A Background to Ensure Success : Rise of Ballesteros to Council Seat No Fluke

During her unsuccessful 1983 campaign for the San Diego City Council, Celia Ballesteros half-jokingly described herself as “walking proof that . . . ‘Life Begins at 40.’ ”

Indeed, that adage seems particularly apt for a woman who, since passing that personal milestone, went to college while operating a restaurant and raising four children, ran a law practice while serving in myriad local and state organizations, and, on Monday, was appointed to the 8th District council seat that she narrowly lost to Uvaldo Martinez three years ago.

“Celia exemplifies the very best in any individual who takes advantage of the free-enterprise system, works hard and accomplishes a lot,” said Dr. Ralph Ocampo, a political activist who has known Ballesteros for about 10 years. “She’s a very involved, participatory person.”

Ballesteros’ friends and supporters say that their pleasure over her appointment is tempered only slightly by the knowledge that she will merely be a one-year caretaker at City Hall. Like other contenders for the vacancy created by Martinez’s November resignation in the wake of his guilty plea to two felony counts of misusing a city credit card, Ballesteros pledged not to run for election to the seat next fall.

Ballesteros herself admits to having bittersweet feelings about the appointment.

“Oh, a year is such a short time--and it gets shorter every day,” Ballesteros said, laughing. “Of course, I’d love to serve a full term. That’s why I ran last time. But it’s something I can’t change, so, like everything else, you try to do the best you can in the time you have.

“And I don’t care for the term ‘caretaker.’ That implies that you’re just going to be baby-sitting the office, which I certainly don’t intend to do. I plan to be a complete, active council member who will stimulate the start and completion of some projects. And I hope that will help to stimulate greater participation in the system by Latinos.”

While her current stay at City Hall will be relatively brief, many Ballesteros backers firmly believe that she eventually will seek another elective office and that the exposure she gains over the next year will be a valuable asset in any future campaign. Ballesteros says that elective office is “something I certainly hope” is in her future.

Friends and co-workers of the 55-year-old describe her as an intelligent, tenacious person whose diverse political and community activism demonstrates her abiding passion for improving conditions for the poor and disadvantaged.

“When you live in a community, it’s very natural, I think, to want to do what you can to improve it and help individuals and communities in need,” said Ballesteros, a Democrat who takes a moderate to liberal stance on most issues. “You cannot complain unless you are willing to put yourself on the line with your own time, money and efforts. That’s the test of commitment.”

Ballesteros’ activism and community involvement can be traced to lessons she learned while growing up as the second eldest of eight children in San Ysidro.

Born in East Los Angeles, Ballesteros was 6 when her family moved to San Diego. Her father was a Baptist minister--an unusual happenstance in the largely Catholic Latino community--who frequently called upon his congregation and family to help the poor in Tijuana and participate in a variety of other community activities.

“There was a strong, strong emphasis on service to the community,” Ballesteros recalled. “Sometimes it’s difficult to understand that when you’re a teen-ager. But my father taught us that it’s not enough to just stand by and criticize all the problems in the world. You have to get personally involved and try to change those things.”

Being a woman in what Ocampo decribed as a “ macho -oriented Hispanic culture” complicated, though failed to thwart, Ballesteros’ entry into political and business circles.

“That tradition that the woman should remain at home and raise the children is especially strong in the Latino community, so I did run into strong resistance from a few,” said Ballesteros, who married young and whose children now range in age from 26 to 32. “But, after a lot of inner turmoil and discovery, I knew that the energies within me didn’t respond to only being a wife and a mother.”

In 1969, Ballesteros and her husband opened a restaurant called La Posada del Sol in El Cajon. Shortly thereafter, the couple divorced, but Ballesteros continued to run the business and supervise its two dozen employees. Several years later, at age 40, she began undergraduate studies at the University of San Diego, sandwiching her classes between morning and evening stints at the restaurant.

After graduating with honors, Ballesteros sold the restaurant and entered USD’s School of Law in 1975. Three years later, she received her degree and the following year began working for a local law firm, later beginning her own practice.

