Fresno Voters Give Candidates a Lesson in Contradiction

A Fresno man took his anger at City Hall straight to the source this week. Trying to calm a family dispute and unable to reach police or other officials by phone, he barreled his 1979 Buick Limited through the rear entrance of the new $30-million City Hall.

Not content, he backed up and rammed the glass doors twice more before police arrested him.

It was the coup de grace in a week of City Hall battering here.

Last week, in an election that pundits are still trying to decipher, voters threw out the incumbent mayor, endorsed council term limits, junked a 42-year-old formula that paid police and firefighters some of the best salaries in the state, and defeated a school bond that would have averted year-round classes.

Although angry about bad air and congested traffic, they voted in candidates who were pro-growth and developer-backed. And they passed a new sales tax on themselves to fund the arts.

“It was a schizophrenic vote,” said Fresno Bee columnist Eli Setencich. “That’s Fresno for you. Crazy. It still doesn’t know what it wants to be.”

Trying to decide between a farming past and a future of mini-malls and tract homes, voters here have never been more restive.

The defeat of one-term Mayor Karen Humphrey, whose 17% of the vote wasn’t even enough to qualify for an April 27 mayoral runoff, means that the entire seven-member City Council has turned over in two years. Three council members were defeated in 1991 and three others, gauging correctly the sour mood, decided not to seek reelection this year.

Humphrey, who served two terms on the council before becoming mayor, was known as a clear voice for sensible growth in one of the country’s fastest growing cities. In the runoff, Jim Patterson, the owner of a fundamentalist Christian radio station, and Brian Setencich, a councilman who has cultivated an outsider’s reputation, will square off next month. Patterson received 47% of the vote and Setencich 32%.

“Patterson is polished and disarming, but you would have thought he’d encounter a bump or two giving his strong religious affiliation,” said former Mayor Dale Doig. “Maybe somewhere else, but not in Fresno. Nothing surprises me in Fresno.”

Many Fresnans say no issue was more important to the fiscal outlook of their city--which is facing $19 million in spending cuts--than the police-fire wage formula known as Charter Section 809.

The 42-year-old formula, the only one of its kind in the state, tied the salaries of Fresno police and firefighters to the average pay for their counterparts in Pasadena, Glendale, San Jose and five other cities where the cost of living is higher than here.

According to Councilman Rod Anaforian, who led the fight to repeal 809, the beginning salary of a Fresno firefighter is double that of a firefighter in San Diego. He said it costs the city of Fresno almost twice what it costs Fresno County to put an officer on the street.

The formula was repealed by a nearly 2-1 vote despite a well-financed campaign by supporters of the charter section, who outspent their opponents 35 to 1.

“I think Fresno matured politically this election,” Anaforian said. “The voters didn’t cave in to tremendous political pressure from people normally considered right up there with motherhood and apple pie.”

In voting down the $200-million school bond, voters weren’t moved by predictions of double sessions and year-round classes. School officials say the money is desperately needed to offset a 58% enrollment gain since 1980 in Fresno Unified, the third-largest school district in the state. The last high school built in the district was erected in the early 1960s.

The fact that voters did embrace a tax measure that would funnel $5 million a year into arts and the zoo was seen as something of a milestone in Fresno, considered by many to be a cultural wasteland. The new sales tax amounts to a penny for every $10 in taxable purchases, with the money designated for the local art museum, philharmonic orchestra, zoo, libraries and beautification projects.