Trust, Leaked Memo, Slander Issues Facing Golding : Campaign: Backers in mayor’s race say she has an outstanding record that speaks for itself. Others say she will have to deal with a number of potentially damaging issues, including her jailed husband.

An internal campaign memo leaked to the press last week confirmed for the first time one of County Supervisor Susan Golding’s weaknesses in the race to become San Diego’s next mayor: Some people simply don’t trust her and probably never will.

The ensuing controversy also showed more clearly that Golding’s top opponents, despite assertions to the contrary, will attempt to make her integrity and political ambition issues in the increasingly bitter campaign now under way.

Whether Golding is successful in deflecting those personal attacks and refocusing the campaign on issues more flattering to herself will be an important factor in the race, political analysts said.

“I think, given Susan’s outstanding record in terms of accomplishments, that’s the one weak area they think they can exploit,” political consultant Jean Andrews, a Golding supporter, said.

But James Conniff, a political scientist at San Diego State University, believes that “Golding doesn’t have a great reservoir of trust to draw on. It may be that people are a bit suspicious of her to begin with.”

For months, Golding’s detractors have spoken privately of confidential polling showing large numbers of voters with negative feelings about the front-runner in the race to succeed retiring Mayor Maureen O’Connor.

That skepticism, they said, is based primarily on voters’ feelings about the 1990 conviction of Golding’s husband, financier and former gubernatorial aide Richard T. Silberman, for his role in a money-laundering scheme. Silberman is in a federal work camp and the couple is in the midst of divorce proceedings.

They also cite the 1988 payment of $150,000 by Golding’s insurance carriers to settle a slander lawsuit filed by Lynn Schenk, her opponent in the 1984 supervisorial race. The lawsuit concerned 11th-hour mailers containing accusations that Schenk contends were libelous. Golding objected to the settlements, urging her lawyers to go forward with the legal fight.

Such claims of voter antipathy are common in a high-stakes campaign, but also suspect, because, like any kind of statistics, private polling results can be interpreted to convey maximum advantage to the candidate paying for the poll. Ask such pollsters to reveal the entire poll, questions and all, and they almost always refuse.

But then came the Nov. 26 memo from Golding pollster Dick Dresner, which began a lengthy discussion of “Developing a Campaign Theme” with “The Silberman Problem.”

“Most voters are willing to judge a Golding candidacy on its merits. Unfortunately, something like 20% to 30% are not,” Dresner wrote. “Probably half these people would be voting against Golding even in the absence of a Silberman problem. Thus, even the best strategy for handling the problem would impact no more than 10% to 12% of the voters.

“The question thus becomes: How do we get beyond Dick Silberman, because a campaign that focuses on Silberman focuses on Golding’s weaknesses,” Dresner asked rhetorically.

In another section, Dresner wrote: “In addition, by focusing on issues that involve crime, drugs and ethics, we may be able to overcome some underlying skepticism about Golding’s own ethics and Silberman’s drug conviction.”

The memo also recommended that Golding adopt a strong stand against continued payment of welfare benefits to able-bodied adults, to “create a storm of publicity.”

Erroneously claiming that the proposal was “illegal”--no judge has decided that issue yet--Dresner also recommended the idea because “Susan will be in a position to stand up to the government bureaucracy and fight for something most people would like.”

In the short term, the memo will underscore the trust question that Golding’s opponents hope will dog her, feeding on a general distaste for politicians that is already pervasive, said Joseph Rost, professor of leadership and administration at the University of San Diego.

Golding’s welfare posture “doesn’t engender trust, doesn’t engender (an image of) honesty and forthrightness, which I think has been a big problem in our political lives,” Rost said.

“For many (people), this is just a confirmation of what many politicians appear to be engaged in,” added Samuel Kernell, director of the American Political Institutions Project at UC San Diego. “It strikes me as one of the most cynical exhibitions of political behavior that I have ever witnessed.”

Golding’s opponents seized on the opportunity to attack her integrity, which for San Diego City Councilman Ron Roberts, in particular, continues a pattern of sprinkling references to Silberman and the Schenk lawsuit into speeches and interviews on the race.

In the past month, Roberts has referred to Silberman money funding Golding’s past campaigns, obliquely mentioned the Schenk lawsuit and, on Friday, treated the Rancho Bernardo Republican women’s group to a lengthy description of his wife and children--as if to contrast them with Golding’s.

In a television ad during his City Council race last year, Roberts pledged to rid local communities of “money launderers.”

David Whitehurst, Roberts’ campaign consultant, issued what amounts to a non-denial denial when he said that challenging Golding’s integrity is not part of the councilman’s strategy.

“Enough is already known about her record and it will be an issue in the race--not as part of our strategy, but as part of the record,” Whitehurst said.

Golding responds to the Silberman question with a simple, common-sense reply: No one has ever shown that she knew anything about her husband’s illegal activities, and she wouldn’t spend the time and money running for office if she believed that most people hold his conviction against her.

She and her advisers have sought to distance Golding from Dresner’s memo, saying that the advice was unsolicited, hastily assembled and just one memo among the many that Golding uses to devise campaign strategy.

“Nobody is at fault for offering advice,” said George Gorton, a Golding campaign consultant. “But it is no more, no less than his comments as he sees it.”

Gorton contended that the 10% to 12% of voters who Dresner said would not vote for Golding because of the Silberman question “is a pretty small problem.

“Believe me,” Gorton said, “10% to 15% of people hate anybody for anything. If it wasn’t manageable, who would run?”

According to Kernell, who has studied the elusive question of voter trust of politicians, relatively well-known candidates suffer less from attacks on their character. That bodes well for Golding, who has a strong lead over her opponents in name identification.

“The more the citizen already knows about that politician and has opinions about that politician’s record on issues in the past, the less consequential those personal qualities become,” Kernell said.

“If her supporters know why they’re supporting her . . . then she can carry a lot of negatives around with her, because these people have a lot of additional criteria for their vote.”

Golding has attempted to portray the leaked memo as dirty campaigning. Without specifically accusing the Roberts camp of responsibility for the leak, she complained that his aides have practiced a pattern of sleazy tricks against her, including calling television stations to say that a news conference formally announcing her entry into the race had been delayed. Roberts maintains his staff was not to blame.

The campaign consultant for mayoral candidate Tom Carter, the only major candidate who has stayed out of the mudslinging, believes that such animosity will benefit Carter and Peter Navarro, the non-politicians in the race.

The bickering “is going to enhance that view of them as career politicians,” said Luke Breit, Carter’s consultant, “and we may be the beneficiaries of this.”

“Let them bicker and fight. Its long-term damage is cumulative, to the degree that the public is taking a look and saying ‘these are professional politicians.’ ”