Harmon Bids to Be 1st Elected Escondido Mayor

Jerry Harmon, who has spent most of his nearly 18 years on the Escondido City Council as the lone slow-growth advocate among pro-growth peers, announced Wednesday that he will seek the office of Escondido’s first elected mayor.

Harmon, 46, won a four-year council term by a landslide in 1988 and carried two other slow-growthers with him. Now, he predicts, the entire council will be composed of like-minded members after the June election.

Mayor Doris Thurston has announced that she will not seek another term in June and Councilman Ernie Cowan, the other member up for reelection and a growth advocate, has not decided whether he will run again.

Harmon first was elected to the council in 1974 and, despite his long tenure, has never served as mayor, a post which earlier was filled by a vote of council members and more recently has been decided, indirectly, by the voters. In recent elections, the candidate with the highest number of votes became mayor pro tem and was automatically elevated to mayor two years later.

With the election of Carla DeDominicis and Kris Murphy, who ran on a slow-growth slate with Harmon in the 1988 election, Harmon’s views often became the majority on the council.

“The growth wars are over,” Harmon said Thursday, pledging to work to bring the city’s divergent interests together to plan a development timetable.

He pointed out that in the 1988 election, he carried every precinct in the city. He said he felt that slow-growth momentum has continued to grow in the past 18 months, even as the city began to put the rein on development that is taxing city resources and services.

Harmon said he had “heard rumors” that he might be opposed for mayor by Escondido builder Don Daniel. Daniel could not be reached for comment.

A revamped General Plan for the city, which is “99% complete,” would trim the ultimate size of the North County community to 150,000--half the amount of growth the present plan calls for, Harmon said.

“I might want to see Jerry elected,” said Jim Rady, former Escondido mayor and a longtime political adversary of Harmon. “He’s no leader. And, it is only fair that if the city gets screwed up, it should bear his imprimatur.”