Biotech Industry Becomes Factor in S.D. Politics : Campaign: Mayoral candidates seek support from leaders in the increasing important high-tech industry.

The telephone calls from San Diego mayoral hopeful Peter Navarro came as a surprise to most of the biotechnology industry executives who were on the receiving end.

“He was really low-key. . . . He was not asking for my vote, he was smoother than that,” said Martin Nash, chief executive officer of Cypros. “He asked what he could do to earn my vote.”

Navarro isn’t the only candidate reaching out to the local biotechnology industry. Susan Golding also is actively courting biotechnology industry executives.

That both mayoral candidates consider the county’s fast-growing biotechnology industry to be a political force “is a brand-new development,” local political consultant David Lewis said. “I’ve been in campaigns for better than 16 years and I’ve never seen these guys before.”

“These guys” are the growing cadre of largely male and almost exclusively white executives at nearly 150 local biotechnology companies that employ an estimated 14,500 San Diegans. The industry is expected to grow dramatically during the coming decade as companies push drugs and other products through research and development and into full-scale manufacturing.

Conventional political wisdom suggests that Nash and other biotechnology leaders should vote like the rest of the business community. And, when it comes to the ongoing mayoral campaign, even Navarro’s most ardent supporters in the biotech industry agree that a majority of their associates will cast their votes for Golding.

But, as biotech executives start to flex their muscles, politicians are learning that politics as usual doesn’t necessarily work with the highly educated and highly paid industry.

“Go through the high-tech and biotech companies and you’ll find that 25% are . . . really Libertarians,” said longtime San Diego political consultant Jack Orr. “They don’t see things in the old ‘liberal and conservative’ way . . . and they don’t find old-style politicians very appealing.”

The biotech industry was thrust into the local political arena two years ago when water authorities unexpectedly responded to the ongoing drought by threatening to cut back on water deliveries to industrial customers.

Unusually heavy rainfall washed away the threatened cutbacks, but executives realized that they could no longer ignore local races and issues, said Howard Birndorf, a co-founder in 1978 of Hybritech, the city’s most successful biotechnology company.

Led by David Hale, chairman of Gensia, a local biomedical company, executives created and funded the Biomedical Industry Council, a trade group that now represents more than 40 of the county’s most important biotechnology companies. Architects, accountants, lawyers and other firms that will benefit economically as the biotechnology industry grows banded together to create Biocom, which supports the biotech industry’s political agenda.

The two organizations are pressing local officials to support development of a guaranteed water supply, a safe disposal dump for radioactive industrial waste and new zoning regulations that recognize the industry’s needs. Both Golding and Navarro have, in varying degrees, pledged to support the biotechnology industry, according to industry executives.

Biocom and the Biomedical Industry Council have not opted to endorse either candidate, but individual members are actively campaigning and making donations to Golding and Navarro.

Despite its increasing political power, however, the biotech industry has yet to become a major source of campaign contributions. “We’ve never told candidates to go into Sorrento Valley and shake the trees in search of money,” Lewis said.

Similarly, when Golding tried to secure support in the biotechnology industry during a 1984 county supervisor’s campaign, she found it almost impossible to draw the industry into the local political arena. “It was basically very, very difficult,” Golding said. “They really didn’t understand why they should be interested in local government.”

Lewis said that political support for biotech during the ongoing mayoral campaign has been easier to give “because it’s an easy issue . . . not too controversial. . . . It’s a non-polluting industry, it means lots of jobs for well-educated people . . . there’s almost nothing bad about saying you support biotech.”

But observers said it will be harder for local politicians to fathom executives’ political beliefs when the debate moves beyond a strict business agenda and to personal and social issues.

Golding, whose brother and father once were research scientists, agreed that highly educated, highly intelligent scientists do look at political issues differently. In many cases, their political beliefs are based on “having had time to think about how to solve the world’s problems,” she said, “ . . . and they also are more comfortable with theoretical” solutions to problems.

