E-mails put California Coastal Commission member in awkward spot

A California Coastal Commission member already under investigation for a potential conflict of interest on a controversial project was put in an awkward position this week with the release of e-mails detailing a prominent lobbyist’s attempts to secure his vote.

E-mails between a hired lobbyist, developers and officials at the Port of San Diego reveal efforts to convince Commissioner Patrick Kruer to vote in favor of the multimillion-dollar project to revamp the downtown San Diego waterfront, a proposal ultimately defeated by the divided panel.

None of the messages suggest that Kruer violated any rules. But the correspondence does offer a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the tactics lobbyists employ while representing major projects before the commission, charged with regulating development along 1,100 miles of California coastline.

The e-mails describe lobbyist Susan McCabe drafting talking points for Kruer, discussing “spoon feeding” him information and asking port officials to contact officials in Sacramento to get them to sway Kruer. At one point, McCabe calls the commissioners who voted against the project “the toxic five.”

After Kruer forwarded McCabe a copy of local activists’ objections to the project on Feb. 3 asking, “Do you have anything to add to this?,” McCabe wrote to her staff saying, “Pat is looking for responses from us to give him ammunition to help us.”

In another e-mail to about a dozen staff members and port officials the same day, McCabe wrote “we should continue to identify people who know Pat who can call him to urge him to support this project.”

“Anyone who has relationships in the horseshoe [governor’s office] or Resources Agency … are encouraged to talk to them with the same message,” she wrote.

A few days later in a Feb. 7 e-mail to Shaun Sumner, senior asset manager for the Port of San Diego, McCabe wrote that Kruer “will recommend a yes vote” and discussed preparing talking points for him, attaching an example of such a document her firm had prepared “at Pat’s request” on a past project.

“It’s called spoon feeding — but we’re happy to do it! :-)” she wrote.

In an e-mail to The Times, Kruer said he was “offended by the tone of these e-mails.”

“As with all matters, I approach a decision with an open mind and a true desire to have all relevant facts,” wrote Kruer, who heads the Monarch Group, a La Jolla real estate investment firm, and has served on the coastal panel for more than a decade. “I never told anyone I would recommend a yes vote on the project.”

The e-mails were released as part of a lawsuit against the port by the Navy Broadway Complex Coalition, a group of local activists critical of the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan.

Reached by phone, McCabe, one of the principal lobbyists for developers, landowners and local governments before the Coastal Commission, declined to comment.

Ronald Powell, a Port of San Diego spokesman, apologized for the language McCabe used but said she was only doing what she was paid to do: be a hard-charging advocate for the project.

“The Port of San Diego disagrees with her choice of words,” Powell said. “We do not use that language ourselves.”

McCabe’s contract expired June 30 and hasn’t been renewed, he said. “We’re currently analyzing whether or not we will retain her,” Powell said.

The Coastal Commission has strict rules requiring commissioners to report their communications with supporters or foes of pending business.

It shouldn’t be a huge surprise that a coalition of people on both sides of a contentious issue — developers and conservationists — would be working behind the scenes to get commissioners to see things their way, said Jonathan Zasloff, a UCLA law professor who has studied the Coastal Commission.

“People have been working to influence commissioners since its origins,” Zasloff said. “But it’s usually done in a much more subtle way and not through direct back channels. It strikes me as quite ham-handed that they would do it that way.”

Kruer had been a vocal proponent of the first phase of the $228-million redevelopment of the waterfront in downtown San Diego. Coastal Commission staff recommended rejecting the project because the port had eliminated a public park called for in earlier plans.

When a vote on the project came in April, Kruer abstained because Coastal Commission staff had questioned him about his brother’s financial involvement in the project. Kruer’s brother Jonathan runs a construction management firm working on the planned revamp of the waterfront.

A few weeks later the California Fair Political Practices Commission confirmed that it was investigating Kruer for a potential conflict in response to a complaint by Ian Trowbridge, a member of the Navy Broadway Complex Coalition.

With Kruer recusing himself, the panel rejected the project by a 5-5 vote April 14, effectively killing the project for now.

tony.barboza@latimes.com