The V.P. in the ‘Hood : Politics: Dan Quayle receives mostly critical response to his visit to a tough section of Southeast San Diego.

Vice President Dan Quayle went to Southeast San Diego Monday to check out what Ted Thomas calls “the ‘hood.” Flanked by minicams and motorcycles, Quayle left as he came--with a toothy smile and a wave of the hand.

Afterward, Thomas stood alone in the parking lot, muttering about promises and dreams and missed opportunities. He didn’t mean “photo opportunities.”

Moments after the motorcade pulled away, the 27-year-old ex-Marine and lifelong resident of the neighborhood frowned and said, “I really wonder--why was he here? Was he here to better our community or here for a media blitz?

“What did the man do for us, really? Deep down, I want to know, is something really going to happen here, or will the ‘hood stay like it is? This was nothing but media, man. This was a media show! When are we going to get someone who will actually do something?”

Quayle met briefly with children and staff members of the Nu-Way Youth Center at Logan, Olvera and Euclid avenues, which police escorting the vice president called one of the toughest areas in the city.

Quayle said he came to the corner because it falls within a “Weed and Seed” district, meaning the surrounding area is eligible for federal funds in a program designed to enhance law enforcement (the “weed” portion) and community involvement (the “seed”).

The program was announced a year ago. San Diego is one of several cities due to receive $500,000 in the current fiscal year and $500,000 in the next--amounts criticized by some as minuscule. Quayle stopped at the youth center to showcase the “seed” portion.

So far, the center, which serves about 1,000 children from 10 and 21 years old, and up to 300 families, has yet to receive a penny of federal funds. Sixty-five percent of the children and teen-agers in the program are “law-enforcement referrals,” meaning they have police records.

The remaining 35% are from what director Doris Green called “dysfunctional families, kids who are troubled, with all sorts of behavioral problems.” Green said the program provides tutoring and recreation for inner-city children in drug-plagued areas and targets latchkey kids.

Green said the goal of the Nu-Way program is to “prevent kids from entering the criminal-justice system, which many seem headed for.” She said the vice president’s visit “helps our children’s self-esteem. I hope he sees meaning and takes our message back. And I hope it translates into funds.”

Begun in 1979, the program seeks primarily to intervene in families whose children are courting or being courted by gangs. It operates on an annual budget of $70,000, all of which comes from county and city sources. About a year ago, the program received a philanthropic donation of $100,000.

Police say that many of the 35 gangs in the city, with more than 4,000 known members, come from the area visited by Quayle on Monday. In 1990 alone, police reported 52 drive-by shootings, many in the neighborhood of Doris Green’s center. Twelve gang-related homicides occurred in the area in 1990.

But, on Monday, many residents appeared as doubting as Ted Thomas about the long-term effects of Quayle’s visit. Thomas said the neighborhood needs “only a chance, just a little push, to help us pull ourselves up, out of this pit” of joblessness and despair, “but we want tangible results.”

As several hundred children waited to see and cheer the vice president, a small crowd gathered at the liquor store across the street. Several teen-agers stood under a Marlboro sign, one of them twirling a basketball on the end of his finger.

About 11 a.m., thunder sent a shock wave through the neighborhood. A streak of lightning pierced the sky. “Oh, boy,” said a member of the media. “More fire and brimstone from Danny Boy.” Quayle came directly from a sheriff’s convention, where he blasted rap singer Ice T for an anti-police song.

One of the Nu-Way teachers led a five-girl drill team in a series of anti-drug chants, which intensified after the vice president’s arrival:

“You don’t need no crack! It will just set you back!”

“Am I that wrong?” the teacher chanted.

“No, you’re right!” the girls replied.

When Quayle showed up, wearing a dark suit, a red Paisley tie and E Pluribus Unum cuff links, he joined in a chorus of “America, the Beautiful,” then donned an apron to place frankfurters into buns. The minicams zeroed in.

Valerie Moore, 9, a student at Silvergate Elementary School, offered her impressions: “I feel he’s not doing very much, and the world needs somebody who will do a whole lot more. We wanted to come, because he’s famous and stuff. But he needs to go around more and find out how people are feeling. One day won’t do it.”

