Trials Of Two Cities

When gas prices are down and attack ads are up, you don’t need to look at a calendar to know it’s election season. Here in San Diego, political divisions have also begun to crowd the issues landscape; no matter where city candidates come down on hot buttons like the border fence or the Mount Soledad cross — not everyone will be satisfied, even if these decisions are out of the city’s power to make. Two very different local elected officials who aren’t fighting for their jobs this month offer vastly differing perspectives on how the political process in San Diego works, and how positive change does or does not come with the autumn weather in an election year.

Few local figures have galvanized the local electorate like Donna Frye. Though her casual style and beachbum tan brand her as a liberal outsider, she nearly won the mayoral election in 2005 as a write-in candidate, and sits as councilmember for District 6. She and Mayor Sanders have put aside their differences from the campaign, but she hasn’t softened the urgency of her warnings about the unresolved pension deficit. "Throughout the entire budget process, I continually raised the issue that the pension debt was understated, and that the City was underpaying. And despite that, those were the numbers that were used, and that budget was approved." She stresses that this isn’t playing politics; it’s fiscal reality, as has recently been vindicated by a City financial review. "I was trying to provide honest guidance and the best information I had to help our city, and it was ignored."

Bloodsport rules prevail in San Diego politics, Frye explains, but feel-good visions cloud ugly issues in election cycles. "I thought it would be harmful to sugarcoat reality to get elected. As awful as it might be, it needed to be said."

Straight talk isn’t just a good election strategy; it’s a good plan for survival. Frye recalls that when Governor Gray Davis leveled with California about the budget crisis after the election, the voters rebelled. She doesn’t need to note the fiscal perfect storm that hounded Dick Murphy out of office. "At some point, you need to treat the voters like grown-ups."

Frye and fellow mayoral candidate Pat Shea backed a plan for closing the $1.3 billion pension gap — which she wryly calls "bankruptcy lite" — that includes lighter cuts than the $374 million suggested by budget analysts; vigorous maneuvers to reduce the legally dubious and labyrinthine pension debt; and everyone’s least favorite T-word. "What I hope will happen is a civil, not a political, dialogue about our choices, to make sure that this generation pays its debt, instead of passing it off until everyone is out of office. That’s the elephant that nobody wants to talk about, and when you do, it becomes mudslinging." Frye posits the specter of perpetual debt and the forced sale of precious local assets as the consequence of blindsiding the voters at election time.

And that goes double for the Padres, the Chargers, and other pound-foolish civic investments. "I love sports. Sports are how we make our living. But when we’re going to use taxpayer money, we should do it in a way that’s honest. If it’s going to cost $200 million dollars, let’s say that. Let’s not tell them it’s free, and have them find out two years down the line that there’s no free stadium."

Frye foresees more power struggles on the horizon as the mayor tries out the new Strong Mayor amendments to the city charter. "I think we’re going to start to see cracks in that, and the realities of how it does and does not work bubbling up." Vagueness in the new protocols invite conflicts over legislative authority, as the mayor could invoke them to wrest power to cut city programs without Council approval. "We’re going to have to go through the drama of redefining the lines between branches of government, and we should. I just wish we had gone through it before we went into this sort of experiment." Not all issues put someone’s head on the block, and one close to Frye’s heart is energy efficiency. "You have government working with outside business, and you keep the environment cleaner and save millions of dollars, and I don’t know how it gets better than that." In a long-standing pet policy of Frye’s, a public-private partnership allows the city to make 50-megawatt power purchase agreements with contractors to power city buildings cheaper than SDG&E.

Reflecting on the mayoral campaign itself, Frye is still positive, especially with the colorful seven-way televised debate. She worked with Steve McMillan and Shea after the primary, and counts many of her former opponents as friends and allies. "For me, it was a wonderful experience. I’d do it again. People say, ’Why would you go through that again and lose?’ But it’s the process."

A process, however, that remains flawed, despite the popular unrest that energized the mayoral race. Frye believes that real reform in local politics must come from a reform in official behavior. "There’s elections, and there’s governance. Many elected officials view governance simply as the continuation of the campaign, basing their decisions on polling data and popular opinion. Governance is representing the best interests of the public, and not necessarily the popular will."

