Morrow Campaign Fails to Catch Fire in an Uphill Race for Mayor

In one of his television commercials, former San Diego City Councilman Floyd Morrow peers directly into the camera and, smiling broadly, slowly brings his index finger to his lips as he says: “Shhhh! I’m Floyd Morrow. You’re not supposed to know I’m running for mayor against Maureen O’Connor.”

Unfortunately for Morrow, as the San Diego mayoral campaign enters its final week, that 10-second ad is more accurate than he would like to admit.

“There’s a lot of truth in that,” Morrow acknowledged. “This campaign has not gotten the kind of attention I had hoped when I got in it.”

Indeed, from beginning to end, the mayoral contest has been a somnolent campaign that, in style and content, has more closely resembled a small-town election than a race for the top elective post in the nation’s seventh-largest city.

In stark contrast to the high-profile, multimillion-dollar races of recent mayoral contests, this year’s campaign has been barely visible, drawing only cursory attention from the public and news media alike--primarily because O’Connor has been, from the outset, an overwhelming favorite in the June 7 primary.

“To even say the race has been boring is too generous--it hasn’t been that exciting,” political consultant Nick Johnson said, only half-jokingly. “It seems like Maureen O’Connor is on a perpetual honeymoon and the rest of San Diego is on the Love Boat.”

Strong Lead in Polls

Elected to the $60,000-a-year mayoral post in the special 1986 race necessitated by Roger Hedgecock’s felony conviction, O’Connor is widely expected to surpass the 50% margin needed in the primary to avoid a November runoff--a possibility strongly reinforced by recent polls showing her with a better than 2-to-1 lead over Morrow. If O’Connor does close out the race in the primary, she will be only the fourth mayor in the City Charter’s 56-year history to do so.

By race’s end, the combined spending of O’Connor, Morrow and the three minor candidates in the race--semi-retired public relations official John Kelley, City Hall gadfly Rose Lynne an businessman Charles Ulmschneider--may only narrowly top $100,000, considerably less than the amounts typically spent by City Council candidates. As of May 21, O’Connor--whose unsuccessful 1983 mayoral race cost more than $780,000 and who spent $268,000 two years ago--had spent only $48,839, compared to $26,654 for Morrow.

Throughout the race, radio ads have been scarce and TV commercials even rarer--in O’Connor’s case, because of her confidence and determination to wage a low-budget race, and in Morrow’s, a simple lack of money. The flurry of glitzy brochures that filled mailboxes in past races has been replaced this year by rather plain hand-outs distributed at shopping centers and community meetings. And, with O’Connor adopting a common front-runner’s strategy by refusing to participate in the series of debates that marked recent mayoral campaigns, those forums have drawn small crowds with little interest in hearing only Morrow and the long shots.

With this being the fourth mayoral campaign in the past five years--and, counting primaries, the seventh race overall--O’Connor argues that what she describes as her “quiet, no-hoopla” campaign for a full four-year term is in keeping with San Diegans’ attitude toward the contest.

“When I talk to people, the most common response I get is, ‘What? You have to run again? Already? “‘ the 41-year-old O’Connor said. “We’ve had so many mayor’s races lately that most people are just tired of it.”

‘More Like a Coronation’

But Morrow, a 55-year-old lawyer who finished third in the 1986 race, with 19% of the vote, behind O’Connor and then-Councilman Bill Cleator, regards O’Connor’s perception of the public mood as a self-serving interpretation intended to justify the mayoral equivalent of a Rose Garden strategy. Accusing O’Connor of treating the campaign “more like a coronation than an election,” Morrow argues that her above-the-fray stance has disenchanted many voters.

“Local government is supposed to be the level of government closest to the people, but you couldn’t prove that by Maureen,” Morrow said. “She’s been hiding during this whole race, and that offends people. Voters expect public officials to stand up and defend their record, to say what they want to do and where they want to lead. Maureen hasn’t done that, and I think that’s hurt her--and the community.”

