Local Elections : Candidates Aim Ire at Marshall in 4th District

Marla Marshall confesses that, as she campaigns for the San Diego City Council 4th District seat, she often feels as if she were “wearing a bull’s-eye target” on her back.

While eight candidates are competing for the post being vacated by Councilman William Jones, the rhetoric of most of them and their supporters often makes it appear that they are concerned primarily, not with whether they win, but rather with insuring that Marshall does not win.

The vitriol began shortly before Marshall moved into the district last spring to satisfy council campaign residency requirements and, in the intervening months, has gradually increased in intensity.

A Republican running in a heavily Democratic district, Marshall is routinely called a “carpetbagger” and “foreigner” at candidate forums, as well as being accused of trying to buy the election with “Establishment money.”

Warnings Sounded

Other candidates have been criticized by community activists--and criticize one another--for not dropping out of the race to unify the opposition to Marshall. In short, Marshall may be living in the 4th District, her critics say, but she is not of it. If she is elected, they warn, her primary allegiance will be, not to the district, but to the GOP leaders and prominent business figures who form the foundation of her campaign.

Some of the most caustic oratory heard in the campaign to date occurred Friday at the weekly meeting of the Catfish Club, the black community’s major political forum. At the lunchtime meeting, a series of speakers raised the anti-Marshall debate to a crescendo, often using historical analogies that illustrate the intensity of the opposition to Marshall’s candidacy among some 4th District leaders.

“The buying and selling of Negroes is not new,” psychologist Charles Thomas, told the club.

The Rev. Ellis Casson, a politically prominent minister, added: “If we’re not careful, we’re going to wake up and find out . . . we’re back on the plantation . . . We don’t need any handpicked candidate sitting on the City Council speaking for us.”

Air of Unconcern

At the center of the storm, Marshall has assumed a confident air of unconcern and even slight bemusement, an attitude founded on her belief that the criticism simply reinforces her status as one of the contest’s front-runners.

“There seem to be a lot of people running against Marla Marshall, but none of them say who they’re running for,” said Marshall, an account manager with a title company and the former administrative assistant to 3rd District Councilwoman Gloria McColl.

“But that’s OK, because my opponents did the best thing they ever could have done for me by attacking me in the beginning. That really heightened my name recognition. If that continues, I’m not so sure that I wouldn’t welcome more of their attacks.”

Although he could be one of the prime beneficiaries of the campaign’s anybody-but-Marshall overtone, the Rev. George Stevens, a Democrat widely considered to be Marshall’s major opponent in the Sept. 15 primary, says that he is displeased that the race has taken on that texture--not so much because of political concerns, he insists, but rather because it paints a divisive picture of the heavily minority district.

Historic Race

“The people of the 4th District should not be placing emphasis on who they do not want--we have to accentuate the positive,” said Stevens, an aide to Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) and associate pastor at Calvary Baptist Church. “We should be talking about this community having the first opportunity in 19 years to elect a council member who was not first appointed, not worrying about trying to reject someone. This is an historic race for this district.”

Jones’ announcement that he intended to enroll at the Harvard Business School rather than seek reelection this fall touched off a political free-for-all in the 4th District, which includes Southeast San Diego, Paradise Hills, Logan Heights, Emerald Hills, Skyline and parts of Golden Hill and Encanto. At one time, more than a dozen potential candidates were seriously considering entering the campaign.

However, the complexion of the race changed dramatically last month when three major candidates--including lawyer Wes Pratt, tabbed as the early front-runner by most political consultants--were disqualified from the primary ballot for failing to secure sufficient valid signatures of registered voters on their nominating petitions. The top two vote-getters in the district primary will face each other in the November citywide general election.

Two of the disqualified candidates--businessman Richard (Tip) Calvin Jr. and radio broadcaster Gloria Tyler-Mallery--already have launched admittedly uphill write-in campaigns. Pratt, meanwhile, has asked the city clerk’s office to include him on the ballot, arguing that he “substantially complied with the intent” behind the nominating petitions despite falling 21 names short of the 200-signature requirement. If his request is rejected, Pratt said he might mount a write-in challenge.

