Golding Narrowly Leads Navarro for San Diego Mayor : California: In the San Joaquin Valley and Marin County, voters were opposing farmland preservation measures. Medicinal use of marijuana is supported.

After a tough, bruising battle over who will become mayor of San Diego, county Supervisor Susan Golding held a small lead over managed growth advocate Pete Navarro with about half of Tuesday’s votes counted.

Elsewhere in California, early results showed voters opposing farmland preservation measures in the fertile San Joaquin Valley and in Marin County. In Santa Cruz County, voters appeared to be solidly favoring an advisory measure urging the medicinal uses of marijuana.

In San Diego, the race to succeed outgoing Mayor Maureen O’Connor was the first in years that did not revolve around debate over “Los Angelization,” the city’s pejorative term for urban sprawl, snarled traffic and smog.

With tough economic times that have put nearly 100,000 residents out of work and wreaked havoc on the home construction industry, candidates Golding and Navarro offered detailed economic recovery plans for the state’s second-largest city.

Golding’s inner-city “Marshall Plan” called for providing financing for new businesses and no-down-payment loans for first-time home buyers willing to renovate deteriorating housing. Navarro countered with a “30-Day Economic Action Plan” to eliminate business license fees for small companies and allow biotech firms to do research and production at the same site.

Navarro, 43, a UC Irvine economics professor, soared to political prominence in the late 1980s as head of a managed growth group called Prevent Los Angelization Now!

Faced with the city’s economic slowdown, the registered independent emphasized his political outsider’s image, hammering away at Golding’s lengthy public record and vowing to serve as “an agent of change.”

Golding vigorously defended her experience as essential background for running a major city.

The 47-year-old Republican, a two-term county supervisor who served short stints on the San Diego City Council and in Gov. George Deukmejian’s Administration, had the solid backing of San Diego’s business and civic Establishment. But she had to overcome the taint of her ex-husband’s 1990 conviction on federal charges related to a money-laundering scheme.

Although Golding and Richard Silberman are divorced, Navarro’s TV and radio ads referred to Silberman’s crimes.

In the growth-happy San Joaquin Valley, the issue of Los Angelization came to the fore this fall in the guise of Measure F, a referendum to declare 40% of the open land in Stanislaus County off limits to developers.

Backers of the anti-development measure contended that action was necessary to discourage the replacement of walnut and almond groves with tract homes and golf courses. “This is some of the best farmland in the world, and if you pave it over, you’ve lost it forever,” said former Modesto Mayor Peggy Mensinger, a leading proponent.

Those opposed, including leaders of the building industry and many of the area’s farmers, countered that outsiders had no right to tell them what to do with their property.

The measure called for restricting county supervisors from changing zoning on 400,000 acres of prime farmland within irrigation districts for 20 years. If it passed, farmers could subdivide their land only by a vote of the electorate or if the land was deemed unsuitable for agriculture.

In Marin County, early returns showed voters rejecting a preservation measure that placed limits on subdividing farmland for 30 years.

In San Francisco, controversial Mayor Frank Jordan’s first initiative to make good on a campaign pledge to crack down on the homeless was up for a vote. Proposition J would make it a crime to “harass or hound” people while panhandling. Violaters would face a maximum fine of $500 or six months imprisonment. Voters were favoring the measure in early returns.

In early returns, San Mateo County voters appeared to be supporting an advisory measure that calls for extending Bay Area Rapid Transit District service through the suburban county south of San Francisco.