2 Convicted San Diego Politicians Will Resign

A day after their convictions for taking illegal campaign contributions, Deputy Mayor Michael Zucchet announced his resignation from the City Council, and an attorney for Councilman Ralph Inzunza said he plans to announce his resignation today.

Zucchet, tearful but defiant, said that “my sincere interest in staying in office while continuing to fight this injustice no longer seems possible.”

Michael Pancer, attorney for Inzunza, said Inzunza would offer his resignation today. The two resignations will allow the City Council to set a date for an election to fill the vacancies.

Meanwhile, candidates in Tuesday’s election to replace Mayor Dick Murphy, who resigned last week, scrambled to find political advantage in the convictions of the two city councilmen. Zucchet and Inzunza were found to have taken contributions from a strip-club owner in exchange for promising to help change city law that prohibits nude dancers and their customers from touching.

Colleagues had urged Inzunza and Zucchet to step down rather than wait to be ousted under state law when their convictions are formally accepted by U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey T. Miller.

“I see no other option but for them to resign,” Councilman Jim Madaffer said at a noon news conference. “It’s time to put the interests of the city above their own.”

By mid-afternoon, Pancer had announced Inzunza’s intention, and shortly after 5 p.m., Zucchet held his news conference with his wife, Teresa, by his side.

“My wife and I have endured two and a half years of pure hell,” he said haltingly, “and what kept us going is the belief that justice will be served in the end.”

To make the resignations official, the council members must submit a letter to the city clerk’s office. Neither has done so.

By law, the convicted council members were immediately suspended from office without pay.

Inzunza and Zucchet face a prison sentence of three to four years. After their resignations become effective, the City Council must hold an election within 90 days to fill the posts, which each pay $75,386 a year.

The council may decide to tie that election to an expected November runoff for contenders to succeed Murphy, who resigned amid criticism of his handling of the city’s $2-billion pension deficit and other problems.

Zucchet, a City Council member serving a one-year term as deputy mayor, had been slated to be acting mayor after Murphy’s resignation, but the jury verdict came before he could lead his first council meeting.

The council named Councilwoman Toni Atkins as mayor pro tem through next week, until it decides on an interim mayor.

With the resignation of Murphy and the convictions of Inzunza and Zucchet, the council has six members, with five votes needed for passage of any item.

“It’s going to be very difficult to get anything done without a consensus on the council,” said Mike Madigan, a builder who has held several city posts and was a staff member in the mayoral administration of Pete Wilson.

Candidates in Tuesday’s mayoral election were quick to incorporate the convictions into their stump speeches, already thick with criticism of all aspects of city government.

“I think this is a different race because of what we’ve seen in the last couple of days,” former Police Chief Jerry Sanders told a luncheon meeting of the San Diego Lions Club. “We need leadership right now.”

Richard Rider, a Libertarian tax-fighter who wants to outsource city jobs to private firms, told the Lions Club that council members are “a herd of deer caught in the headlights.”

But bankruptcy attorney Patrick Shea, who says bankruptcy offers the only chance for the city to save its fiscal house, said the convictions of Zucchet and Inzunza are only a minor step.

“I want you to know that while there has been progress, it’s not the kind of progress that will bring San Diego into the next day,” he said.

Business owner Steve Francis, vying with Sanders to place second and advance to a runoff with front-runner Councilwoman Donna Frye, said he thought the convictions would help him. Francis has criticized Sanders and Frye as “insiders” unable to change government.

“My message to voters is that we need a fresh start,” Francis said in an interview. “We need an outsider to come in and take over City Hall.”

But Carl Luna, a political science professor at San Diego’s Mesa College, said he doubted that the convictions would influence the election. Cynicism about City Hall was already high, he said, and the strip-club scandal was separate from the pension deficit that caused Murphy’s resignation.

Luna, asked to comment on the race, said he doubted that Francis would succeed in labeling Frye as an insider given her maverick ways and voting record opposing the pension increases.

While mayoral candidates were labeling city government as dysfunctional, city employees came to the City Council to complain that they were being used as political punching bags.

“It’s amazing I can stand up here,” librarian Lowell Waxman told the council, “with a dozen mayoral candidates and the city attorney campaigning on my back.”