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Donna Frye

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AS SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE GOES TO PRESS, Dick Murphy has been sworn in to a second term as mayor of San Diego. But the political and legal wrangling over the controversial write-in candidacy of Donna Frye is still playing out in the media and the courts. Councilmember Frye, a San Diego surfer girl–turned–political fireball, won international attention and churned up San Diego’s political waters with her 11th-hour bid for mayor. Regarded by some as a one-issue politico, Frye has strong environmentalist credentials tied to her long affinity for San Diego’s beaches and bays. She lives in her mother’s home in Clairemont with her husband, local surfing legend Skip Frye.

TOM BLAIR: So, have you formed your mayoral campaign committee for 2008 yet?

DONNA FRYE: [Long laughter] No.

TB: Don’t you want to start a bit earlier this time?

DF: Not that early. And I think the ethics are, you can’t start a campaign committee before you’re actually ready to run.

TB: It took some time for you to decide how and when and if you might challenge the results of the mayoral election. Why was that?

DF: The first of many issues [was] my ability to form a legal fund to defend the legitimacy of my write-in candidacy. Another question [was whether] we could form a legal defense fund if we decided to challenge the election outcome. And then it was just my soul-searching. Here’s the dilemma: It’s hard enough for me to figure out my brain in private. In public, it’s a lot harder. But there were a number of questions I [had] to ask myself, and the way I feel today is that it was about the principle that every vote should count. I’ve always been a champion of that. I wanted a complete tabulation of the election.

TB: Now that Murphy has been sworn in, and presuming that holds up in court, how do you feel about your decision to join the race so late in the game?

DF: I feel great!

TB: If you had gone through the primary campaign against Murphy or challenger Ron Roberts, do you think you could have made the runoff?

DF: Oh, absolutely.

TB: Then why didn’t you enter the primary?

DF: At the time, I really didn’t intend to run for mayor.

TB: What changed your mind?

DF: There were a number of circumstances, and events, and disclosure issues that never stopped. The secrecy never stopped. As a sitting councilmember, not being informed of what was actually going on got worse. It was the Chinese water torture. Another thing was that people were calling me and asking who I was going to vote for. I didn’t want to vote for either one of them. And I certainly wasn’t going to endorse either of them. And the calls and e-mails just kept building. And then, when I mentioned I’d seriously consider running, and that got out to the media, for four days my phone just never stopped ringing.

TB: From people urging you to run?

DF: Absolutely. People were frustrated and angry. and they said, “We need a choice.” Up to then, given the seriousness of what was going on at City Hall, I’d kept hoping one of the candidates would start advocating for real change. Instead, it was just watching two grown men name-calling. I never saw anybody stand up for the public.

TB: More than a few people—Ron Roberts among them—believe your 11th-hour candidacy split the anti-incumbent vote, leaving Murphy with his only chance to win reelection.

DF: What’s interesting is that when I first decided I was going to run, both candidates welcomed me. And I think they both believed it would help them. And I said no, it’s not going to help either one of you, because I don’t do this not to win. I don’t do this just to go through the drill.

TB: Let’s try a crystal ball in reverse. Do you think if you hadn’t been in the race, Ron would have won or Dick would have won?

DF: I just don’t know. I think one of the things the voters saw, and I experienced during the debate, was that Roberts was just very angry and really wasn’t offering many solutions—even though he said he had a plan. It was more like damnation and anger. And then there was Dick, who essentially was appearing to be wearing blinders. Who wasn’t quite understanding the reality of what was happening. And was trying to reassure people in a way that was really ringing hollow. I think a lot of people would have just not voted at all.

TB: Would you have voted?

DF: [Long pause] Yeah.

TB: Do you know who you would have voted for?

DF: I might have written my name in.

TB: There has been a charge that you, Murphy, the city clerk and city attorney might have conspired to defeat Roberts through your write-in candidacy in order to protect the considerable city pensions you might have lost had Roberts won. Roberts was on record as saying he would cut city pensions as mayor.

DF: [Protracted laughter] I’m sorry. When I first heard that, I had the same reaction. First of all, I didn’t vote to increase the benefits for the city employees union. Second, if you recall during the campaign, it was Dick Murphy who first brought up eliminating [a key perk of the pension] program. So that theory just blows up. The other thing is that anybody who’s been watching City Hall politics and thinks I was sitting with Dick Murphy conspiring to do anything—I mean, that’s a stretch.

