Navarro Says Police Initiative Will Not Be on Fall Ballot

The PLAN! police initiative, a proposed ballot measure sponsored by an organization affiliated with San Diego mayoral candidate Peter Navarro, will not be placed before voters in this fall’s election, Navarro said Monday.

Navarro said PLAN! Police Initiative Inc. will let city deadlines for the Nov. 3 election pass while it continues to circulate the initiative. He said the decision was made to defuse criticism from political opponents that the initiative is being used to bolster his mayoral aspirations.

“We don’t want there to be any confusion about the mayor’s race and what’s going on with the initiative,” Navarro said Monday. “We don’t want to be accused in any way of mixing the two.”

But Navarro and an aide acknowledged that the group is far short of the number of signatures needed to qualify for the same ballot on which Navarro seeks election to the mayor’s office and is still seeking donations to pay signature gatherers who have fanned out around the city in search of signers.

Navarro said the group has collected about 20,000 signatures on petitions in support of the initiative, which would prohibit new development if it decreased the ratio of sworn police officers to city residents.

To qualify for the fall ballot, the measure requires the signature of 55,153 registered San Diego voters. Generally, groups sponsoring initiatives turn in thousands more because some signatures are inevitably disqualified.

Beckie Mann, Navarro’s campaign manager and executive director of PLAN! Police Initiative Inc., said the decision not to shoot for the Nov. 3 ballot was made at a meeting Sunday when the group assessed its finances and a number of anticipated contributions did not materialize.

“The hard, cold facts became apparent Sunday afternoon,” Mann said. The group will launch a fund-raising campaign through the mail and continue circulating petitions for a future election, she said. Under city law, the organization has until the end of September to gather signatures.

But, even if the measure qualifies for the ballot, the next regular citywide election is not scheduled until June, 1994. Unless the council calls a costly special election, the group’s initiative could not come before voters until then, said Mikel Haas, a city elections official.

Just last week, Navarro and Mann said the group was seeking to place the initiative on the November ballot, where it would be decided along with the mayoral contest between Navarro and County Supervisor Susan Golding. The effort is being funded primarily by Navarro’s mother, Florida resident Evelyn Littlejohn, who has contributed “a majority” of the money collected so far, Mann said Monday.

The city clerk’s office set an informal June 2 deadline to guarantee enough time to count signatures and schedule council consideration of the measure. Navarro said his group could have turned in petitions by mid-July and still meet the formal Aug. 7 deadline for all ballot measures.

Golding political consultant Tom Shepard accused Navarro of using the initiative, which is not covered by the $250 limit on individual contributions that governs the mayor’s race, to publicize his candidacy and his message.

Another Golding consultant, George Gorton, said Monday that the initiative “was always a vehicle for the mayor’s campaign. It was nothing else.”

“My speculation is that, when they came up with the hard reality of what it was going to cost to put it on the ballot, they decided it wasn’t worth it,” Gorton said.

He suggested that the initiative’s finances might be used to pay Mann for work done on the mayoral race and said the Golding campaign would carefully scrutinize the expenditures of both groups as both campaigns continue.

“How much is the campaign paying her, and how much is PLAN! paying her?” Gorton asked. “And is she keeping records of her time?”

Monday’s announcement is an attempt to block just those kinds of charges, Navarro said.

“We evaluated the situation, (and) we decided we didn’t want to mix the mayor’s race with the initiative in any way and be subject to false accusations about our integrity,” he said.