Frank debate would have to evolve beyond pollster-coached sound bites, and the media would have to refrain from chewing the public’s news for it. Frye consistently calls in to 91X’s morning show to chat up local issues or discuss the early morning surf. "I guess I’m just not afraid of people." Such informal access sets her apart from many candidates and gives her room to articulate a broader message than most bumper sticker-sized TV debates, and perhaps that’s what politicians of all parties could learn, before their next election.

If political feuds have ridden roughshod over San Diego proper, there are still some quiet eddies in the county, where elections still turn on delivering for the people. As San Diego’s smallest incorporated city (two square miles; population 4,500), Del Mar faces issues that pit the prosperous beach town against invasions from without, rather than divisions within. First-term (and avid hiker) Mayor Crystal Crawford makes a point of campaigning door-to-door every election cycle, but she walks her beat throughout the year.

When she was elected to the Del Mar City Council in 1998 and 2002, three candidates ran for two seats. "I haven’t had to go through any awful elections," she confides, but Del Mar politics is hardly without controversy. In 2004, "We had a proposition on the ballot that engendered a lot of opposition from the real estate community," which proposed a transfer tax on home sales. Realtors spent $125,000 to defeat the measure, and over 70 percent of voters rejected it. "That was a wild and wooly race, but I wasn’t on that ballot."

Different neighborhoods have different issues, but most stem from outsiders spoiling the quality of life. "Right after Labor Day, I walked along the beach, and I heard a lot about the impact from summer crowds — traffic, parking, litter, urinating on the sidewalk — and people were frustrated. Then I walked on the North Hill, and they don’t have a lot of through-traffic, so they’re pretty happy."

Where hot political issues have divided and driven San Diego’s electorate, in Del Mar, the most dreaded T-word is not taxes, but traffic. The dysfunctional arterial flow of I-5 drove Del Mar to incorporate in 1959. Crawford handles this burning dilemma the same every year, election or no. "I get asked a lot of questions about that on election years, when I’m out walking. Recently, we’ve gone through a lot of hearings to manage traffic up on Crest Road. That neighborhood is impacted by people cutting through to avoid the traffic on the 5, often going too fast. Our neighborhoods are pedestrian-oriented, and we don’t have sidewalks, so people speeding through creates a lot of anxiety. We’ve come up with a plan to install speed bumps and chokers that will narrow the roadway, so the geometry of the road will require people to slow down. That doesn’t reduce volume, but we hope that once people realize they have to slow down, they’ll stay on Camino Del Mar, or the freeway." This policy worked on Stratford Court two years ago, "and we’re not getting any complaints from that neighborhood."

In 2007, Del Mar will complete an update to the city’s Circulation Element planning document, which tracks traffic volume through the city as a whole, which Crawford hopes will bring real change. Local residents actively participate in coming up with traffic solutions, and Crawford welcomes the input.

"We’re a small town, surrounded on three sides by development and the Pacific. We have to work locally to manage the impact, but also regionally." Crawford sits on several SANDAG boards to protect Del Mar from overaggressive development. Originally, I-5 was planned to run through Camino Del Mar, but a coalition forced it to the east. Lately, "We’ve tried to manage the impact of the rail corridor. We don’t want double-tracking on the bluffs. We don’t believe they can support that. Exactly how we’ll do that, we don’t know, but we have the geology reports that say the bluffs won’t support it, and they’ve got to move it."

Crawford credits a "determined, smart, proactive citizenry" with much of the effectiveness of her government, and the second highest property tax base in the county hardly hurts. She knows Del Mar suffers from few of the problems that entangle political life to the south, but her approach engages the public in such a way that larger communities should take note. "We’re very fortunate. We have the smallest budget in the county, but we’ve been able to do a lot with it, and we’ve been very creative with how we fund projects." The Coastal Conservancy funded the bulk of the 25th Street Lifeguard Station, and in her role on the SANDAG Biodiversity Council, she is in talks to get them to bankroll another at 17th Street. With bold strategies to revitalize Del Mar’s tightly constricted business community, grow the sales tax revenue, and maintain tough development standards, Crawford seems to have artfully balanced small-town and big-city issues without the hot-air wars that mar political progress elsewhere.

"But that’s not to suggest that you don’t have people throwing grenades at election time. Human nature says that you have to criticize the people you’re trying to replace." But any candidate seeking to unseat Crawford in the next election is advised to bring more than grenades... they’ll need some comfortable hiking boots.
— Cody Goodfellow