Laurie Black

Dialogue with Tom Blair

A CIVIC AND POLITICAL ACTIVIST in San Diego for more than 20 years, Laurie Black is the newest appointee to the San Diego Port Commission. A lifelong and outspoken Democrat in what was heavily Republican San Diego, she’s managed to make friends in both parties. Black, who served as chief of staff to one-term Congresswoman Lynn Schenk in the early 1990s and was active in John Kerry’s 2004 campaign for president, also has served as a San Diego library commissioner and member of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Board. All of this she’s accomplished while being wife to developer Bob Lawrence and mother to three sons and a daughter. She lives in Mission Hills.

TOM BLAIR: You have a reputation for not mincing words. You’re not going to start now, are you?

LAURIE BLACK: No.

TB: Good. You won a second chance in three months for an appointment to the Port Commission, and the second time was a slam dunk . . .

LB: Well, nothing’s a slam dunk after George Bush.

TB: But the first time around, you got sort of ambushed. You’ve been a Democrat and labor supporter all your life. Did you feel cheated when your union friends supported your Republican opponent Steve Cushman?

LB: This started back in November, when I read a newspaper editorial that said, “Isn’t there anybody else?” Steve Cushman was going to be reappointed to the commission; the city council was going to waive term limits. And I thought, well, this is something I’ve wanted to do. I’d applied to the Port in 2002 and was not appointed. So I did the Library Commission and other things. But my heart has always been on the waterfront. I sat on the Regional Water Quality Board; my background and experience were on the waterfront. So I made a couple of phone calls.

TB: But the fix was already in for Cushman?

LB: I don’t know if it was a fix. He clearly worked it. He had commitments, but I was able to have Councilmen Scott Peters and Jim Madaffer nominate me, so I went for it. But yes, I was shocked, frankly, that people I’ve worked with——the Environmental Health Coalition, certainly labor——didn’t support me the first time.

TB: Now that you’ve won appointment, do you feel it’s going to be easy to work with Steve Cushman?

LB: I think we’re probably going to agree more than disagree. Our styles are very different. I’m not a microphone person. I don’t need to be at the microphone. I take all of the information in, and I’m very collaborative. I can work with a lot of agencies simultaneously and not worry about who’s taking credit.

TB: You’ve long been a champion of what could be called lost causes in this traditionally conservative city: women’s rights; gay rights; advocacy for the homeless; even Democratic politics. Where or who does this come from?

LB: My mom and dad. Both of them are educators. My dad was a high school football coach, which explains why I never dated a football player. Nobody would come to the door. I was always Coach Black’s daughter; I am still Coach Black’s daughter.

TB: Football coach, political activist——those don’t seem to follow.

LB: But remember the Vietnam War. My dad had players who were brilliant guys, who left Troy High School, Fullerton Junior Collage, Santa Ana College——they left for the war. And when they came back, if they came back . . . I remember one guy, Andy, came home with both legs lost and one arm gone. We saw a lot. And my dad went from a crewcut coach, in 1964, to long hair, mustache and guitar-playing football coach in 1968. In 1964: Republican; 1968: Democrat.

TB: Where was your mother in all of this?

LB: She went back to school. She had gone to Berkeley and UCLA, but then got married in the ’50s, and I was born. She stayed home for 10 years, raising three kids, and by 1968, she was in kind of a consciousness-raising mode and went back and got her bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

TB: So all of the political issues you’ve championed have family roots?

LB: The women’s issues, definitely. I grew up as a feminist, and I’m a very proud feminist today. I had a chance, a couple of years ago, to thank Gloria Steinem personally. The homeless issue? The mental health issue? I have a brother, my youngest brother, who is schizophrenic.

TB: He’s homeless?

LB: Not anymore. He’s married today. And he’s amazing.

TB: He’s taking medication?

LB: Yup. And he’s probably the smartest of the three of us kids. He had a predisposition for schizophrenia. My brother is a part of a study at Johns Hopkins of Ashkenazi Jews——the immigrants who came from Russia and Poland. There is a higher incidence of schizophrenia among these people. My brother took a dive off the Coronado Bridge, midspan, back in 1988 and survived. He’s a paranoid schizophrenic, so he had auditory hallucinations; he heard voices saying, “Jump, jump.” So he did. The Navy SEALs were doing maneuvers on a Sunday morning, and they saved him. In 1993, he was shot——what they call a police-assisted suicide attempt. He went to a Grossmont Center jewelry store with a steak knife and said, “Call the police.” He wanted to be shot. Instead of being sent to jail, which the D.A. really wanted to do, he ended up going to a locked facility where he met Judy Hoffman, who also had some issues. The bottom line is, they fell in love, and my nice Jewish brother married a nice Jewish Valley Girl. He’s now working at a hospital where once, when he was so ill, they wouldn’t even let him in.

