Election Day Ends Hard-Fought Campaigns

Ending an unusually competitive, expensive and acrimonious primary season, local voters will go to the polls today to decide elections that could dramatically alter San Diego’s political landscape for the next decade.

Headlined by the presidential race and two U.S. Senate contests, ballots throughout San Diego County include 451 candidates running for 327 elective positions, including high-profile campaigns for mayor of the city of San Diego and for the county’s entire congressional and state Assembly delegations.

In the San Diego mayoral campaign, four major candidates--county Supervisor Susan Golding, managed-growth activist Peter Navarro, San Diego City Councilman Ron Roberts and businessman Tom Carter--and long shots Loch David Crane and Bill Thomas are competing for the right to succeed retiring Mayor Maureen O’Connor. If none receives the simple majority needed for outright victory, the two top vote-getters will compete in a November runoff.

Escondido voters will elect a new mayor and City Council, and council races also are on the ballot in El Cajon and Lemon Grove. In another closely watched local race, San Diego City Atty. John Witt is running for reelection against former San Diego City Councilman Bruce Henderson.

Although congressional and state legislative primaries in San Diego traditionally have been little more than easily predictable electoral formalities, that changed this year as redistricting, anti-incumbent fervor, the congressional banking scandal and Christian activists’ growing political clout created compelling matchups.

The state Assembly races feature four Republican primaries in which moderates endorsed by Gov. Pete Wilson face ultra-conservatives backed by Christian political activists. With dozens of Christian candidates poised to run for school boards and other community posts this fall, the outcome in the four Assembly primaries could be a harbinger of whether the so-called “religious right” will be able to build upon its 1990 successes in San Diego.

In the county’s five congressional contests, most attention has focused on a 17-candidate scramble in the newly drawn 49th District in northern San Diego and on a showdown among three Democratic heavyweights--former Rep. Jim Bates, state Sen. Wadie P. Deddeh and San Diego City Councilman Bob Filner--in the new 50th District.

While other local congressmen--Republicans Randy (Duke) Cunningham and Duncan Hunter--are heavy favorites in the 51st and 52nd districts, respectively, both have greater reasons than usual for glancing over their shoulder.

Cunningham has been sharply criticized for moving from his southern San Diego district into a North County district--and, in doing so, forcing six-term Rep. Bill Lowery out of the race. Hunter, meanwhile, was a major offender in the House check-writing scandal, which could transform his three-candidate primary into a referendum on that controversy.

Nineteen propositions also appear on the ballot, including school bond measures, a proposal to establish a two-term limit for the San Diego City Council and a measure that would allow the city of San Diego to turn over a small strip of land to a nonprofit group in order to preserve the Mt. Soledad cross.