Growth Is Key Issue in 2 City Council Races : Election: Results in the 1st and 5th districts could prove crucial in setting the city’s course on development.

Although his San Diego City Council candidacy ended in the September primary, lawyer Mike Eckmann’s characterization of the 5th District race lingers as a succinct summary of the choice facing voters in next Tuesday’s runoff election.

“Ed’s the developers’ vote on the council, Linda’s the environmentalist, and I’m the moderate,” said Eckmann, who finished fourth in the five-candidate primary. “I’ll build houses, but not as many as Ed or as few as Linda.”

Eckmann’s elimination from the race leaves the rest of the electoral equation intact as it relates to Councilman Ed Struiksma and challenger Linda Bernhardt. Had Eckmann been in the 1st District race, he would have occupied a similar middle ground between Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer and former City Hall staffer Bob Trettin, the finalists in the only other race on next Tuesday’s ballot.

Indeed, after months of debate and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign expenditures, both races will turn largely on the candidates’ divergent positions on growth--long a mainstay in San Diego politics. Whatever other differences, in style or substance, exist between the candidates--and there are many--those distinctions offer only a subplot to two campaigns that will determine the council’s ideological balance on the politically volatile growth issue.

Both races provide a compelling philosophical split on the growth-control question, giving voters in the respective districts a clear choice.

In the 1st District, Wolfsheimer, who is seeking a second four-year term, has been rated by the Sierra Club as the second most reliable pro-environmental vote on the council, while Trettin has been endorsed by the Building Industry Assn. and has received a sizable portion of his $211,851 in campaign contributions from development interests.

Struiksma, meanwhile, has built a solidly pro-development record during his eight years on the council--so much so that opponents have hung the derisive moniker “Bulldozer Ed” on him. In contrast, Bernhardt, a land-use consultant who outpolled Struiksma in the primary, 39% to 33%, has been endorsed by the Sierra Club and a handful of other environmental groups.

“Growth certainly is the issue this year,” Wolfsheimer said. “That brings with it a lot of sub-issues--crime, sewage problems, dirty air, traffic, the threat of a limited water supply. But it all comes back to what you do to control growth.”

With the two other council seats at stake this year having been decided in the primary, the outcome in the two remaining runoffs will, to a large extent, preordain the council’s approach to growth-management over the next two years.

Victories by Wolfsheimer and Bernhardt, coupled with John Hartley’s primary upset of 3rd District Councilwoman Gloria McColl, would create a solid managed-growth majority on a council that has been dominated in recent years by the conservative “Gang of Five.” Conversely, a Struiksma-Trettin tandem victory would preserve the conservative coalition’s domination, whereas a victory by only one of them would create a nearly even balance, giving more clout to several “swing” councilmen.

If for no reason other than the fact that Tuesday’s races mark the first district-only council runoffs in nearly 60 years, the results are certain to be closely scrutinized for evidence of how voters’ narrow approval last November of the election-system shift has altered the dynamics of council campaigns.

McColl’s defeat, combined with Wolfsheimer’s and Struiksma’s tough battles for survival, vividly demonstrates how incumbents are much less secure under district-only races than the city’s former two-tiered format of district primaries followed by citywide runoffs between the top two vote-getters.

Under the former system, candidates had to rely largely on expensive television and radio ads to reach a citywide audience, putting a premium on name recognition and fund raising and thereby generally favoring incumbents. District contests, however, are often described as political guerrilla warfare, with the major weapons being door-to-door politicking and carefully targeted mailers--changed political realities that, to date, challengers appear to have grasped better than incumbents.

Another common assumption about district elections--that they will reduce campaign costs--has already been disproved before Election Day. Indeed, though council candidates now face constituencies only one-eighth the size of the former citywide electorate, the smaller jurisdictions clearly have not translated to less expensive campaigns.

The two races’ combined price tag likely will approach $1 million, comparable to the amount typically spent under the city’s former district-citywide election system.