TB: As the wife of a developer——there’s a neat segue——you’re uniquely qualified to understand how developers might feel about the brickbats often thrown their way. Doug Manchester has taken more than the average share for his various projects. You’ve been outspoken about his Broadway Pier/Navy project——saying something better could be done there. You mentioned a Hollywood Bowl–type facility.

LB: I was profiled by your magazine about 10 years ago, and I said then that downtown was like pieces of a quilt that needed to be pulled together. Ten years later, I feel the same way. I don’t know if those involved with Lane Field and a potential cruise-ship terminal and Mr. Manchester are talking and connecting it all. When you have the type of weather we do, and the waterfront we have, the lack in this particular city of a place to celebrate is just wrong. I believe in celebrating and mourning. And in music.

TB: Do we need more hotels on the waterfront?

LB: We need hotels downtown, particularly if we go on expanding the convention center. Should they be on the waterfront? Probably not.

TB: Is the cruise-ship industry in San Diego as strong as it could be?

LB: When I was chief of staff to Lynn Schenk, she sat on the maritime committee in Washington. She wrote the cruise ship legislation, which eventually passed, that boosted cruises to San Diego. We should have more ships coming in. This is a natural for us. If you ask the Port Tenants Association, it’s wonderful for them. It’s great to have concerts on the bay. It’s wonderful if we have tidelands properties available for both tourists and residents——in all the cities, including National City, Chula Vista and Coronado.

TB: What about shipbuilding? When you were up against Cushman for appointment to the Port Commission, you said, “He’s about business, and I’m about making this a place for all San Diegans.” Shouldn’t it be both?

LB: Yes. It’s balance. Quality of life is balance. I’m a great believer in finding out what the balance is between quality of life and economics and prosperity.

TB: Well, quality of life is about prosperity, too.

LB: That’s right. This is a part of redevelopment. Back in 1998, Proposition C [the ballpark initiative] passed by a little over 50 percent. But if you asked people today if they supported it back then, you’d get 80 or 90 percent saying they voted for it. Because it’s a winner. We thought there’d be somewhere between $300 million and $500 million in economic benefit to the city. It’s $2 billion——four times what we thought it would be.

TB: What about the airport at Lindbergh Field? It’s no longer controlled by the Port, but it’s still part of downtown’s waterfront. Is moving the airport a dead issue? And what about the millions of dollars spent by the Airport Authority on finding a new site and coming up with Miramar again?

LB: I’d like to add up how many tens of millions we’ve spent on airport studies. I’ve got stuff that goes back to the Spreckels era. In 1924, they were talking about San Diego’s small-mindedness and how we’ve got to expand. But there were NIMBYs even then. I love the airport where it is. Should they expand? Yes. The economics of an airport are interesting. If you become impacted and can’t grow, you don’t feel it right away. But the economy will take a slow dive, and by the time you catch it, you can’t build an airport.

TB: So the answer is . . . ?

LB: Joint airport use and high-speed rail. When I worked with Lynn Schenk, she was working on this issue. And today, she’s on the state high-speed rail committee, and it’s going to happen. We can do it. It works in Europe and Japan . . .

TB: So we’d have high-speed rail to an airport north of here.

LB: You’d literally check your luggage here, go through security, get on a high-speed train to your terminal, and you’re right there, ready to board your flight. The environmental impact report is done; they’ve got the route. They’re thinking it will be funded and it will be done in about 10 years.

TB: Lots of folks think when you start serving on a lot of high-profile boards, like water quality, and the Library Commission and the Port Commission, you’re laying stepping stones for elective office. Are you running for something?

LB: When I’m 80, will it have mattered if I was a mayor or a member of congress? No. Libraries, water quality, our waterfront——these are about our kids. When I moved downtown, it was so my kids could understand the urban landscape. My son A.J. lives in Boston. He says Boston is a grown-up city. That’s because he heard me say so often that San Diego is stuck in puberty. It’s about people not wanting change, or fighting about who gets credit, or putting out fancy brochures from agencies without doing the nitty-gritty that gets things done. You’re never going to have the perfect neighborhood, because we’re people; we’re humans. We’ve eliminated a lot of concerts on San Diego Bay because people were complaining about noise. Hey, welcome to the city. Buy them earplugs.

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to San Diego Magazine »