Council Race Becomes War of Opposites : Election: Henderson paints Stallings as liberal and spender but can point to few specifics. Stallings has a lot of names for him, but comes up with few concrete positions.

In a campaign in which they have come to view each other as their political and personal polar opposite, San Diego City Councilman Bruce Henderson and challenger Valerie Stallings disagree even over which among their myriad differences most deserves voters’ attention in Tuesday’s election.

Henderson, whose second-place finish in September’s 6th District primary cast him in the role of underdog in a reelection campaign once seen as little more than an electoral formality, consistently exhorts voters to closely examine what he describes as the candidates’ “deep, fundamental philosophical and political differences.”

“It’s a typical liberal-conservative split as far as the approach to problem-solving,” Henderson says. “She believes that government is the answer to solving more and more of the city’s problems; I believe that the private sector is.”

In a phrase that he has repeated so often as to make it a kind of political mantra, Henderson delights in capsulizing the campaign as a contest between his fiscal conservatism and Stallings’ “tax-and-spend liberalism”--a label that she argues distorts her generally moderate ideology.

Indeed, although Henderson’s record justifies his self-description, he has been unable to back up his characterization of Stallings with specifics.

Stallings, meanwhile, just as persistently urges campaign audiences to look to the candidates’ character and style--a comparison that she argues “sometimes tells you a lot more than how somebody voted, or might vote, on this or that.”

Describing Henderson with caustic terms such as “blowhard,” “grandstander” and “obstructionist,” Stallings calls herself a “team player” whose election would have a calming influence on a City Council too often hampered by internal squabbles “in which Bruce Henderson usually plays a leading role.”

“My whole career has been pulling people together, opening dialogues with people traditionally seen as enemies,” said Stallings, a 51-year-old Salk Institute cancer researcher and Pacific Beach activist. “That’s a very different, more productive approach than that of Bruce Henderson, who I think has been a very divisive influence on the council.”

One of the few things on which Stallings and Henderson do agree is that at stake in Tuesday’s election is not simply a single council seat but rather the balance of power of the council itself.

With the council being evenly balanced between two loose coalitions of voting blocs--one a generally conservative, pro-development group of which Henderson is part, and the other the remnant of the more moderate “Gang of Five” that dominated the council last year--a change in the 6th District seat could reshape the political dynamics within City Hall.

While Stallings’ campaign consultant, Tom Shepard, calls the election “a district race with a citywide impact,” Henderson is even blunter in his assessment.

“The city is what’s really at stake,” Henderson said. “This race could set the tone for the ‘90s and beyond in San Diego, because it could move the council in one of two very different directions.”

Rather than illuminate the race’s bottom line, however, the candidates’ dialogue and actions over the past seven weeks have more often muddied it.

Their mutual name-calling, Henderson’s unsupported allegations, a lack of specificity on Stallings’ part that makes detailed issue-by-issue comparisons difficult, and other distractions have done little to fill in the campaign’s broad outlines.

In a telling detail that says much about how the race has evolved, no other facet of the campaign drew as much attention as did an incident two weeks ago in which Henderson’s top aide scuffled with an elderly protester who had been taunting the councilman at a campaign rally.

Henderson’s opponents have kept that isolated incident alive as a campaign issue by passing out flyers at forums saying, “Hey, Bruce--Are your guys gonna knock down a 78-year-old man tonight?”

From the outset of the runoff, Henderson and Stallings have adopted different strategic tacks that reflect their attempts to frame the campaign on their terms and their varying analyses of Stallings’ upset first-place finish in the Sept. 17 primary, in which a City Hall gadfly’s 146 write-in votes caused her to fall only 14 ballots short of the majority vote needed for outright election.

Conceding that he was out-hustled and underestimated lingering anti-incumbent sentiment in the primary, Henderson has approached the runoff with a renewed vigor spawned by his realization that his daunting name recognition and fund-raising advantages can no longer be seen as a virtual guarantee of a second four-year term.

Having concluded that his disappointing primary performance stemmed from his failure to sufficiently highlight the candidates’ distinctions, Henderson has tried to seize the offensive in the runoff by extolling his own record while portraying Stallings as a liberal or “one big question mark.”

Like any incumbent, Henderson has found his record to be both boon and bane for his campaign--allowing him to claim superiority in experience but with a legislative history that inevitably made as many, if not more, enemies as allies.

Notably, his unwavering pro-development stance has caused the Sierra Club and the controlled growth group Prevent Los Angelization Now! to rate him as having the council’s worst record on environmental issues--a ranking that generated valuable financial and volunteer aid for Stallings from those groups.