The stunning shake-up in the 4th District field has transformed Marshall and Stevens from being simply two of a handful of strong contenders into the odds-on favorites to qualify for the citywide runoff. Both have financial backing and community support clearly superior to that of the three other candidates on the ballot--community activist De De McClure, U.S. postal worker Robert Maestas and Warren Nielsen, a property manager and frequent unsuccessful candidate.

Aside from the debate over Marshall’s candidacy, the race has been dominated by the candidates’ remarkably similar campaign pitches. In agreement on most major topics--notably, the need for a citizen review board to examine complaints against the Police Department--the candidates have spent less time debating specific issues than they have in blending blunt, no-nonsense talk about the 4th District’s daunting array of problems with lofty, if often general, visions for its future.

Encompassing some of San Diego’s most impoverished neighborhoods, the 4th District’s unemployment and crime rates are among the highest in the city. According to San Diego Police Department figures, the crime rate in portions of Southeast San Diego is nearly double the citywide average, and the number of violent crimes is three times higher--grim statistics that many attribute partly to a youth unemployment rate that approaches 45% in pockets of the community.

While the area includes some of San Diego’s most attractive hillsides and historic homes, those graceful elements are often largely obscured by the crime problems, as well as abandoned cars, lots with overgrown weeds, graffiti and tacky business strips that abound in the district.

Aware that the answer to those problems cannot be found solely at City Hall, the candidates argue that the new council member must strive to be, in Pratt’s words, “an educator, a motivator, an inspirational figure” who can mobilize citizens and the private sector to pick up where the impact of public dollars ends.

“Getting the district’s fair share of city services is only one part of this job,” Marshall said. “You need a very assertive mover-and-shaker who can also bring together all facets of the community, both inside and outside the district, to get things done.”

Her four years at City Hall on McColl’s staff, Marshall argues, make her that person.

“I know my way around City Hall,” said Marshall, who resigned from McColl’s staff when she began her campaign. “I could hit the ground running and not spend the first year and a half being a stranger on foreign soil. My ability to count to four or five (votes) from the beginning on that council floor is better than anyone else in this race.”

Marshall, 36, dismisses the furor produced by her move from Kensington to Encanto, where she lives with her two preteen children, as “just the frustration of a few people who want to call the shots” in the 4th District--a not-so-subtle reference to some prominent black leaders, including a number of her fellow Republicans, who tried unsuccessfully to persuade her to stay out of the race.

Common Boundary

Noting that McColl’s 3rd District shares a common boundary with the 4th District, Marshall also has tried to deflect the criticism by arguing that there are some overlapping concerns between the two districts.

“The problems on 65th and Imperial in the 3rd District,” Marshall said at one forum, are not that different from “those at 61st and Imperial in the 4th District.”

As of Aug. 1, Marshall had received campaign contributions totaling $72,052--three times more than her nearest competitor, Stevens, who had raised $23,183. In fact, Marshall’s contribution total--half of which came from development interests--exceeded the donations cumulatively raised by the seven other candidates in the race.

Her proven fund-raising prowess leads Marshall’s opponents to fear that if she finishes in the top two spots in the primary she could be unbeatable in the general election.

“We should try to get together so that we won’t have to contend with Marla Marshall in November,” said the Rev. George Walker Smith, one of the black community’s most visible political activists. “Any other two (candidates) on the ballot would be better for this community.”

Revitalization Needed

Like the other candidates, Marshall speaks of the need to push for added job opportunities in the district through the Southeast Economic Development Corp. and direct appeals to private companies. In order for those appeals to succeed, Marshall added, run-down portions of the district need to be revitalized through a public-private sector partnership--steps that she argues also could help reduce the area’s crime problems by encouraging citizens to take a more active role toward that end.

“It’s like buying a new car or new house--if you feel proud of something, you’re not going to tolerate drug dealers hanging around out front,” Marshall said. “If the drug and crime problems get cleaned up, it’s going to be as much because of what the people living here do as what the police do.”

Similarly, Stevens, 55, a talented public speaker whose pulpit-honed style has been a valuable asset in his campaign, tells audiences that, if elected, he would aim to “help set a moral tone and change attitudes” in the 4th District.

