate effort to stake out the moral high ground in the campaign. As a result, Ulmschneider’s potential influence in the race appears to be limited to perhaps forcing a runoff by siphoning off enough votes to keep both McColl and Hartley below the 50% threshold.