Amid Summer Fun, an Election

The first-place Padres are drawing large crowds, “Macbeth” is playing at the Old Globe and the beaches beckon.

But amid the summertime fun and fancy, voters are being asked to do something grimly serious: pick a new mayor to help dig the city out of its worst financial and legal mess in history.

There is something unnatural about holding an election here in the summer. This is the season for backyard barbecues, not political debates.

Unnatural or not, voters on July 26 will be asked to pick a replacement for Mayor Dick Murphy, who is resigning just seven months into his second term, unable to cope with continued criticism over his handling of the city’s $2-billion pension deficit.

A variety of polls indicate that voters favor a former police chief, a city councilwoman and the owner of a business that provides temporary workers for the healthcare industry.

Three other candidates -- a Libertarian tax-fighter, a Harley-Davidson dealer and a bankruptcy attorney -- are stuck in the low, single digits.

“I think all the candidates are having trouble getting anyone to give a gosh-darn about them, except for the in-crowd,” said Carl Luna, a political science professor at San Diego’s Mesa College. “Campaigning in San Diego in the summer is easy: nobody’s listening.”

Even the leaders -- former Police Chief Jerry Sanders, Councilwoman Donna Frye and business owner Steve Francis -- say getting their message out to sun-soaked voters is not easy.

Their messages are largely the same: cut spending, hard-bargain with labor unions over trimming employee benefits, go to court to see if previous benefit boosts were illegal and thus can be rolled back. None is talking bankruptcy or tax hikes.

Francis, 50, is using his own money to blanket TV with ads in which he blasts the current City Council as a bunch of incompetents who should apologize to the citizenry.

Without much money for TV spots, Frye, 53, and Sanders, 54, are hunting voters wherever they congregate.

Sanders said every time he goes to grocery store parking lots in the beach area, he finds more tourists than residents.

“Anytime TV will show up or the press will show up, I’m ready to talk -- anything to get my message out,” he said.

Frye, co-owner of a surf shop with her husband, surf legend Skip Frye, is hoping for a repeat of last fall, when her maverick style caught voters’ fancy and she nearly defeated Murphy as a write-in.

“We’re like a weird combination of grass-roots support and just enough money to be dangerous,” she said with a laugh.

If there is consensus among political observers, it is that Frye will finish first and Sanders and Francis are fighting for second place, and then a runoff with Frye in November. To win outright on July 26, Frye would need more than 50% of the vote.

In November, Frye’s write-in candidacy gained more votes than Murphy, but a judge ruled that several thousand votes were invalid because people had not darkened an oval on the line next to where they had written her name.

The disputed election undercut Murphy’s authority as mayor, and left Frye’s supporters believing that she had been robbed on a technicality.

“We urge you to do everything possible to reelect Donna Frye mayor of San Diego,” Nancy Moores, owner of a small advertising firm, told a Frye crowd last week.

In the fall, Frye’s candidacy was built on her reputation as the lone voice against the pension increases of 2002 that have left the city deeply in debt. As a Democrat battling two Republicans, her appeal is populist.

When the U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld the right of government to seize private property, she reminded voters that she has opposed the use of eminent domain powers.

Frye has supported the owner of a downtown cigar store -- Grand Havana -- who fought unsuccessfully to block the city’s redevelopment agency from seizing his store.

“It’s just wrong,” Frye told a crowd. “Government is supposed to protect and help business; it’s not supposed to hurt them.”

If Frye is trying a strategy that has proven successful in the past, Francis, who owns a firm that supplies temporary workers for hospitals, is trying one that has not.

In the last two decades, furniture manufacturers, bankers and a financier have all run for mayor on the platform that what city government needs is a businessman at the helm. All spent lavishly; none was elected.

Still, Francis believes that San Diego’s situation is so dire that voters are ready for a tough-love business approach. He has promised to cut salaries and budgets of City Council members and trim city departments, except for fire and police, by 10%.

“I’m unbossed and unbought,” he said of his lack of support from labor unions and the fact that his campaign is largely self-financed.

He has criticized Frye for her support from labor unions. She responded by calling him a “Las Vegas politician,” a reference to his brief service in the Nevada Legislature before moving to San Diego.

With the days dwindling, Francis’ supporters say their challenge is to overtake Sanders for the second spot and a November faceoff with Frye.

Sanders served as police chief for six years, retiring in 1999 amid widespread praise. His soft-spoken demeanor belies his 20 years as a street cop, including commanding the SWAT squad.

He became executive director of the local United Way and later served on the board of the Red Cross. He was praised for helping both groups overcome budget and image problems. He has promised to hire a popular retired Navy officer, Rear Adm. Ronnie Froman, to serve as his financial officer.

Bob Glaser, a political consultant working for Sanders, said he is confident that voters are not distracted by the sun and surf. Any other summer, he said, the idea of a political campaign in San Diego would be unthinkable.

But the city’s pension problem and the legal mess -- including investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. attorney -- have sufficiently alarmed the public, Glaser said. “Enough bad news will get people’s attention,” he said, “even in gorgeous San Diego in the summer.”