“An effective leader can do that,” said Stevens, who lives with his wife and four children in Emerald Hills. “We’ve got to change attitudes and say it’s unacceptable in this community to be a high school dropout. We’ve got to say it’s unacceptable in this community for babies to have babies, because that keeps generations of families on welfare. We’ve got to get the message across that leadership and the solution to our problems begin at home.”

Ran in 1960s

An unsuccessful council candidate in the early 1960s, Stevens has worked for Bates for the past 13 years and now serves as the congressman’s community representative. A veteran of numerous city boards and commissions, Stevens authored San Diego County’s affirmative action plan, helped establish district elections for school board races and was instrumental in the creation of the local Job Corps Center, a major youth employment training program.

Among the three other candidates on the ballot, McClure and Nielsen are longtime political activists who both have previously unsuccessfully run for public office.

A 53-year-old Encanto resident who ran in the 1983 4th District race, McClure serves on Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s Black Advisory Board and has emphasized her close ties to O’Connor in her campaign.

“I’d be the fifth vote that the mayor needs to carry out her agenda and my agenda,” said McClure, past president of the National Women’s Political Caucus.

More Accountability

That agenda includes McClure’s proposal for creation of a police commissioner to serve as a buffer between the police chief and city manager, a plan that she argues would “create much more accountability by the Police Department.” McClure also has called for periodic joint meetings of the City Council, Board of Supervisors and San Diego’s legislative delegations in Sacramento and Washington “to set common goals and develop strategies for achieving them.”

A frequent candidate perhaps best known for his unsuccessful efforts to persuade the Navy to build its new hospital in Helix Heights rather than Balboa Park’s Florida Canyon, Nielsen has sought to dispel the notion that this race is merely another of his quixotic campaigns, in part by spending $4,000 of his own money to date.

“Warren is really serious about this race,” his campaign manager said. Unfortunately for Nielsen, a 62-year-old design engineer and property manager, few others share that attitude.

Postal worker Maestas, meanwhile, says that he hopes to be “everyone’s second choice” in the primary. A 39-year-old Southeast San Diego resident who has lived in the district since childhood, Maestas describes himself as the candidate best able to represent the district’s “ethnic mix.”

In the wake of their nominating petition debacle, Pratt, Tyler-Mallery and Calvin are struggling to revive their candidacies through the write-in procedure, which historically has produced very few successes in San Diego politics.

Less Intimidating

But Tyler-Mallery argues that, with voter turnout expected to be less than 20% in the primary, the obstacles confronting a write-in candidacy are less intimidating than they would be in a high-profile, high-turnout election.

“The people who will vote in September are ones with very strong feelings and commitment to candidates,” said Tyler-Mallery, a 38-year-old gospel radio announcer. “If people support me, it’s no more trouble to write in my name than it is to punch a hole on the ballot. I’m telling people that this is a chance for them to extend their voting w-r-i-t-e-s.”

In announcing his write-in campaign, Calvin, a former police officer and head of a printing and publishing firm, took a verbal swipe at Marshall.

“This district must have a choice,” said Calvin, 51. “We will not allow time as an assistant to be the only reason to select our council person.”

His law-enforcement experience, Calvin adds, could be helpful in seeking ways to ease police-community tensions in the 4th District.

Will Go to Court

Distressed by the self-destruction of his once front-running campaign, Pratt has said that, if the city clerk’s office refuses to place his name on the ballot, he will go to court to press his case. If that appeal also fails, Pratt says, he may become the race’s third write-in candidate.

“The purpose of the petitions is to demonstrate some indication of a candidate’s public support,” said Pratt, 36, who now is on leave from his position as county Supervisor Leon Williams’ executive assistant. “I may have been a few signatures short, but I think I’ve clearly complied with the law’s intent.”

However, even some of Pratt’s past supporters contend that, in the unlikely event that his appeal is successful, the politically embarrassing episode--in particular, his failure to meet the relatively simple signature requirement--has irreparably undermined his campaign.

“There’s no way he could ever regain the momentum,” one of Pratt’s former prominent supporters said. “People have lost faith in him. I’ve lost faith in him. It was all there just waiting for him. But let’s face it. He blew it.”