Victory by O’Connor Was Truly Sweeping

Displaying strong citywide strength that she likened to “getting a straight-A report card,” San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor carried every neighborhood throughout the city, most of them by large margins, in her resounding reelection victory in last Tuesday’s mayoral primary.

Final, unofficial vote totals released by the county registrar of voters’ office showed that O’Connor, a Democrat who historically has run well in the minority communities in the southern half of San Diego, dramatically expanded that base of support by carrying traditional Republican strongholds and other areas that she said she has “never, ever carried throughout my political career.”

Besides carrying areas such as Rancho Bernardo and Point Loma where Democrats usually run poorly, O’Connor also handily defeated her only major opponent, former San Diego City Councilman Floyd Morrow, in the neighborhoods where he works and lives--Linda Vista and Clairemont, respectively.

“I think this is going to be a tough act for anyone to follow, myself included,” O’Connor said of her across-the-board sweep of the city’s neighborhoods. “I mean, every single neighborhood? That may never happen again. I never carried some of these areas before and I may never carry them again. But it’s a good feeling to realize that, community by community, the city is responding so positively to what I’ve been trying to do.”

O’Connor received 124,222 votes (59.6%) in last Tuesday’s election, easily surpassing the majority vote needed to avoid a November runoff--thereby becoming only the fourth San Diego mayor to be reelected outright in the primary, according to the final unofficial returns. Morrow drew 69,974 votes (33.5%), and the three minor candidates on the ballot--businessman Charles Ulmschneider, semi-retired public relations official John Kelley and City Hall gadfly Rose Lynne--were distant also-rans, receiving 6.9% among them.

The figures released by the registrar’s office showed that O’Connor not only carried every neighborhood, but also outpolled the combined vote totals of her four opponents in every community. O’Connor’s smallest vote percentage in any individual neighborhood was 50.4% in Loma Portal, a conservative community where she lost to then-Republican Councilman Bill Cleator, 63% to 37%, in the special 1986 mayoral race, while some of her most lopsided majorities came in neighborhoods such as Southeast San Diego and San Ysidro, where she took about 70% of the vote.

Growth-Management Policies

O’Connor also ran particularly strong in a number of communities in northern San Diego, including Penasquitos, Del Mar Heights, University City, Mira Mesa and the Scripps Ranch-Miramar area. Noting that urban sprawl is a major concern in those communities because that is where most recent growth has occurred, O’Connor attributed her success there to her strong growth-management policies.

Any analysis of O’Connor’s impressive citywide showing is blurred somewhat by the fact that Morrow, too, is a Democrat, meaning that Republican voters had no partisan alternative. However, with Morrow having been O’Connor’s only major opponent, the mayor argues that many Republicans probably supported him simply as a protest vote.

“Floyd’s at least a businessman, so that might have appealed to some Republicans,” O’Connor said. “Besides, they really had no where else to turn.”

O’Connor, however, even managed to easily defeat Morrow, in the mayor’s words, “in his own back yard.” In Linda Vista, where Morrow has a long-established law practice, O’Connor won, 53.6%-41.3%, and the mayor also carried Clairemont, where Morrow lives, 54.3% to 39.4%

The vote totals show that O’Connor, against the backdrop of relatively weak opposition, this year completed an alteration of some traditional voting patterns that she began in the 1986 mayoral race.

In the 1983 mayoral election that O’Connor narrowly lost to Hedgecock, 52% to 48%, there was a clear north-versus-south division of votes, with Hedgecock receiving much of his support from the largely white, relatively affluent neighborhoods north of Interstate 8. In contrast, most of O’Connor’s votes came from poor and middle-class communities populated heavily by racial and ethnic minorities--traditional strongholds for Democratic candidates.

Two years ago, in her 55%-45% victory over Cleator, O’Connor partly erased that political line of demarcation, maintaining her strong base in southern San Diego but also carrying some of the northern, heavily Republican neighborhoods won by Hedgecock in 1983 and again in his successful 1984 reelection against businessman Dick Carlson. O’Connor, for example, edged Cleator in Rancho Penasquitos and ran ahead of him by margins of up to 3 to 2 in areas such as Del Mar Heights, University City and Mira Mesa.

This year, O’Connor not only increased her margin in those northern communities--to better than 2 to 1 in some areas--but also carried the handful of neighborhoods that Cleator had won in 1986, including Rancho Bernardo, La Jolla, Scripps Ranch-Miramar, Tierrasanta, San Carlos-Navajo, Loma Portal and Point Loma.

In the 1986 race, for example, O’Connor lost Rancho Bernardo to Cleator 51%-49%, but carried the neighborhood, 63% to 32%, over Morrow. Similarly, in Point Loma, where Cleator had trounced O’Connor by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, she won this year 51% to 43%.

The most dramatic gap between O’Connor and Morrow was in the minority communities of southern San Diego, where the mayor eclipsed her challenger by margins ranging up to 4 to 1.

In Southeast San Diego, Encanto, Paradise Hills and the Chollas area, O’Connor drew 12,916 votes (68.3%), contrasted with 4,593 votes (24.3%) for Morrow. O’Connor’s victory margin was even greater within some of those individual communities, as in Southeast San Diego, where she received 72% of the vote.

O’Connor also easily outdistanced Morrow in the heavily Latino South Bay communities of San Ysidro, Otay and Nestor, receiving 4,309 votes (65.5%) to Morrow’s 1,666 (25.3%).

SAN DIEGO MAYORAL VOTE BY NEIGHBORHOOD

NEIGHBORHOOD O’Connor Morrow Others Rancho Bernardo 5,560 2,822 452 Penasquitos 4,266 1,965 427 Del Mar Heights 2,261 1,057 201 University City 5,915 2,570 510 La Jolla 4,814 2,802 489 Mira Mesa 4,889 2,499 455 Scripps Ranch-Miramar 2,273 1,218 176 Clairemont 11,778 8,545 1,365 Tierrasanta 2,404 1,454 250 San Carlos-Navajo 9,027 6,184 1,096 Serra Mesa-Linda Vista 4,844 3,496 567 Pacific Beach 5,280 3,109 214 Mission Beach-Bay area 802 515 71 Ocean Beach 2,390 1,418 314 Midway-Old Town 1,105 636 138 Mission Hills 1,617 1,021 167 Hillcrest 2,599 1,342 289 North Park 4,200 2,252 600 Normal Heights 4,233 2,423 580 State College area 2,648 1,576 299 South Park-East San Diego 7,873 4,353 1,138 Downtown-Golden Hill 2,766 1,503 393 Loma Portal 1,861 1,607 221 Point Loma 1,701 1,429 221 Southeast San Diego-Chollas- Encanto-Paradise Hills 12,916 4,593 1,411 South Bay-Otay-Nestor- San Ysidro 4,309 1,666 602 Absentee ballots 9,891 5,919 1,761 Total 124,222 69,974 14,407

SOURCE: San Diego County Registrar of Voters office.