Because of their scholastic and research background, political observers said, biotech executives are more likely than their counterparts in better-established businesses to break step with candidates and issues that are perceived as business-friendly.

“It’s absolutely true that our industry has a splintering . . . that includes both liberals and conservatives,” Birndorf said.

That splintering is evident at Molecular Biosystems, where Frank is an outspoken Navarro supporter and Kenneth Widder, the company’s chairman, strongly supports Golding. The two executives “have politely agreed to disagree,” said a mutual friend.

Birndorf tied the willingness of executives to consider alternative candidates to the “highly educated and independent nature of the people in our industry.

Birndorf’s view is similar to an observation made 15 years ago by former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., according to William W. Otterson, director of UC San Diego’s Connect program, which helps young biotechnology and high-technology companies to grow.

Brown “told me that ‘You high-tech people are more liberal than other business people,’ ” Otterson said.

Brown tied the liberal leaning he saw among high-tech executives to the fact that they “were more highly educated . . . and (consequently) more concerned about quality of life than others,” Otterson said.

David Katz, president of Lidak Pharmaceuticals and a Navarro campaign adviser, believes that most of the industry’s executives probably supported San Diego Councilman Ron Roberts’ pro-business campaign during the spring primary. And executives “almost automatically shifted into the Susan Golding camp” when Roberts was knocked out during the primary election, Katz said.

But Katz maintained that biotech industry executives can’t automatically be counted upon to vote for the obvious business candidate if important social issues up for debate. “There isn’t just black and white in (biotech executives’) minds . . . but lots of shades of gray,” especially when it comes to much discussed quality of life issues, Katz said.

Steve James, a vocal Golding supporter and president of Biomagnetic Technologies Inc., which is developing brain-scanning devices, agrees that the biotech industry has come late to the local political game.

“We were running along minding our own businesses, working 70-80-90 hours a week . . . but the local community had no idea that we existed,” said James.

James, who had been largely apolitical in recent years, joined Golding’s campaign “because I can’t sit back and bitch and moan about why the city isn’t pro-business if I wasn’t trying to do something about it. . . . I realized it was irresponsible not to try and join in to get something done.”

For Otterson, the biotech industry’s political awakening means that yet another voice will be added to the chorus of special interests that, for years, has debated how the city can balance environmental and business issues without destroying San Diego’s natural beauty or its economy.

The biotech industry is coming of political age at a time when the local business leadership has been weakened by the dismal economy and the absence of traditional power brokers--including longtime civic and business leaders Kim Fletcher and Gordon Luce, who saw their S&Ls; collapse during the 1980s.

Given the faltering economy and the failure of local institutions such as Great American and HomeFed Bank, “the business community is splintered, it’s largely silent,” a local business executive said. “Executives are just too busy (in tough economic times) trying to keep the lights on.”

While biotech executives are equally busy keeping their companies afloat, many are, for the first time, taking time to campaign for their favorite candidate.

Katz, who was largely apolitical before joining Navarro’s campaign, has helped to write portions of Navarro’s business platform. He also has tried to give Navarro access to industry leaders, but concedes that most executives will probably vote for Golding.

Age also plays a role in the political beliefs held by biotechnology executives, observers said.

“A lot of people in the biotech and high-tech businesses are fairly young,” said Bryna Kranzler, associate director of UCSD’s Connect program. “These are people who grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s and they have a lot of different attitudes toward what government should or could do.”

Birndorf, who grew up in a liberal Democratic family outside of Detroit but is now a Republican, said that the industry’s political preferences could change as the industry ages. He linked his transformation to “the fact that people become more conservative as they grow older . . . people who pay taxes think about how their tax dollars are being spent.”

Jerry Caulder, chairman of Mycogen, which is developing biopesticides, also believes that biotech will grow more conservative as it becomes a mainstream business. “I’ve always liked the quote . . . to the effect that if you’re 20 and not a liberal you’ve got no guts; but if you’re 40 and not a conservative, you’ve got no brains.”