Nicole Griffin, 11, who will be a sixth-grader at Dailard Elementary School in the fall, called the surrounding neighborhood a frightening place to be, saying, “There are gangs, shootings every night, and it’s very, very scary. There was even a shooting near my house one night.”

Mikey Soto, 10, said that, even at his age, he can tell the problems in his neighborhood “are almost out of control. We need a lot more law enforcement. We have drive-by shootings and gang stuff all the time, but we don’t see no cops.”

After seeing Quayle, Nicole Griffin said one of her first thoughts was, “Why can’t a woman be president?”

“I heard a lady say on Oprah Winfrey that, if he was ever elected president, he would be our dumbest president ever,” Valerie Moore said. “But I want to have the smartest president, and I don’t think he’s been very smart.”

At a recent campaign stop in Trenton, N.J., to promote the Weed and Seed effort, Quayle visited an elementary-school class, where he officiated a spelling bee. A 12-year-old boy was asked to spell “potato,” which he did--correctly.

Quayle, however, said potato was spelled with an “e” on the end. Plenty of Nu-Way students were talking potatoes on Monday.

“I thought that was real funny,” Valerie Moore said. “I mean, most of us know how to spell potato.”

Someone made mention of Quayle having named the center itself: The Nu -Way center.

As he sidled through the crowd, aides checked frequently with television reporters and cameramen, asking if the lighting was good, if the sound would work. They said they would do “whatever we can” to make him available for a sound-bite press conference.

“Hip-hip, hooray!!!” some of the kids yelled.

In a brief “round-table” discussion with local black leaders, Quayle said, “We need to take back the streets. We need to empower the people, let the people make the decisions. When people are hurting, we’re hurting.

“This (Weed and Seed) program is a good program. It’s a good concept, and the concept is common sense--we want to extract, get rid of the bad element. We want good ideas, good social services. We want to emphasize education.

“Just listen to that drill team out there bragging about no drugs! We’ve got to get drugs out of the homes, out of the families and off the streets. We’ve got to say, ‘Not in my back yard! Not in my community!’ ”

The media were then ushered out of the round-table discussion, which Quayle later described as “very lively, very direct, very cordial. We had a lot of different viewpoints in the meeting, one being to bring back CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, a job-training program), which I see as a failed idea. The CETA program did not work. That’s thinking in the past, and we need new thinking.”

Asked about specifics for helping Southeast San Diego, Quayle said, “The most important aspect was to listen and to get their input. I’m here because I care. The Weed and Seed program is a high priority of this Administration.”

Quayle was asked why the amount of Weed and Seed money proposed for the San Diego Unified School District was less than what the city of San Diego spends on police cars each year.

“You can have (the funding) in the public schools, or you can have it in a community center like this,” he said. “It’s the choice of the local area, and I don’t think we’re going to say that every single one has to be in the public schools.

“The public schools are a very good option. The public school we visited in Trenton is a very good Weed and Seed program, but the community program in this area is also quite good.”

Quayle answered questions about Ross Perot investigating then-Vice President Bush in the 1980s, about Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s comment that American prisoners of war may be alive somewhere in Siberia, and whether the U.S. was “winning” the war on drugs.

“It’s (drug use) a terrible problem,” Quayle said. “And we have made some progress, but we haven’t accomplished our mission until we get rid of all that stuff.”

With that, he was gone--heading down Logan Avenue to Miramar Naval Air Station and points north.

But Ted Thomas said Quayle has “no idea” how bad drugs in the ‘hood really are or how much the area needs help.

Two women standing nearby nodded their heads.

“We need more money in our community for kids,” Thomas said. “We need it desperately. Look at that rundown (Jackie Robinson) YMCA across the street. Go across town, and the YMCAs have green grass and playground equipment. Look at ours and ask yourself . . . Why?

“We’re not asking for a handout, we just want people to try to understand. Why is money only helping the higher echelon of people and not the lower echelon? Why did he come here and just look and leave? When will someone come here and do something, not just look and leave?”