Running under the slogan “Still Nobody’s Mayor But Yours,” an updated version of her 1986 theme, O’Connor argues that she has restored stability to City Hall in the wake of Hedgecock’s forced resignation and other scandals, enhanced average citizens’ access to City Hall, strengthened growth-management policies and made progress on other fronts.

‘There’s Been Progress’

“I’ve kept my promises and made a good beginning in moving the city forward,” O’Connor said. “Anyone who looks at the problems that were there when I came in--the instability at City Hall, a sewer system that broke down every other day, drugs on neighborhood corners, growth that was out of control--and compares that to where we are now would have to say there’s been progress. So, why change now?”

Morrow’s answer to O’Connor’s rhetorical question is that her brief tenure at City Hall has been marked by “two years of treading water or backsliding” on many major issues.

“On a lot of things, I’d say we’re about where we were when she came in, and on others, we’re worse off,” Morrow said. “If she has any vision for this city--and I doubt that she does--she hasn’t shared it with the rest of us. What I’ve seen in the first two years doesn’t make me want to see four more.”

Morrow has faulted O’Connor, for example, for “caving in” to federal demands for the city to construct a $1.5-billion secondary sewage treatment plant needed to bring the city into compliance with federal standards. While O’Connor is seeking state and federal funds to help offset some of the cost, Morrow, arguing that the plant is unnecessary, predicts that the project could prove to be “a ratepayers’ nightmare,” and says that he would fight the federal government in court.

The two also differ on Proposition A, the proposed half-cent sales tax increase on next month’s ballot intended to raise $1.6 billion for new jails and courtrooms. While O’Connor, like most local elected officials, supports the tax, Morrow opposes it, saying that it would ultimately lead to jail overbuilding.

Few Differences

With the exception of those two topics, however, there are few philosophical differences between the two Democrats on most major citywide issues. That factor, combined with what Morrow has derisively described as O’Connor’s “non-campaign campaign,” has hampered his efforts to dramatize how the city would differ if he, instead of O’Connor, were on the 11th floor of City Hall.

The candidates’ only major joint appearance in the campaign will be a one-hour debate on KPBS-TV (Channel 15) that will be broadcast at 5 p.m. Saturday .

“There wasn’t a need for a lot of (debates) because we’ve all run for office before and the public already knows who we are and where we stand,” O’Connor said. “This is kind of like a reunion. Most of us have been a candidate for mayor two or three times. There’s not much we can tell the public about us that people don’t already know.”

A former three-term City Council and former chairman of the San Diego County Democratic Party, Morrow has more than enough political savvy to realize that a single debate the weekend before the election hardly improves his chances of upsetting the better-known, better-financed O’Connor. Earlier this spring, Morrow’s campaign coordinator, Gary Sheler, conceded that his chances depended heavily on his ability to “draw blood” in face-to-face encounters with O’Connor.

While conventional political standards seem stacked against him, Morrow has refused to allow that to deter him, often saying that he has grown accustomed to being underestimated in a political career in which he has won 12 of 19 races.

“The serendipity of this campaign has been incredible,” Morrow said. Last week, for example, Morrow wandered into a meeting of the San Diego County Republican Central Committee by mistake and, after a few laughs, ended up getting a warm reception.

“Things like that--I mean, the irony of a former Democratic chairman getting a nice response at a Republican Central Committee meeting--give me good feelings about this campaign,” Morrow said.

Nothing if not dogged and persistently upbeat in his pursuit of a prize that most believe is well beyond his grasp, Morrow typically has attended up to a half dozen community meetings, luncheons and sporting events daily, usually with a handful of volunteers to pass out literature. Morrow said that he has personally shaken tens of thousands of hands and estimates that overall, his campaign has contacted more than 100,000 voters.

“For the last three months, we’ve been everywhere like the air,” Sheler said.

One of the most elementary of political maxims, however, is that hands shaken do not always translate to votes.

