Activist Stallings to Run for 6th District Seat

Calling this fall’s San Diego City Council campaign a referendum on the council’s performance and Councilman Bruce Henderson’s character, Pacific Beach activist Valerie Stallings Tuesday announced her candidacy for Henderson’s 6th District seat.

At a news conference outside City Hall, Stallings, a 51-year-old cancer researcher at the Salk Institute, sharply criticized both Henderson and the council itself, which she argued is “fast becoming the least respected government body in the region.”

“During the past four years, we’ve been subjected to a steady diet of political grandstanding, petty bickering and back-room deal-making,” Stallings said. “Bruce Henderson has distinguished himself in all these areas.”

Charging that Henderson misled voters by billing himself as “Your Neighborhood Protection Candidate” in his 1987 race, Stallings noted that the first-term councilman was rated by the Sierra Club and the group Prevention Los Angelization Now as having the worst voting record on the council on neighborhood, growth and environmental issues.

Earlier this year, Stallings had been preparing to run against 2nd District Councilman Ron Roberts, who, like Henderson, is seeking reelection to a second four-year term in the September primary. However, Stallings said Tuesday that “the race I’ve wanted to do all along” was against Henderson, and she recently moved to Bay Park to qualify for the 6th District contest.

Dismissing critics’ attempts to characterize her move as political opportunism, Stallings argued that the council’s protracted efforts to redraw district lines over the past year--a contentious issue only recently resolved--left her own political plans in limbo.

“I haven’t known which district I’ve been in,” Stallings said, adding that, in order to oppose Henderson, it was necessary to “move from what became the 2nd District, which had been the 6th, into what is now currently the 6th.”

Outlining her own priorities more in generalities than specifics, Stallings called for a “decisive water supply and conservation plan,” stricter growth-management standards and increased spending on law-enforcement and anti-crime programs.