San Diego Mayoral Candidates Enter Campaign Ring Swinging

The four major candidates to succeed retiring San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor opened the 1992 campaign in uncivil fashion Thursday, turning their first joint forum into a prickly affair that could presage a nasty primary season.

The local economy and criminal justice system dominated the first debate to include County Supervisor Susan Golding, City Councilman Ron Roberts, growth-control advocate Peter Navarro and housing developer Tom Carter. Only Carter avoided the pointed give-and-take on issues and personalities.

Before a United Jewish Federation audience of about 150 people, Navarro sarcastically referred to Roberts as “the biotech mascot”; Golding called Navarro “a single-issue demagogue” (without mentioning his name); and Roberts noted that he has “never been involved in any kind of a lawsuit . . . with respect to negative campaigning,” a not-too-subtle reference to the $150,000 payment Golding’s insurance company made to 1984 opponent Lynn Schenk to settle a slander lawsuit.

And it’s only February.

The four candidates could continue jousting through the primary election June 2, when two of them will qualify for the runoff to be held Nov. 3. Ten other minor candidates have so far taken out the nominating papers necessary to begin the process of entering the race to succeed O’Connor, who will step down at the end of the year.

Addressing a University Club audience dominated by businessmen and -women and professionals, all four candidates made economic reform--particularly job creation and loosening of regulations--a major portion of short presentations that opened the forum.

For Carter, that goal requires accelerating the development of the city’s light-rail system and shifting construction of the cars from a German firm in Sacramento to San Diego. Roberts said it is crucial to improve the region’s airport to take better advantage of the city’s position on the Pacific Rim, bring in more international tourists and help the city’s burgeoning biotechnology industries export their products.

Navarro, a UC Irvine professor with a doctorate in economics, warned that the city is becoming “a low-wage, underemployed, service-sector, McDonald’s-and-Jack in the Box economy,” and said it must start supporting its business sector, not catering to real estate developers.

Golding accused the City Council of treating San Diego’s business community with “indifference,” particularly in the creation of a regulatory climate that makes it difficult to be in business. She said San Diego is ideally situated to become the “telecommunications and banking center of the new North American common market.”

Roberts, the only member of the council in the race, conceded that, “in many cases, Susan is right, the City Council has been anti-business.” But he noted that he defended the city’s Economic Development Corp. against proposed council funding cuts.

In what is sure to be a major theme of the upcoming campaign, Golding and Roberts traded blame for the city’s escalating crime rate. San Diego saw a record number of homicides in 1991, and every candidate considers public anxiety over street crime at or near the top of his or her priority list.

The county’s 700,000 outstanding arrest warrants, a backlog that continues to grow because there is no room in the jails, “tells you that there’s something terribly wrong,” Roberts said.

He noted that the city has been forced to build its own pre-arraignment jail, and he called the need for changes in the criminal justice system “the No. 1 need in this city right now.”

Golding, however, said the city’s police union has been forced to launch a ballot initiative to increase the size of the police force because the council has been unwilling to do it.

In addition to catching criminals, “we have got to attack the underlying causes of crime, which means the dropout rate, which means illiteracy,” she said.

Navarro, who, like Carter, is promoting his status as an outsider to an electorate that many believe is increasingly fed up with politicians, declared both Golding and Roberts at fault for a city where “we do have felons running freer than dogs.”

“Why do we see a flurry, now, of press releases from these people, when they’ve been in office a cumulative total of 15 years and have had time to deal with it?” Navarro said. “This is not the kind of leadership I think that you want as business people.”

But both politicians enjoyed a moment of revenge when Navarro, who founded the growth management group Prevent Los Angelization Now!, claimed that the County Board of Supervisors has some jurisdiction over land use in the city of San Diego. Golding and Roberts both interrupted to correct him.

“Read the (City) Charter or something,” Golding scolded.