Prop. 187 Tryout Folded in Encinitas in 1980s : Despite its own bruising civic battle over illegal immigration--or perhaps because of it--the city kept a low profile when the initiative put similar issues and a similar scenario on the statewide stage.

In politics, as in theater, there are dress rehearsals where the plot and the players are displayed before a small audience before moving to the larger arena.

Take Proposition 187, now center stage from Eureka to San Ysidro.

If California is Broadway for this political-social-cultural drama, then Encinitas was New Haven.

This prosperous seaside suburb of San Diego--known for its flower fields and youth sports programs and safe neighborhoods--became the focal point in the late 1980s for the rising phenomenon in California of civic anger directed at illegal immigrants.

There were other communities in San Diego and Orange counties that heard similar complaints from their residents at roughly the same time as Encinitas.

But when the television networks, the wire services and the New York Times wanted to do stories on the growing clash between affluent Southern California homeowners and impoverished immigrants, they came to Encinitas. The beachfront setting proved journalistically irresistible.

For five acrimony-filled years, Encinitas homeowners demanded that City Hall do something about the groups of young Latino men standing on street corners soliciting work as day laborers and camping on private and public property.

A civic ordinance was adopted to penalize employers for hiring illegal immigrants off street corners, but it was struck down by a federal judge in 1990. Those in Encinitas who had complained the loudest about immigrants in their midst reluctantly admitted defeat.

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Given that history, you might figure Encinitas would have become a hotbed of Proposition 187 support--that those same residents and politicians, having seen their efforts thwarted, would have been overjoyed that at long last something was going to be done to discourage illegal immigration and that the governor was playing a leading role.

It didn’t happen.

As the debate flared statewide, Encinitas (population 57,000) was quiet. If anything, the city took an outward attitude of “been there, done that.”

“It was surprising what a non-issue 187 was here,” said Gregory Dennis, a free-lance journalist, environmental consultant and Encinitas resident.

Catholic and Lutheran ministers in Encinitas and an official from the local synagogue were part of an ecumenical movement against Proposition 187, but the City Council declined to take a stand. There were no campaign signs on city streets.

Although the city decisively supported the initiative at the polls, there were no forums and no large demonstrations. Most of the letters to the local newspaper dealt with a hotly debated local measure about whether to allow construction of a subdivision and golf course.

Ex-Councilwoman Marjorie Gaines, whose high-voltage fights with immigrant advocates were an early indication of the level the emotional rhetoric would reach in the statewide immigration debate, took a hands-off attitude toward Proposition 187. “I have chosen not to be political,” she said.

None of the nine candidates for City Council was willing to commit the city to another round of trying to rid the streets and canyons of immigrants, even though the legal and political winds now seem to be favoring the employer-sanction approach.

“All we got last time was a bunch of bad national publicity,” said Councilman John Davis at a candidates forum.

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The issue of newly arrived immigrants living in tents and cardboard lean-tos was waiting for the first City Council when the communities of Encinitas, Leucadia, Olivenhain and Cardiff-by-the-Sea incorporated as the city of Encinitas in 1986 to free themselves from the pro-growth attitude of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.

The controversy gave the new city, 25 miles north of San Diego, a sense of being born into crisis.

At meetings that went long into the night, residents complained to the fledgling council of trash heaps, public urination and crime problems. Shop owners complained that their customers were being intimidated.

“Nobody saw it coming but then the issue just exploded,” said Dennis, who was managing editor of the North County Blade-Citizen during the controversy.

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In retrospect, the scenario appears familiar: Defining illegal immigration as a problem. Declaring a state of emergency. Appealing to the federal government for help. Sending the feds a bill. Devising a proposed solution that brought passionate opposition from the editorial pages and cries of racism from immigrant advocates. Protests in the streets.

“We never realized we were blazing a trail for the rest of the state,” City Manager Loren Wasserman said with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

By the standards of Proposition 187, the Encinitas ordinance was mild.

The ordinance would have slapped penalties on those who employ illegal immigrants rather than on the immigrants, the kind of employer-sanction approach that even some opponents of Proposition 187 say is needed.

It was also part of a compromise whereby the city opened a hiring hall for documented immigrants, the first such hall in San Diego County, to ensure that employers would treat their day laborers fairly.

Pam Slater, who was on the Encinitas council and now is a county supervisor, says that if the Encinitas ordinance had been allowed to stand and been copied by other communities, it might have averted the political upheaval that led to passage of Proposition 187.

“We thought we were going in the right direction (with the ordinance and hiring hall), but the migrant advocates blocked us at every turn,” Slater said.

“And they got Proposition 187 as a result.”

A differing view comes from Claudia Smith, attorney for the California Rural League Assistance, which along with the American Civil Liberties Union sued to overturn the Encinitas ordinance and prevent the idea from spreading to other California communities.

To Smith, Encinitas residents were unwilling to accept the “shared humanity” of the immigrants. “To me, I thought it offended their aesthetic sensibilities to see these men standing out there,” she said.

The years since the lawsuit have not softened Smith’s view of Encinitas. She is still suing the city over its refusal to provide immigrant housing. She refuses to shop in the city.

“I refuse to patronize Encinitas,” she said. “I hate Encinitas.”

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A city, of course, is more than just the sum of its public debates, and Encinitas has flourished despite the divisiveness of the immigration fight.

New subdivisions have the scrubbed, cheery look of the archetypal Southern California neighborhood in “E.T.,” a paradise for kids on bikes. The median resale price of a home is $295,000.

Traffic is still a hassle along the commercial intersection of Encinitas Boulevard and El Camino Real, but a good Cajun restaurant has opened along Pacific Coast Highway and the new athletic club, Frog’s, received an award for architectural comeliness.

As for why Encinitas opted out of the Proposition 187 battle, it is anybody’s guess.

Dennis believes that the city has decided to give tolerance a chance and learn to live with the young men who still gather on street corners in the morning. “People came to understand that most of these guys are just looking for a job,” he said.

Gaines, who was defeated for reelection during the controversy, leans toward the idea that its five-year civic battle left Encinitas too exhausted over the topic to get emotionally involved in the fight again.

And she notes, with some irony, how the issue that cost her her political career has now moved to a bigger stage:

“It’s strange, all the things we said then are what a lot of people are saying now.”