City Council Switches Rather Than Fight : Gives In to Wolfsheimer’s Challenge on Listing Ballot Endorsements

Faced with a legal challenge from one of its own, the San Diego City Council on Tuesday reversed itself and decided to sign endorsements on November ballot proposals by showing how the council voted on each of the endorsements.

Last month, council members had decided just to list “Mayor and City Council� on its endorsements, which will be printed in sample ballots and mailed to more than 500,000 registered voters in San Diego.

The council has taken a stand on five ballot proposals, including the potentially divisive measure rescinding the council’s decision to rename Market Street for slain civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.

But Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer--who opposed the council’s stand on the Market Street issue--complained that the endorsement signature would mislead voters into thinking the council was unanimous in all of its preferences. When her colleagues refused her first requests last month to change the way the endorsements were signed, she took the unusual step of filing a lawsuit in Superior Court against the city clerk and her colleagues to get her way.

That proved to be enough. When the city attorney urged council members to reconsider the matter on Tuesday, they voted 5-1 to change the ballot signatures to Wolfsheimer’s liking.

“I will support this because it provides more information to the public,� Councilwoman Judy McCarty said in discussion before Tuesday’s vote. “Why fight this in court?�

Dropped Court Action

After she proved she could fight City Hall, Wolfsheimer told reporters she would drop her court action.

She said she didn’t feel as much “vindicated as pleased that the voters will now be able to take in some information about the council’s position.�

Wolfsheimer referred to research by her attorney that showed the members of the council and County Board of Supervisors have been listed individually, by name, on previous ballots.

“If a voter likes a person’s philosophy and their judgment, then the voter has the opportunity to look to see how that council member voted,� she said. “If, on the other hand, the voter doesn’t like that council member or that council member’s philosophy . . . the voter can say, ‘Well, I think I’ll vote the other way.’ It gives him some freedom.�

As it remains now, it will take the curious voter some digging on his own to make that kind of comparison. City elections officer Jack Fishkin said the clerk’s office will list the numerical vote--not the names of individual council members--on the endorsements.

That won’t matter in three of the council’s endorsements. The council voted unanimously, with one member absent, when it voted last month to endorse $73-million and $93-million bond issues to make improvements to Balboa and Mission Bay parks as well as another measure to limit development in Mission Bay Park.

The critical issues, however, are two council endorsements having to do with Market Street and the proposed 5,100-acre La Jolla Valley project.

Council members voted, 5-3, to oppose the Market Street initiative, which would prevent the city from naming the thoroughfare for King. Wolfsheimer, Councilman Bill Cleator and Councilwoman Gloria McColl were in the minority on that vote.

Voter Approval

The council also voted, 7-1, to oppose the controversial La Jolla Valley project, which requires citywide voter approval because it is in the city’s urban reserve, acreage that is off-limits to development until 1995. Cleator was the only one voting contrary to that council stance.

Opposing Wolfsheimer’s motion Tuesday was Councilwoman Celia Ballesteros. She cautioned the council against changing its procedure for signing ballots in “midstream� and warned against taking any steps that could arouse ill feelings on the Market Street issue.

“I feel that it will exacerbate the divisiveness on this particular matter,� she said. “It has become very racial in connotation.�

Absent from Tuesday’s vote were Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Councilmen William Jones and Mike Gotch.