Ousted Leader Assails Alliance Between Sierra Club, Bernhardt

San Diego City Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt’s anti-recall forces sought to “circumvent” campaign laws by funneling contributions from an ambulance company to the Sierra Club to pay for pro-Bernhardt campaign mailers, an ousted Sierra Club leader charged Friday.

Mark Zerbe, who was pressured to resign from the Sierra Club’s top leadership panel Thursday night, issued the charge Friday in a blistering nine-page memo that contended that the preservationist organization has abandoned its environmental principles to support Bernhardt at all costs. None of Zerbe’s many accusations could be independently confirmed.

“The Club’s staunch support for Linda in the face of certain defeat (in an expected recall election this spring) is embarrassing and may result in the loss of an environmental majority on the City Council,” Zerbe wrote in the Dec. 13 memo to Sierra Club officials that he distributed publicly Friday. “The Club now smells as bad as the dead horse it chained itself to.”

Sierra Club Chairman Rob Langsdorf declined to discuss any of Zerbe’s allegations, which included its relationship with Bernhardt, manipulation of elected Sierra Club leaders by the organization’s political lobbyists and the environmental report card the club released Nov. 26.

Bernhardt, however, called Zerbe’s charges “baseless allegations” made by a political opponent. “The guy apparently has some serious problems,” Bernhardt said.

Glen Roberts, chief executive officer of Hartson Medical Services, denied Zerbe’s accusation that a contribution to Bernhardt’s campaign was linked to a council vote on the Hartson contract with the city. Roberts said he has contributed funds to every City Council member except Abbe Wolfsheimer, but did not recall when he last contributed to Bernhardt.

The City Council voted, 6 to 2, Sept. 18 to negotiate an extended contract with Hartson and added 10 firefighters to the paramedic force. Bernhardt voted with the majority.

Zerbe, then treasurer of the Sierra Club’s political committee, claimed that, when he balked at accepting the money, he received a call from David Gould, Bernhardt’s campaign treasurer.

“Mr. Gould called me the next day and suggested ways of circumventing the city’s $250 contribution limit and ban on contributions from businesses, such as getting a stack of contributions from employees of Hartson’s and depositing them in the Sierra Club’s account in San Francisco so that it wouldn’t appear in campaign records in San Diego,” Zerbe wrote in the memo.

Gould did not return a telephone call to his office Friday.

The scheme was never carried out, Zerbe said. But, in the memo, he added that “lobbyists seldom give contributions just prior to important votes without making sure the politicians involved are aware of them. I also find it difficult to believe that the Bernhardt campaign would casually expect me to allow the (Sierra Club political committee) account to be used to launder contributions without someone within the Club first making the suggestions to them.”

Zerbe, who worked to defeat former Councilman Ed Struiksma, Bernhardt’s 1989 political opponent, acknowledged Friday that he no longer supports the 5th District councilwoman. Last month, he publicly accused the Sierra Club of manipulating its environmental report card so that Bernhardt would be ranked first.

Those accusations led to his ouster at a Sierra Club meeting Thursday night. Langsdorf declined to discuss the situation, issuing a three-paragraph statement that said, in part, that “Mark made it clear that he did not wish to use the (club’s) process to deal with his concerns.”

In Friday’s memo, Zerbe went further, claiming that the Sierra Club’s second report card was published as an “alternate method” of supporting Bernhardt, when the organization’s executive committee balked at sending out a favorable mailer to its membership.

“It was discussed that (the report card) would have to be prepared quickly in order to have an impact on the recall,” Zerbe wrote.

Zerbe also said in the memo that Julie Dillon, chairman of the local Building Industry Assn., told him in a meeting that “Bernhardt had effectively been extorting money from developers, and that they were considering a financial boycott.”

Dillon said the charge was “totally false” and that she discussed only water conservation and campaign reform with Zerbe.