Repeating the pattern of her 1985 campaign, in which $229,000 of the $313,000 that she spent came from her own pocket, Wolfsheimer has again relied heavily on her own money to outspend Trettin this fall. As of Oct. 21, Wolfsheimer had spent $265,684--$180,000 of it her own money--and since has loaned $20,000 more to her campaign, while Trettin’s $211,851 total includes a $10,000 personal loan.

Struiksma, who has out-raised all other candidates this year, is heavily outspending Bernhardt in the 5th District, partly because of the challenger’s self-imposed runoff spending ceiling of $73,914--a figure that equals $1 for each of the district’s registered voters. Campaign finance reports filed last week show that Struiksma has received $322,710 in contributions, contrasted with $69,676 for Bernhardt--30,200 of that her own money.

Much of that money has been spent in an effort to convince voters that the respective candidates are the ones best equipped to manage the problems and opportunities posed by San Diego’s continuing rapid growth.

Viewing her pro-environmental record as her strongest asset in her northern San Diego district, where much of the city’s recent growth has occurred, Wolfsheimer has sought to keep the campaign’s dialogue focused on that issue. The district stretches along the coast from La Jolla to North City West, extending inland to Rancho Bernardo and the San Pasqual Valley.

“I’m the limited-growth candidate who’s out there saying, ‘Hey, let’s stop until we get control of what we’ve already got,” said Wolfsheimer, a 50-year-old former law professor. Emphasizing the election’s potential to shift the council’s balance, she also tells campaign audiences that her reelection would help create “a limited growth and environmental coalition that will put the needs of the people . . . before the desires of take-a-buck, make-a-buck and pass-the-buck.”

But Trettin, whom Wolfsheimer derisively dismisses as “Bulldozer Bob,” primarily because of his financial backing from development interests, has refused to, in his words, “wear the black hat” that the incumbent seems to trying to fit him for.

“Anyone who drives on the freeways and streets of the 1st District knows that, if anything, traffic and other growth problems have gotten worse over the past four years,” said Trettin, who has offered proposals for limiting housing density. “If this is what Abbe calls growth-management, the district and the city can’t stand four more years of it.”

A former aide to county Supervisor Susan Golding and, before that, to Councilman Bill Mitchell, who was unseated by Wolfsheimer in 1985, Trettin stresses in his standard stump speeches that the district’s population has grown by 35% over the past years--growth that Wolfsheimer terms the “left-over mess” that she inherited from Mitchell. Regardless, Trettin, 35, also faults Wolfsheimer for failing to secure sufficient funding from developers to pay for parks, libraries and other public facilities.

Trying to turn the growth issue back upon Wolfsheimer, Trettin notes that she, too, has accepted developer donations and has accused her of arranging for development of a 988-acre tract in Valley Center that she is in the process of selling. In response, Wolfsheimer characterizes those charges as little more than Trettin’s attempt to confuse voters and obscure “the share of the blame he deserves” for problems that occurred during Mitchell’s tenure.

Although Wolfsheimer led the three-candidate primary with 43% of the vote, Trettin’s campaign received a significant boost when he was endorsed last month by third-place finisher Harry Mathis, whom he edged by 116 votes to qualify for the runoff. Still, Dick Dresner, Wolfsheimer’s consultant, takes comfort in the statistical fact that Trettin, who drew 29% in the primary, “has a lot more ground to make up” to reach 50% than Wolfsheimer.

By minimizing the impact of Wolfsheimer’s personal wealth, the switch to district-only races significantly enhances his chances in the runoff, Trettin argues.

“Instead of starting over in a new, bigger race, I’m going around the same track for a second time,” Trettin said.

One notable difference from the primary campaign is that much less has been made of Wolfsheimer’s often abrasive comments and her argumentative, sometimes patronizing style--factors that have alienated both her council colleagues and community leaders. In the primary, Wolfsheimer exacerbated that liability through an ill-chosen remark suggesting that wealthy politicians are brighter and less corruptible than poorer ones.

Praised by supporters as a fiercely independent, uncompromising devotee to principle, Wolfsheimer softened that criticism by proudly noting that “whatever fighting I’ve done is for my district.” That argument, combined with her avoidance of another verbal gaffe in the runoff, has largely eliminated her style as a major issue.

