Henderson Rally Turns Into Shoving, Shouting Match

A campaign rally for San Diego City Councilman Bruce Henderson nearly erupted into fisticuffs Saturday when Henderson’s top aide scuffled with a 78-year-old man among a group of protesters taunting the councilman.

The disruption occurred near the end of the hour-long morning rally when Henderson aide Jim Sills roughly grabbed Joe Lowenstein while he and about a dozen other Henderson opponents loudly heckled the councilman as he posed for a group photograph with about 60 supporters at a Clairemont shopping center.

As Sills alternately tugged Lowenstein’s arm and shoved him to lead him away from Henderson, the elderly man--whom Sills claimed had earlier “jostled” Henderson--stumbled and fell to the pavement.

Several of the protesters from the anti-Henderson group “Ban the Bruce” began screaming at Sills. “You have no right to handle an old man like that!” one woman shouted. But in the midst of the yelling, Sills calmly took a photo of Henderson with carpenters’ union members.

“He took a dive--he deliberately fell,” the 42-year-old Sills said later, arguing that the anti-Henderson group hoped to “provoke an incident.” Lowenstein, Sills added, had been “poking and bumping” Henderson moments before the aide led him away.

“If you’re going to get in the face of an elected official, you’re going to get noticed,” Sills said. “The border is crossed when you go from verbal abuse to laying on hands, and that’s what happened here. But no one tried to hurt him. In fact, I was trying to get him out of there, because he was surrounded by (Henderson supporters) who were getting upset, and it was about three seconds away from turning into something more ugly.”

Lowenstein, however, insisted that Sills “threw me to that cement,” adding: “He’s lucky I’m old or he wouldn’t have gotten away with it. I’m 78 and I can’t maneuver like I used to.”

Lowenstein scraped his elbow but was not otherwise hurt in the fall.

The incident prompted several heated exchanges between the two groups, one of them involving Lowenstein’s son-in-law and a Henderson supporter who came close to blows amid mutual threats to “get it on” in the parking lot. On the way to the parking lot, however, the Henderson partisan apparently thought better of the idea and walked away.

Amid heightening tensions on both sides, Henderson accused Anne Marie Quinn, one of the “Ban the Bruce” leaders, of shoving the 9-year-old son of one of his supporters while trying to get her anti-Henderson sign in the photo. Quinn, however, denied that there was any physical contact between her and the youth, dismissing Henderson’s accusation as an attempt to divert attention from the Sills-Lowenstein altercation.

Afterward, Henderson defended Sills’ behavior, saying that Lowenstein was “shouting at me” and had “reached out and grabbed me” before being led away by Sills. The 48-year-old councilman emphasized, however, that he “wasn’t frightened” by Lowenstein, 30 years his senior, and did not believe that the elderly man intended him any harm.

Like Sills, Henderson contended that Lowenstein “purposely fell down” as part of “a scenario he . . . probably practiced with” supporters of his opponent, Salk Institute cancer researcher Valerie Stallings.

“These people have been trying to disrupt our rallies and events for the past month,” Sills added. “If anyone apologizes, they ought to be apologizing to us.”

The “Ban the Bruce” group, which operates independently from Stallings’ campaign, has “quietly attended” several recent campaign events, Quinn said, but Saturday’s rally was “the first time we were a little bit wild and obnoxious.”

“A rally’s fair game,” Quinn said.

Sills, meanwhile, had another way of summarizing Saturday’s unexpectedly eventful rally.

“It’s just another of those little milestones along the campaign road,” Sills said.