Morrow Backs Bernhardt in Runoff in 5th

As she prepares for a bruising San Diego City Council runoff, land-use planner Linda Bernhardt on Friday received the endorsement of a former opponent whose votes she must attract in order to unseat 5th District Councilman Ed Struiksma in November.

At a news conference outside City Hall, Bernhardt, the first-place finisher in Tuesday’s primary, was endorsed by former City Councilman Floyd Morrow, who was eliminated when he finished third in the five-candidate race behind Bernhardt and Struiksma.

Bob Switzer, a minor candidate who finished last in the primary with only 393 votes, also threw his support to Bernhardt.

Assuming that there are no defections from either’s constituency base, the runoff battle between Bernhardt and Struiksma will largely turn on which candidate does the better job of appealing to the former supporters of Morrow, who drew 20.3% of the primary vote. And, though Morrow was vague Friday about how--or whether--he can help deliver those votes to Bernhardt, the endorsement by the former three-term 5th District councilman is at least a small step in that direction.

“I want to get rid of Ed Struiksma,” Morrow said. “Ed Struiksma is not good for our community, he’s not good for the city. . . . Linda is a great step up.”

Stressing that he does not plan to spend “a lot of my own money” to inform voters of his preference for Bernhardt, Morrow said simply that his “credibility with longtime supporters” would help him to do so. In addition, Morrow noted that his opinions about the runoff will be evident in the community newspaper that he publishes, News and Views--a paper that, though he officially relinquished control of it during the primary, was hardly friendly in its treatment of Struiksma.

Her own plans for trying to capitalize on Morrow’s backing, Bernhardt said, are limited to publicizing the endorsement at Friday’s news conference.

Value of Endorsement

Unperturbed by Friday’s developments, David Lewis, Struiksma’s campaign consultant, said he believes that “a certain core of voters will be affected by what Floyd has to say.” But that number is much smaller than the amount of votes that Morrow received in the primary, Lewis argued.

“Do I think that Floyd’s 20% immediately transfers to Linda Bernhardt? Not for one minute,” Lewis said.

Struiksma, who is running for a third four-year term, also argues that he is “much more compatible” with Morrow’s supporters than Bernhardt.

Lewis had a similarly dismissive attitude toward another proposal that Bernhardt made at Friday’s news conference calling for a spending limit in the runoff, a self-imposed ban on contributions from developers and a “fairness pledge” to conduct a high-road, issue-oriented campaign. Bernhardt, who spent about $40,000 in the primary--only about one-sixth of Struiksma’s total--proposed a spending ceiling of $73,914, a figure that equals $1 for each of the district’s registered voters.

“I’ve proved, as did (3rd District) Councilman-elect John Hartley, that you don’t need to spend $300,000 to win district elections,” Bernhardt said. “Ed Struiksma must finally stop taking contributions from developers with projects before the city.”

Responded Lewis: “If we could believe Linda and all the things she says in her pledge, we might consider it. But we can’t, and we won’t. Besides, it would be very hypocritical of Ed Struiksma at this point to reverse his position that he’ll take contributions from any legitimate source.”

That issue aside, the vote breakdown from Tuesday’s primary clearly shows that the 3,758 votes Morrow received in the primary will be the major battleground in the runoff.

According to final unofficial totals, Bernhardt received 7,203 votes (38.9%) and Struiksma, 6,058 votes (32.7%), in the primary. With Switzer and the fourth-place finisher, lawyer Mike Eckmann, accounting for only 8.2% of the vote, Morrow’s voters loom as the major unclaimed constituency available in the runoff.

Bernhardt, a former aide to Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, carried most major neighborhoods in the 5th District, including Mira Mesa, Scripps Ranch and Serra Mesa. In the Scripps Ranch-Miramar area, where Struiksma’s support of the controversial Miramar Ranch North housing project has aroused intense opposition, Bernhardt ran ahead of Struiksma--in fact, received more votes than the four other candidates combined--by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, 1,569 votes to 888.

Throughout the district, the only area where Bernhardt ran behind Struiksma was in a small portion of Kearny Mesa near Montgomery Field, where Struiksma’s role in the establishment of a noise-monitoring system obviously paid dividends. Morrow, meanwhile, led the field in East Clairemont and Linda Vista, areas where he has lived and worked for years and that have long constituted the nucleus of his political base.

A similar statistical picture emerges in the 1st District, where incumbent Wolfsheimer will face former county supervisorial aide Bob Trettin this fall in her bid for a second term.

Just as the division of Morrow’s votes will be a critical factor in the 5th District, the ballots of 1st District’s third-place finisher Harry Mathis--who narrowly missed qualifying for the runoff, trailing Trettin by only 109 votes--will play a pivotal role in determining the Wolfsheimer-Trettin showdown.

Mathis has not indicated whether he intends to make an endorsement in the runoff.

In a strong showing against two well-funded, aggressive opponents that surprised even some of her top advisers, Wolfsheimer led the primary with 11,300 votes (43.3%), followed by Trettin with 7,460 votes (28.6%) and Mathis with 7,351 votes (28.1%).

Wolfsheimer outpolled Trettin in every community in the 1st District, carrying every neighborhood with the exception of University City, where Mathis lives and received a plurality. Her widest margins were in Del Mar Heights, where she received more votes than Trettin and Mathis combined, and La Jolla, where she drew 46% of the vote. She also narrowly carried vote-rich Rancho Bernardo and even outdistanced Trettin in his home community of Rancho Penasquitos.

“The key is where Harry’s votes go, and I think I’m better positioned to get most of those,” Trettin said of the runoff. “Harry and I said a lot of the same things on most issues. Plus, I think a lot of his votes, like mine, came from people who want to see someone other than Abbe at City Hall.”

But Wolfsheimer campaign consultant Dick Dresner professed confidence about Wolfsheimer’s ability to appeal to Mathis’ backers, particularly taking comfort in statistical analyses.

“We only need to pick up about 7% of Mathis’ votes, and I think we’ll be able to do that,” Dresner said. “Even if you grant that there’s some anti-incumbent sentiment there, we only need to get about a fourth of his votes to win. Trettin needs just about all of them.”

HOW NEIGHBORHOODS VOTED

1st District

NEIGHBORHOOD Wolfsheimer Trettin Mathis Rancho Bernardo 2,056 1,839 1,059 Rancho Penasquitos 1,549 1,396 715 Del Mar Heights 856 409 387 University City 1,625 587 1,836 La Jolla 2,182 855 1,680 Absentee ballots 3,032 2,374 1,674 Total 11,300 7,460 7,351

5th District

NEIGHBORHOOD Bernhardt Struiksma Morrow Eckmann Switzer Mira Mesa 2,026 1,735 594 250 91 Scripps Ranch-Miramar 1,569 888 178 283 27 Clairemont 742 576 944 126 71 Kearny Mesa 46 142 30 5 4 Serra Mesa 853 787 552 93 52 Mission Valley 79 65 39 10 5 Linda Vista 567 541 663 92 51 Absentee ballots 1,321 1,324 758 268 92 Total 7,203 6,058 3,758 1,127 393

SOURCE: San Diego County registrar of voters.