Little News Coverage

‘I’m sure Floyd is meeting a lot of people and that he’s right when he says there’s a lot of anti-Maureen sentiment out there,” political consultant David Lewis said. “But not enough to make it any different than about 65% for the mayor on June 7. For an underdog to have a chance in a race like this, one of two things has to happen: You either buy the race with your own money or you get a lot of free media (through news coverage). Neither’s happening here.”

The absence of the saturation news coverage that marked past mayoral races, in fact, has emerged as a major theme in Morrow’s campaign. While the lackluster nature of the race has much to do with the limited coverage, Morrow also often seeks to persuade campaign audiences that another factor is O’Connor’s close friendship with Helen Copley, publisher of the San Diego Union and Tribune.

“The best way to make sure that Maureen O’Connor remains mayor is to ignore the race,” Morrow said. “It’s not a question of us not being out there doing our thing. But when the major daily newspapers choose to ignore that, there’s not much we can do.”

Last month, Morrow challenged Copley to a debate, calling her “the real power behind Maureen O’Connor’s throne.” In addition, one of Morrow’s TV ads is a parody of a Union-Tribune commercial in which Copley is seated on a park bench beside the papers’ two editors, each reading a newspaper.

Filmed in an almost identical setting with its characters also seated on a bench, Morrow’s ad begins with the candidate and a supporter lamenting O’Connor’s unwillingness to debate. Then, glancing down the bench at a woman whose face is hidden behind a copy of the Union, the supporter remarks, “I guess she’s still hiding behind the Union.”

Copley executives have dismissed Morrow’s claims as inaccurate and mere campaign gimmickry.

“Too many candidates these days think they can run against the newspaper and not the opposing candidate,” Union editor Gerald Warren said. “It hasn’t worked in the past and it won’t work now. . . When there’s something to cover, we cover it. But there hasn’t been that much to cover in this race.”

O’Connor’s campaigning, meanwhile, has been largely confined to handshaking at shopping centers and occasional speeches before community groups. Typifying the bare-bones approach of her campaign, the mayor also spends hours personally telephoning voters from her downtown headquarters to solicit their support--calls that often initially draw skeptical responses.

One night last week, for example, O’Connor spent much of her time trying to convince people that they were, indeed, speaking to the mayor. Most of her calls were laced with comments such as: “No, this isn’t a joke. . . Yes, it’s really the mayor. . . A lot of other people don’t believe it’s me calling, but it is me calling. . . Well, would you believe it if I put a reporter on the line to tell you it’s me? . . . Really , this isn’t a joke.”

Although O’Connor, comforted by her lead in the polls and not wanting to give her opponent publicity, generally ignores Morrow’s snipings, some of his charges obviously grate on the mayor and spark occasional caustic rejoinders.

Notably, Morrow’s frequent accusation that O’Connor lacks leadership drew this angry response from O’Connor: “I know what I’ve been doing since the last election, but I can’t say the same of Floyd. He can talk of leadership, but where was he when we were trying to do something about growth and crime and drugs and sewage? There’s more to leadership than just talking about it at election time.”

While her scaled-down campaign is vivid proof of her confidence, O’Connor, having learned a lesson from her two past mayoral races, when she committed the classic political gaffe of overestimating her finish, has consistently downplayed expectations this year. Although most political observers expect her to be the first San Diego mayor to win election outright in the primary since Pete Wilson did it twice in the 1970s, O’Connor has done her best to create the impression that it would be something of an upset if she did so--when, in fact, it would be an upset if she were to be forced into a runoff.

“My goal is just to get 50% plus one vote--that’s all,” O’Connor said. “All this talk about a landslide is just that--talk. Any incumbent is going to have a certain percentage of people who oppose him, so it’s difficult for anyone to get an enormous vote. I hope I’m lucky enough to win it in the primary but I’m not counting on that. So, am I confident? Yes. Cocky? No.”