San Diego Stadium Expansion Foe Becomes Designated Villain

The morning commute is underway and radio personalities Joe Bauer and Mac Hudson, faithful barometers of the local zeitgeist, are gagging it up about Bruce Henderson, the designated villain in the red-hot controversy that threatens to drive the Super Bowl and the Chargers out of town.

Bauer: “Let’s talk about how proud Bruce Henderson must be today because the Holiday Bowl may skip San Diego as well. Good work, Bruce.”

Hudson, referring to San Diego’s judicial scandal: “They sentenced two ex-judges and a lawyer yesterday because of Henderson.”

Sportscaster Ted Leitner: “That’s right. That’s right. Right.”

Hudson: “And Pamela Harriman died. Bruce Henderson.”

Bauer: “Bruce, Bruce, Bruce.”

Bruce, indeed.

Civic forces favoring the expansion of San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium have spent considerable time lampooning and blaming Henderson, 53, the former city councilman and dedicated whistle-blower who started the referendum drive aimed at halting the expansion project until a public vote can be held.

“Bruce Henderson has been vilified more than any other person I’ve ever seen in San Diego politics,” protests Henderson’s lawyer, Robert Ottilie, who ran against Henderson for City Council in 1987.

Ottilie and co-counsel Michael Aguirre are preparing for a Feb. 20 hearing at which a judge will consider Henderson’s request to halt construction on the stadium in mid-bulldoze. Opposing them will be the combined legal muscle of the city attorney’s office, the National Football League and one of the city’s blue-chip law firms.

Meanwhile, Bruce-bashing has become a minor sport.

The editorial page of the San Diego Union-Tribune suggested that Henderson move away. An editorial cartoon in the same newspaper had Henderson as Lucy whisking the football away from Charlie Brown.

A cartoon in the San Diego Reader showed him as a troll living under a bridge. The caption: “Defeated lawyers don’t go away. They stick around to clog the way. Bruce Henderson. Thrice defeated. Not shy.”

Steve Cushman, car dealer and board chairman of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, snorts that Henderson is nothing more than an “obstructionist force.”

Mayor Susan Golding scolded Henderson publicly and said that if the Chargers, Padres and Super Bowl flee San Diego because the stadium is a mess, it will be Henderson’s fault and not hers or the City Council’s.

“Henderson and his colleagues have made an art form out of mobilizing the 40% or so of San Diegans who will vote no on everything that many of us associate with a healthier San Diego,” wrote Neil Morgan, senior columnist at the Union-Tribune.

If the scorn of San Diego’s political-business-journalistic establishment bothers Henderson, he’s not letting on.

“Maybe I’m foolish but I don’t take it personally,” said Henderson. “Nobody likes the whistle-blower until he’s proven right.”

Those who have watched his career as a political figure are not surprised at his high flappability threshold.

“He’s absolutely fearless,” said lobbyist and political consultant Jack Orr. “He’s not impervious to all this criticism but he can take it. He’s as tough as a junkyard dog.”

At the Feb. 20 court hearing, Henderson’s lawyers will argue that the demolition that began Dec. 31 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium--and has continued apace--should be halted because it is being done illegally.

They contend that the city should have delayed construction while the referendum petitions delivered to City Hall were counted and a public vote held on what was a $78-million expansion plan for the stadium.

City lawyers counter that there was no need to stop construction because the referendum dealt only with $18 million added to the $60-million project adopted in early 1995. Superior Court Judge Anthony Joseph will decide the issue.

Henderson became Public Enemy No. 1 in some San Diego circles after NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced that if stadium construction is halted, the 1998 Super Bowl will be shifted to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The Chargers piled on by saying that they might have to play some 1997 games in the Rose Bowl or the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

If either of these civic traumas comes to pass, Henderson is prepared to blame city officials. He insists that they should have notified the NFL that temporary seats would be installed for the Super Bowl and that permanent construction was being delayed until 1998 so that the referendum issue could be taken to the voters.

“I don’t want to hurt San Diego,” Henderson said. “I’ll feel very badly if we lose the Super Bowl or the Holiday Bowl. That’s why I went down to [city manager] Jack McGrory and begged him not to [start demolition].”

Maybe it’s Henderson’s seeming insouciance that riles the expansion-boosters so badly.

For one thing, he avoids neckties. Even for a television debate with Councilman Harry Mathis, a retired Navy submarine captain, Henderson appeared in open-neck shirt and with some chest hair showing.

He saunters to news conferences with his new dog--an adorable 8-month-old English springer spaniel named Roscoe. He says that regardless of what officials say, the people he meets while taking Roscoe for walks agree that the deal engineered by Golding et al and the Chargers should be put to a public vote.

An inheritance from his father, a physician, and wise investments have left Henderson comfortable enough that he does not have to work. He and his wife, Jane, a former City Council aide and beauty queen, live in a spacious condominium in the Pacific Beach area of San Diego.

“Most people can’t be whistle-blowers because it isn’t good for their business,” Henderson said. “That’s why you need people who aren’t subject to the whims of the marketplace. There aren’t many people like that. For better or worse, I’m one.”

Henderson was elected to the City Council in 1987, but voters dumped him in 1991 in favor of newcomer Valerie Stallings, a researcher at the Salk Institute. Since then he has run unsuccessfully for city attorney and twice for the Assembly.

On the City Council, Henderson was a contradiction. He was one of the best-educated and best-traveled persons ever to serve on the council. But he was largely unable to form the kinds of working relationships needed to gather votes and reach compromises.

A graduate of Harvard and the University of California’s Boalt Hall law school, Henderson lived in Japan and served with the Peace Corps as an attorney on the island of Yap. He retains an appreciation of Japanese art and culture and was a guiding force behind enhancement of the Japanese gardens at Balboa Park.

His politics are those of a fiscal conservative with a dash of pro-development sentiment and Libertarianism. His was the sole vote against the city’s Human Dignity Ordinance, which banned discrimination against gays and lesbians.

His talkative, cocksure demeanor grated on his council colleagues. To express his opposition to the hiring of consultants, he waved a rubber shark and played the theme music from “Jaws.”

In his losing 1991 reelection campaign, his theatrics came back to haunt him. Stalling tagged him as “an obstructionist, a blowhard and a grandstander.” He lost big.

Unflattering names aside, Henderson may have saved San Diego taxpayers more money than any other council member. When the rest of the council was ready to bow to a demand from the federal government to build a new sewer plant, Henderson fought a long but successful legal battle to get the requirement lifted, saving taxpayers an estimated $6 billion.

The relationship between his stadium fight and his sewage plant victory is open to interpretation. His critics suggest that Henderson is desperately trying for one more moment in the sun as the taxpayers’ savior, even though the stadium expansion would not be paid for by tax revenues.

Henderson says the sewage issue showed him that he can win against long odds and that insults along the way do not matter. He is unfazed that others see it differently.

“Some people will understand what I’m doing, some won’t,” Henderson said. “That’s OK with me.”