In the 5th District, arguably the major obstacle faced by Struiksma in his bid for a third term involves his attempt to turn the election into more a referendum on Bernhardt than a judgment on his own eight-year record. Even his own consultant, however, concedes that, in so doing, the 42-year-old Struiksma is bucking historical electoral patterns.

“Any time an incumbent seeks reelection, it’s certainly a job-performance evaluation,” Struiksma consultant David Lewis said. In the primary, that evaluation turned out poorly for Struiksma, who finished second behind Bernhardt, 39% to 33%, a disappointing performance that the incumbent attributes to “four opponents and several so-called independent groups . . . knocking me with a constant onslaught of misinformation.”

Nevertheless, Struiksma says he welcomes voters’ examination of his record, which he extolled with the slogan “Getting Things Done”--and a list of nearly 100 neighborhood-by-neighborhood accomplishments--in the primary. However, the former police officer also hopes that voters pay at least as much attention to the major question that he has posed about Bernhardt: “Is this all there is?”

“People keep looking for the substance behind Linda Bernhardt but are not finding it,” Struiksma said. “When they look for programs, they’re non-existent. When they look at where she wants to go with the city and the district, the answer remains in the fog.”

Trying to maintain a front runner’s above-the-fray stance, Bernhardt, a 30-year-old Scripps Ranch resident, has generally dismissed Struiksma’s criticisms as an attempt to deflect attention from his record of “uncontrolled development at any cost.” Like Trettin in the 1st District, Bernhardt also has benefited from the endorsement of the primary’s third-place finisher--former City Councilman Floyd Morrow, who drew 20% of the vote and maintains a strong following in parts of the 5th District.

Though rated by the Sierra Club as the most anti-environmental member of the City Council, Struiksma describes his record as one that reflects a “common sense, balanced approach” to growth--using statistics detailing the city’s growth to bolster his argument. In 1986, Struiksma notes, more than 19,000 homes were built in San Diego, a figure that dropped last year to about 4,100.

“If that doesn’t indicate that the City Council is controlling growth, nothing else will,” Struiksma said.

One of Bernhardt’s major growth-control proposals calls for a ban on development along the Interstate-15 corridor until traffic is reduced and related problems alleviated. She also has proposed expedited expansion of the San Diego Trolley, increased public transportation funding and economic incentives for car pooling.

“We’ve got to put the pressure on now,” Bernhardt said. “To make progress, we have to hammer everyone over the head to bring them to the negotiating table.”

Struiksma, however, argues that an I-15 building moratorium would be ineffective because nearly half of the traffic that passes over the 5th District’s part of the freeway originates outside the city of San Diego. Many of her other traffic-reduction plans, he adds, are “ideas that she’s stolen from me.”

“It looks like she’s gone to the Joe Biden School of politics,” Struiksma said, referring to the U.S. senator from Delaware who dropped out of last year’s Democratic presidential campaign amid charges of plagiarism.

Moreover, although he agrees with Bernhardt that the growth issue is a pivotal one in the campaign, Struiksma accuses her of “trying to turn this race into a one-issue oversimplification.”

“There are a lot of other issues she doesn’t address--perhaps because she can’t--and some that she’d just as soon not have people think about,” Struiksma said.

In the latter category, Struiksma has attempted to raise questions about Bernhardt’s character by accusing her of defaulting on a $4,955 student loan in New Jersey. Though Bernhardt admits that she missed several payments while unemployed because of a work-related injury, she denies ever technically being in default, saying that the loan is “current and being paid off.”

Struiksma also has criticized Bernhardt for refusing to debate before several community groups in the district, which is bordered on the south by Mission Valley and extends from Linda Vista north to Mira Mesa, passing through Kearny Mesa and Serra Mesa as it reaches east to Scripps Ranch. Arguing that those meetings were stacked with Struiksma supporters, Bernhardt notes that she did consent to five other debates.

“No one’s had any trouble finding out where we stand--and that’s Ed’s problem,” Bernhardt said. “I don’t think I’ve suffered 1% as a result of his smear tactics. I sense that people are upset that Ed has stooped to the gutter. On Election Day, I think they’ll let him stay there.”