THE TIMES POLL : S.D. Supports Arts Festival 4 to 1, Hopes for Another

San Diegans overwhelmingly approve of the just-ended Soviet arts festival and hope that the city hosts a similar cultural event in the early 1990s, a Times poll shows.

By a landslide 72%-19% margin, San Diegans favored the three-week festival that ended last weekend, although nearly half of them questioned the wisdom of spending public money on it. The nearly 4-1 support for the festival represents a significant improvement upon the already impressive 59%-26% favorable rating shown in a Times poll conducted last month on the festival’s opening day.

Another indicator of the strong public support behind the festival is that one-third of San Diegans said they or a family member attended at least one of its art exhibits and performances, according to the poll. That figure--extraordinarily high for any cultural event--reinforces Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s oft-stated contention that the festival’s appeal was widespread, not confined simply to traditional arts patrons.

With that solid public support as a backdrop, 67% of those polled said they favor O’Connor’s suggestion that the city consider holding a similar festival in three years. Although attitudes about the theme for a future festival were widely scattered, China led the list of nations favored to be featured, by a 2-1 margin.

Although O’Connor and other boosters of the Soviet arts festival clearly can view the poll’s findings as vindication of their faith in the project, the poll also suggests that the euphoria surrounding the festival may have limited long-range political and cultural impact.

For example, although O’Connor invested two years of effort and a considerable amount of her political prestige in the festival, most of those polled said the festival’s success has not affected their impression of her. Nevertheless, O’Connor’s popularity may have risen during the festival, as San Diegans gave her a 48%-20% favorable job rating, contrasted with her 41%-23% rating in an Oct. 22 Times poll. That increase, however, fall’s within the poll’s margin of sampling error.

In addition, San Diegans remain evenly divided over whether the $3 million in public funds used to help underwrite the festival should have been spent for that purpose. Despite their delight with the festival, a majority of those surveyed also said they plan to go to cultural events about as often as they did a year ago--indicating that public enthusiasm over the festival is unlikely to cause San Diegans to flock to museums and the theater in greater numbers. And most people disagree with O’Connor’s assertion that, with the Soviet arts festival, “San Diego has come of age” culturally.

“People loved the festival, but that apparently isn’t going to make a big difference in how they think about the arts in general or the mayor, even though she was closely identified with it,” Times pollster I. A. Lewis said.

The Times poll is based on telephone interviews conducted Sunday with 764 people throughout the city of San Diego. The poll’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Although the Soviet arts festival drew intense opposition in both the political and arts communities during its organizational period, the poll’s findings validate O’Connor’s persistent claim that those negative reviews came largely from a vocal minority.

Of the various findings that illustrate the depth of public support for the festival, perhaps none makes the point more vividly than the 72% overall approval rating and the fact that 33% of those polled said they or someone in their family attended the festival.

“I’m thrilled with those numbers--you can’t get much higher than that,” O’Connor said. “You don’t get 33% to participate in anything, even elections. It shows that there was a sea of people out there culturally starved for something like this. This should put to rest this question of whether the people would support the arts festival or whether it was good for San Diego. The answer is a very strong yes on both counts.”

Asked for a reason why they favored the festival, 49% said they believe that the event improved international relations between the United States and the Soviet Union--an explanation more than twice as prevalent as any other reason given by those polled. Eighteen percent said they approved of the festival primarily because it was a good educational experience for the tens of thousands of schoolchildren who attended free performances, and another 10% described it as an inexpensive way to be exposed to Soviet culture.

Festival opponents, meanwhile, cited the use of public funds to finance the event as the major reason for their disapproval, with 81% saying the city dollars should have been spent on more important programs. It was a large drop to the next most common explanation given by the 6% who said the festival “glorified communism.”

The centerpiece of the festival--the display of 27 Faberge eggs, the largest showing ever outside the Soviet Union of the jewel-encrusted, intricately designed artworks--was the festival’s biggest single draw, the poll showed. Seventeen percent of those polled said they or someone in their family viewed the eggs, followed by 12% who attended Georgian folk dancing performances, 7% who saw the festival’s folk art exhibit and 6% who attended the free opening-day performances on Super Powers Sunday in Balboa Park.

However, San Diegans remain skeptical about using tax dollars to fund the festival or similar cultural events, the poll shows.

Reflecting the deep public division over that question, 49% said they dislike the fact that the $3 million in public funds--the same amount donated by the private sector--was spent on the arts festival, while 46% favored the expenditure. The opponents of public funding are stronger in their convictions on that point than proponents, with three-fifths of the opponents saying they “strongly opposed” using tax dollars for the festival, and only one-third of the supporters saying they “strongly favored” public financing.

Those doubts also figure prominently in public attitudes concerning the possibility of the city hosting a similar arts festival in 1992. Of the 67% who favor a future festival, more than one-third made their support contingent upon completely private financing.

Reiterating the argument she has used to deflect criticism of public financing of the festival, O’Connor contends that such disapproval stems largely from the public’s “misunderstanding” of the nature of the funds involved. The $3 million in public funds spent on the festival, she stresses, came from hotel room-tax revenues, not the city’s general taxes.

Although there was no clear consensus concerning possible themes for any future festival, China was named by 14% of those polled as the country they would prefer to see featured. The support for China was twice as strong as that expressed for the next most popular countries, France and Japan, both of which were cited by 7%. Somewhat surprisingly, despite the influence and growing size of San Diego’s Latino community, only 3% and 2%, respectively, expressed interest in a Latin American or Mexican theme.

“I think what people want to do with these festivals is bring part of the world here that’s not easily accessible to them,” O’Connor said. “Mexico is easily accessible to people in San Diego. They’re more interested in seeing things from faraway places.”

O’Connor’s role as initiator and chief cheerleader for the festival caused the event to be widely seen within political circles as a significant test of her leadership. The poll, however, indicates that the festival did not significantly affect O’Connor’s political standing, as 58% said their impression of the mayor was not altered, either favorably or unfavorably, by it.

Of those who said their opinion of O’Connor had changed because of the festival, the shift was in O’Connor’s favor by a 3-2 margin, with 21% saying they now have a more favorable impression of her and 14% expressing stronger disapproval than they felt before.

The long-term effects on the arts may also be minimal. By a 51%-34% margin, San Diegans scoffed at O’Connor’s claim that the festival helped the city “come of age” culturally, and only 2% of those who favored the event said it was because they felt it would boost the local arts community.

OPINIONS OF SOVIET ARTS FESTIVAL Why do you approve of the Soviet arts festival? Good for international relations: 49% Educational for children: 18% Inexpensive opportunity to see Soviet culture: 10% Good for city’s image: 8% Interested in all kinds of art: 8% Gives the local arts community a boost: 2% Other: 1% Don’t know: 4% Why do you disapprove of the Soviet arts festival? City funds could be used for more important things: 81% Glorifies communism: 6% Poor choice of programs and exhibits: 3% Not interested: 3% Tickets were too expensive: 2% Too few tickets: 1% Other: 3% Don’t know: 1% Which festival events or art exhibits did you or anyone in your family attend? Did not attend: 67% Faberge eggs: 17% Georgian folk dancers: 12% Folk art exhibit: 7% Super Powers Sunday: 6% Symphony performances: 5% “Boris Godunov” opera: 3% “Slingshot” play: 3% “Brothers and Sisters” play: 2% Marionette theater: 2% Other: 3% Don’t know: 1% Source: Los Angeles Times Poll.