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Four More Years of...Mayor Dick Murphy |
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Don't everybody cheer at once.
By Ron Donoho
(page 1 of 2)
Dick Murphy was the grass-roots poster boy in 2000. Other primary candidates in the mayor’s race raised more money. Runoff opponent and current San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts—who garnered more votes in the primary—had way more political experience. But when the chads settled, it was the bespectacled Superior Court judge who assumed the reins of the seventh-largest city in the United States.That was an exciting piece of political theater. The second act, however, needs a rewrite.
Why?
With Mayor Murphy at center stage, there has been plenty of drama—but relatively little action.
His much-hyped 10 goals remain largely unfulfilled. The future of the Chargers remains up in the air. Following FBI raids, Murphy’s city council—but not he, as he quickly proclaimed—was engulfed in a bribery investigation. An underfunded city pension system looms as a fiscal Armageddon.
And yet...
The general public apparently loves the Murph. In a May poll—bought for $11,433 by his own campaign team, mind you—79 percent said they had a favorable impression of the mayor. Nearly 70 percent approved of the job he is doing. More than 60 percent said he is doing a good job managing the city budget and finances. Is he “honest and fair?” Yep—so believe 81 percent of polled “likely registered voters.”
Even with 84 percent of those voters aware that he publicly flip-flopped—twice—on whether to run again in ’04, two-thirds don’t mind being led by a mayor not sure he’s up for the fund-raising and glad-handing inherent to political campaigns.
With the mayoral election coming this March, there hasn’t exactly been a dash to the starting line. Straight-shooting city councilmember (and grass-roots queen) Donna Frye hasn’t ruled out a run. But at press time no challenger—not Roberts, not Peter Q. Davis and no action-movie hero—had made a move. By mid-August, only one political novice had filed a form 501, which indicates intent to run.
Also by mid-August, only Murphy had started a committee to collect campaign contributions. He amassed $205,225 during the first half of 2003. And he did it, he says, without personally making a single tedious, debasing phone solicitation. The dread of such activity—weeks on end—is a principal reason he got out of the reelection race for a brief time earlier this year.
Four more years? It looks like it. Murphy may sometimes come off less effusive than embattled California Governor Gray Davis. But he’s got a Teflon coating thicker than President George W. Bush’s. Murphy would seem to be our “Gray Dubya.” And he’s going to be San Diego’s mayor through 2008. Unless, of course, the Democrats recall him, and...
Um, let’s not go there.
Rather, here’s incumbent candidate Murphy, in his own words—in an all-too-rare interview—talking about the ups and downs, ins and outs of running a city by hardly ever making the pond ripple.
San Diego Magazine: We talked politics four years ago, when you first got into the mayor’s race...
Murphy: I still have the [January 2000] cartoon you ran of me up on the wall.
SDM: Talk about the differences between the guy who sat down for an interview in a Coco’s restaurant back then, and the guy who’s mayor now.
Murphy: (Pause) I don’t think I have changed that much. Even when I was a judge, I had a lot of interest in local government. Today, I’m in the middle of it. It’s like viewing something I’m interested in from inside the eye of the hurricane.
SDM: Were you a populist when you were “outside the hurricane”?
Murphy: (Pause) Yes, but I’m probably more of a populist today then when I was on the city council in the 1980s... In the last decade, I see myself as an environmental advocate/moderate populist.
SDM: You say you’ve become more of a populist since becoming mayor?
Murphy: Well, I’ve never been an antipopulist. I think I appreciate the wisdom of the public more today than I would have four years ago.
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