Henderson, however, has drawn comparable support from development interests, which are responsible for a sizable part of his $200,000 campaign treasury--3 1/2 times more than Stallings.

In his standard stump speech, Henderson proudly bills himself as the council’s leading guardian of the taxpayers’ pocketbook. An unrelenting opponent of new taxes and fee increases, Henderson also speaks zealously of “finding economies in government” such as that forced by his successful push for a $3-million cut in the Planning Department’s budget, and takes credit for council actions that he contends saved the city $40 million overall this year.

Henderson also has used the campaign to trumpet his longstanding opposition to a proposed $3-billion-plus secondary sewage treatment plan that some marine biologists claim would do little if anything to improve ocean water quality.

Partly because of Henderson’s intervention in a lawsuit stemming from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to proceed with the plan, a federal judge deferred approval of the sewage upgrading system until 1993, a ruling that could save San Diego hundreds of millions of dollars.

“I have a proven record of saying no . . . and that’s maybe the most important skill you can have in this job,” said Henderson, a 48-year-old former lawyer. Indeed, although most politicians are loath to be the bearer of bad tidings to constituents, Henderson sometimes seems to relish that role.

At a recent forum dealing with funding for the arts, for example, Henderson candidly told arts leaders that, given the city’s fiscal constraints and pressing public safety needs, they had to recognize that the arts are “nowhere near” being one of the city’s top budget priorities.

At the same forum, Henderson drew the ire of minority artists when he told them that their special projects are less deserving of scarce city funds than major arts organizations with broader appeal.

“I enjoy debate, because it allows you to say to people when you get in office, ‘Look, I told you that this was my position,’ ” Henderson said. “I don’t want to lead folks down the primrose path.”

Stallings has spent more time criticizing Henderson than outlining her own priorities.

Noncommittal about a wide range of city programs and services, Stallings argues that it would be “totally inappropriate for me to go into the City Council . . . with my mind cast in stone.”

Although she at first pledged to use the runoff to “make myself less of an unknown” to voters, Stallings has studiously eschewed identifying any specific proposed cuts necessary to finance the few specific proposals she has made--among them, putting more police officers on the streets.

A first-time candidate, Stallings also occasionally has stumbled into politically embarrassing disclosures that underline her inexperience.

During a televised debate late in the campaign, for example, she conceded that she had not taken even a cursory glance at the city’s budget. And. when asked once how she would have voted on a controversial council-approved downzoning plan in Pacific Beach, she answered: “I think I’d have gone out for a cup of coffee.”

Capitalizing on the vacuum created by Stallings’ vagueness and her absence of a voting record, Henderson has tried to define his opponent for voters, charging that she would be inclined to raise taxes to pay for expansion of existing city programs and creation of new ones.

In particular, he has continuously accused her of courting organized labor’s endorsement via support--which she denies--for “prevailing wage,” a salary mandate that city administrators estimate could cost San Diego up to $7 million annually.

However, when pressed to document his allegations, Henderson himself comes up short.

“I can’t think of any debate where she has actually said, ‘This is a tax I will raise,’ ” Henderson acknowledged, saying he “inferred” that from her refusal to sign a “no new taxes” pledge promoted by an El Cajon-based group called We The People.

However, like Stallings, the three other council incumbents who ran for reelection this year also refused to sign that pledge, which some argued would restrict the city’s flexibility in addressing fiscal problems.

“It’s just another case where he’s the one out of sync with the mainstream but tries to twist it around and distort it so that it reflects badly on me,” Stallings complained. “He’s using this ‘tax-and-spend liberal’ thing like a buzzword, a populist scare tactic.”

Expressing doubt that the public “would stand for one more cent” of taxes, Stallings said that she “can’t right at the moment” envision any circumstances under which she would support a new tax.

Despite Stallings’ fuzziness on the issues, there are sharp differences between the two candidates on topics ranging from crime and the environment to social concerns and government reform.

For instance, Henderson voted for two of the council’s most controversial environmental decisions within the past year: the 2.4-mile Jackson Drive extension through Mission Trails Regional Park and opening the city’s so-called urban reserve to development. Stallings said she would have voted differently on both issues.

Henderson also cast the only dissenting council votes against a Human Dignity Ordinance outlawing discrimination against homosexuals and against creation of a Human Relations Commission designed to target racial, ethnic and religious discrimination. Stallings, meanwhile, supports both measures.

Such clear examples, however, are the exception rather than the rule in the 6th District contest, which seems more likely to turn on how voters choose between the known and the unknown.