LOCAL ELECTIONS SAN DIEGO CITY ATTORNEY : Witt and Henderson: Soft-Spoken vs. Outspoken

As he seeks his fifth term as San Diego city attorney, soft-spoken John Witt prefers to run on a long record of accomplishments that includes battling consumer fraud, spearheading election reform and working quietly behind the scenes with the City Council.

But outspoken Bruce Henderson will not allow Witt to slip into another four years without a fight.

Every few days, in public forums or at press conferences, the former city councilman attacks Witt’s integrity in the most relentless and public manner possible, jabbing his opponent with repeated reminders that Witt had a role in recommending that a San Diego planner receive a secret $100,000 settlement and saying Witt has grown stale as the city’s lead prosecutor.

For his part, Witt clearly is uncomfortable with striking back, instead rolling out a rich, 23-year resume while trying to sidestep Henderson’s blows as the days draw closer to the June 2 primary election.

“Any time you’ve had a professional career where you’ve had the accolades of the world and you’ve been quite highly thought of within your own profession . . . to have this guy taking professional potshots at you is particularly distasteful,” Witt says.

Witt runs an office of 263 people. Of those, 106 are attorneys who prosecute criminal misdemeanor offenders, draft ordinances, handle litigation and provide legal guidance. Witt’s budget last year was $16.5 million.

Since 1969, when first appointed to the top spot, Witt has had only token opposition. His challenger in 1973 didn’t mount much of a campaign, another in 1977 didn’t even write a ballot statement, and, in 1984 Witt, ran against a convicted slumlord. The city attorney ran unopposed in 1988.

In campaign literature and in interviews, the 59-year-old Witt lists as achievements his role in keeping the Padres in San Diego, helping defeat the merger of San Diego Electric & Gas Co. and Southern California Edison Corp. and starting a nationally recognized unit to battle domestic violence.

Henderson, 49, an attorney who served on the City Council for four years before he was embarrassed in a runoff last November, said Witt’s role in threatening the Padres’ owners with a lawsuit if they had moved in the early 1970s is what any city attorney is required to do.

The utility merger had as much to do with the local community’s opposition as it did with Witt, Henderson said, and the domestic violence unit is hindered because paperwork from arrests often arrives too late for timely prosecutions.

Although many say Henderson raises substantive issues and is justified in giving Witt a hard time, they also say the former councilman is not likely to win a citywide election when he could not beat Valerie Stallings in his own district last November.

“Given what happened in that race is of concern, but I just don’t see it carrying over and causing me a lot of problems,” Henderson said, adding that a small turnout, negative campaigning on Stallings’ part and general dissatisfaction with incumbents all played a part in his defeat.

On the City Council, Henderson was often viewed as a divisive force, offering long-winded logic on nearly every subject. “When he lost,” said one longtime city official, “my ears rested.”

He is seen as insensitive to gays and minorities, having voted against an ordinance outlawing discrimination against gays and lesbians and against the city’s Human Relations Commission.

A grass-roots group called “Ban the Bruce,” which formed to push Henderson off the council, has reunited as “Ban the Bruce II,” calling for Henderson to be defeated again.

Throughout his four years on the council, Henderson rarely criticized Witt, and the city attorney said he considered Henderson a friend during most of that time.

But three issues, taken together, prompted Henderson to encourage others in and out of the city attorney’s office to run against Witt.

First, Witt declined Henderson’s invitation to allow biologists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography to testify for the city in a federal lawsuit against the city mandating that it provide secondary treatment of sewage. The biologists eventually testified with the help of Henderson but not representing the city, and when U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster deferred approval last year of the multibillion-dollar upgrading, he praised that testimony.

Witt said a limited number of witnesses could be used and that those his office selected would have testified the same way as Henderson’s experts. In the end, Witt said, the outcome would have been the same.

Second, Witt urged the City Council in 1989 to extend the franchise for Cox Cable from the years 2009 to 2029 in return for the cable company’s paying a county tax the city had always provided.

Henderson fought the deal, and the council unanimously rejected it and sought competition. Even when Witt drafted the requirements for those seeking cable business, the city attorney made it virtually impossible for anybody else to bid, Henderson said.

Witt says he drafted requirements consistent with state law and pointed out that the council can renegotiate the Cox franchise every five years.

Third, Witt was aware of a secret $100,000 city settlement to city employee Susan Bray, who had filed a sexual harassment claim against then-Planning Director Robert Spaulding. Witt says he was aware of the settlement but was in no way required to notify the council.

In fact, Witt has obtained a signed statement from former City Manager John Lockwood that says the manager rejected Witt’s recommendation that the Bray-Spaulding matter be referred to the mayor.

Spaulding is suing Witt for allegedly promising to represent the planning director and then dropping his legal defense after news of the settlement broke and infuriated the council.

“What Witt did in connection with my client’s case was a real lapse of his professional obligations, and it’s something John Witt has responded to without much candor,” said Michael Aguirre, Spaulding’s attorney.

“Witt said his office only reviewed the settlement, and that’s not true,” he said. “They tracked it all the way through and were the architects of the settlement, and then abandoned Spaulding when he needed them the most.”

Nevertheless, Aguirre said, he would vote for Witt over Henderson, calling him a more “stable force.” Witt, he said, has created “a good working environment, where individual attorneys can operate and function with freedom. He’s also a decent person.”

Campaign statements filed Thursday show that Witt has raised $40,134 so far. In the past two months, he has received $15,130. Most of his contributions come from local attorneys, bankers, business people and doctors.

Henderson has raised $29,048, all but $5,334 in the past two months, $14,900 of which he has loaned himself. The contributions come from developers, engineers, financiers and business owners.