At the same time, her political and community activism was growing exponentially. She helped establish the Chicano Federation, served on the county’s Juvenile Justice System and San Diego Citizens Interracial Committee and was a counselor at the Children’s Health Center. She also worked for numerous local political candidates and in 1979 was appointed by then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. to the California State University Board of Trustees for a term that expires next spring.

If Ballesteros’ background sounds like the archetypical pulling-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps story, it also has, in both her own and her supporters’ eyes, prepared her well for her new public role.

“She’s a self-made person who’s had to cope with trying to get an education while raising children and having to make a living, too,” said Assemblywoman Lucy Killea (D-San Diego). “That type of life experience is very useful for someone in public office. She’s a very pragmatic, goal-oriented, get-it-done kind of person.”

“ Tenacity is the best word to describe her,” Ocampo said. “She’s shown how, if you display stick-to-itiveness, the system ultimately responds.”

Tom Stickel, a Republican activist who serves with Ballesteros on the state university board of trustees, praised her as a “diligent, meticulous” person always well-versed on issues that come before the board.

“I’ve often been impressed and sometimes taken aback by her ability to pull out some pretty obscure issue or concern and make some very poignant observations on the basis of that,” Stickel said. “Collectively, we have some major philosophical differences, but that’s never gotten in the way of our working together. It would be foolish to ever underestimate her, and any City Council members who think they might be able to buffalo her would be making a big mistake.”

If Ballesteros has a shortcoming, Stickel and others say, it is that she sometimes has difficulty capsulizing her detailed knowledge of issues--an area in which Ballesteros admits she needs to improve.

“She has a tendency to articulate A through Z, and at times, it’s difficult to stay with her,” Stickel said. “In politics, it’s often the person who can best consolidate and condense who is most effective.”

Ballesteros’ ascension to the council via an appointment is tinged with irony because the cornerstone of her 1983 campaign was her staunch opposition to the appointment process, through which Martinez, a former city planner, was elevated to the council in 1982 to replace Killea after her election to the state Assembly.

“My opponent’s appointment undermines the democratic process of allowing the public to elect its own representatives,” Ballesteros said at the time.

Ballesteros herself, however, had sought appointment in 1981 to the 3rd District seat vacated by Republican Bill Lowery after his election to Congress. She ultimately was ruled ineligible for that appointment because, while she lived in the district, she was still registered to vote elsewhere.

After a race that was bitter and acrimonious on both sides, Ballesteros outpolled Martinez, 55%-39%, in the primary in the heavily Democratic district, but lost the citywide general election, 53% to 47%. Despite the loss, her strong showing figured prominently in her appointment; Mayor Maureen O’Connor repeatedly described Ballesteros as someone who had “actually gone before the voters of the district and been tried and tested.”

Ballesteros has argued that seeking the 8th District appointment this year did not contradict her earlier position because of her pledge not to use her appointive incumbency to get a leg up on the next election.

O’Connor’s strong backing of Ballesteros apparently has little to do with politics, because Ballesteros supported Republican Roger Hedgecock over fellow Democrat O’Connor in the 1983 mayoral campaign. In this year’s mayoral primary, Ballesteros endorsed Democrat Floyd Morrow, but, after Morrow was eliminated from the race, then switched to O’Connor in her runoff against Republican Councilman Bill Cleator.

“You did a good thing,” O’Connor whispered to Cleator on Monday after he and three other Republicans shifted their votes to Ballesteros, ending a 41-ballot deadlock on the appointment. “And, remember, she didn’t support you and she didn’t support me.”

When she and the five other finalists for the appointment were interviewed by the council last month, Ballesteros, conceding the obvious, acknowledged that the one-year term would make it difficult to leave a lasting mark on city government.

Regardless, she identified top priorities that include expediting the development of Otay Mesa, the widening of San Ysidro Boulevard and other transportation improvements in the area, resolving the issue of whether the city should memorialize the site of the McDonald’s massacre in San Ysidro, updating community plans and making progress on the homeless problem.

Killea even suggested that the brevity of Ballesteros’ term may offer certain advantages that could maximize her effectiveness.

“Because of the shortness of her term, she’ll realize that upsetting the apple cart isn’t the best way to get things done in government,” Killea said. “That’s a valuable lesson that others take years to learn. So maybe she’ll be able to get some good work done in a short time.”