TB: You’ve said that those who cited the city charter as grounds for nullifying your writein bid were guilty of sour grapes. That they wanted to change the rules to subvert the electoral process. But did you or anyone in your campaign research the city charter to see if it was legal before you launched your write-in campaign?

DF: Oh, yeah. I asked.

TB: Did you look at the city charter?

DF: No. I didn’t think it was illegal because there was a whole municipal code over nine pages that told how to do a write-in.

TB: But you knew the charter said that the two top vote-getters in the primary “shall be the only candidates in the general election” —that the winner must receive 50 percent plus one of the votes cast?

DF: No. I thought it said they’re the ones whose names can be printed on the ballot. But I can assure you that, in the future, I’ll make sure if there are any questions, I’ll get the answers in writing myself. When I talk about sour grapes, what I’m talking about is this: Had I not got as many votes as I did—if I had got 5 percent of the votes—I assure you there would have been no legal challenges. And you know, our city’s been ignoring the charter forever. If there’s an inconsistency, hey, let’s start with the pension system. The charter says you shall fully fund it.

TB: Most San Diegans know of your environmentalist credentials—hotelman Bill Evans once called you a “monomaniac” on the issue. But what do you think are the top five issues—apart from preserving the environment—that face San Diego in the next 10 years?

DF: I still go back to the basic tenets of an open government. That’s important because of how much money a secret government costs. By the time all is said and done, we could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars lost from the bad decisions we made behind closed doors.

TB: But what about issues the city faces in terms of jobs, growth, housing, traffic . . .

DF: I don’t want to get into minutia, but one of the things we need to have is an honest discussion about the cumulative impact of growth and development. That means we need to actually update the city’s progressguided general plan. First, you develop a vision of how you want the city to be. And then you adopt the zoning ordinances necessary to implement that. If we really want to address growth and how we want our city to look, we need to get very serious about updating the entire general plan.

TB: By most accounts, you’ve lived a hard life, surviving spousal abuse; recovering from alcoholism; working as a maid, a cook and restaurant hostess; going through a bitter divorce. And then, you become a city councilwoman at 49, and a viable candidate for mayor at 52. Can you pick out one thing that you believe turned your life around?

DF: My husband, Skip. I was still a drinker when we met, and having him in my life turned it around. That’s the way life works. Something shakes you up. He shook me into reality by not shaking me at all. There are people who come into our lives with this desire to lecture us, or yell at us, or control us. Skip would just walk away. Physically leave. He would just exit stage left. And that worked.

TB: During the hard times, did you ever imagine you’d be a serious contender for mayor of the seventh-largest city in the country?

DF: No. No. Not seriously. I loved politics, but not as a candidate. I was primarily behind the scenes. I did the grunt work. The research, writing, registering voters. I can remember setting up outside the unemployment office to register voters, and we couldn’t afford a table, so we had this old ironing board, and I’d throw a cloth over it. And people would be coming out of the unemployment office—and not in the best of moods—and here I am: “Come on, register and vote. It’ll make a difference. Jobs.” And people would look at me like I was nuts. But my enjoyment was in helping people understand their own power.

TB: The Chargers are having their first winning season in a decade. You’ve said your husband is a Chargers fan. And you’ve said you’re not totally opposed to a new stadium. Are you any more inclined to support a stadium now that we’re winning? Under what circumstances would you support it?

DF: That we not pay for it.

TB: Not a penny?

DF: I won’t say not a penny. But at this point, I’m not willing to make that a priority issue. We don’t even have an annual financial statement. So to even have these conversations, to make them serious conversations, would be a little disingenuous. To say, “Gee, we can’t even issue a financial report, but we’ll talk about going into some more bond indebtedness.” It’s irresponsible.

TB: Thank you.

DF: One more thing. In City Council chambers [on December 8, when Murphy was sworn in as mayor], I gave a little speech to my supporters, conceding nothing. But I did tell them about a British playwright, Tom Stoppard, and what he once wrote: “It’s not the voting that makes a democracy; it’s the counting.”

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