Murphy Squeaks Into Runoff for Mayor of San Diego

Superior Court Judge Dick Murphy has beaten banker Peter Q. Davis for the right to face county Supervisor Ron Roberts in a November runoff election for mayor.

Roberts placed first on election night last Tuesday with 26% of the vote, but Murphy and Davis were virtually deadlocked at 15%, with nearly 50,000 absentee and other ballots yet to be counted.

After the county registrar of voters staff finished counting those ballots Monday, Murphy had a 169-vote margin over Davis, who spent $1.25 million of his own money on his campaign, the most ever by a candidate for local office in San Diego.

Davis said he does not plan to seek a recount and immediately endorsed Murphy.

The Murphy-Roberts fight to succeed Mayor Susan Golding will pit two 57-year-old Republicans who began political life as appointees of then-Mayor Pete Wilson and are in agreement on many of the major issues facing the state’s second largest city.

If their politics are similar, their personalities are not: Roberts is intense and combative; Murphy low-key and mild-mannered. Both are sports fans and support the city’s bid to keep the Padres from leaving San Diego by building the pro baseball team a downtown ballpark.

Both are fiscal conservatives and believe in managing growth rather than trying to stop it. But on social issues, Roberts emerged during the campaign as more moderate.

Roberts opposed Proposition 22, which bans same-sex marriage, while Murphy supported it. And Roberts said he was willing to consider a publicly sponsored needle exchange for drug addicts, while Murphy said that would be sending “the wrong message” to children about drug use.

In a city that seemed to favor candidates with strong establishment credentials, both have impressive resumes.

Murphy earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois, a master’s in business administration from Harvard and a law degree from Stanford. He served as a lieutenant in the Army and later worked for Bank of America in San Diego.

He was appointed to the San Diego City Council in 1981 with the backing of then-Mayor Wilson and then was elected to a full term. On the council, he was chairman of the trolley board and co-chairman of drive to create Mission Trails Regional Park.

He left the council in 1985 after being appointed to the Municipal Court bench. In 1990, he was elevated to the Superior Court.

Roberts received a bachelor’s degree from San Diego State University and a master’s in architecture from UC Berkeley. He was part of a San Diego architecture firm when he was appointed by Wilson to the Planning Commission and then elected to the City Council in 1987.

A former Democrat, he switched his party registration so that he could vote for Wilson in the race for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in 1982.

Roberts was defeated in the 1992 mayoral primary election, and in 1994 was elected to the Board of Supervisors. As a supervisor, he gained a reputation as a cost-cutter and a proponent of turning some government functions over to the private sector.