Roger--Over and Out : In San Diego, a long, drawn out political and legal drama is over

Whether you believe that former Mayor Roger Hedgecock got what he deserved Thursday, the city of San Diego finally has been rewarded for its patience with the feuding factions at the center of his political and legal melodrama.

Yes, the infamous Hedgecock affair is over, and with its conclusion a turbulent chapter in the city’s political history is winding down. Whether you blame Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller Jr. or Hedgecock for the scandal and bloody infighting that marred the mid-1980s, you can now look forward to a gradual diminishing of the fervor of the struggle. Or so everyone hopes.

By 1990, Hedgecock had become less a man on trial than a touchstone, a human Green Line dividing a city into political and philosophical camps. It’s a good bet that the many people who have migrated here in the years since Hedgecock was charged in 1984 with campaign-financing crimes can tell you whether they’re “pro-Roger” or “anti-Roger.” But they probably can’t begin to describe the crimes of which he was actually accused.

You see, in the modern San Diego lexicon, being “pro-Roger” means being anti-Establishment, anti-Miller, anti-Mayor Maureen O’Connor and anti-Copley Press. Roger’s legions consist of snarling, long-suffering “little guys,” who want to throw the bums out and who have been waiting for justice for their hero. It’s a civic division that the trial on charges of campaign-law violations exacerbated and that Hedgecock exploits daily on his local radio show.

But it is a schism that doesn’t help San Diego.

Now, with Hedgecock free of the threat of jail and ensconced behind his microphone--enjoying considerable clout but forswearing a future bid for office--the soap opera has something of an ending. Sure, Hedgecock won’t stop hammering at City Hall and his detractors won’t soon forgive him.

But perhaps with the matter settled and O’Connor stepping down in two years, San Diego is poised to begin a new political era.