A capacity crowd of over 200 people came out to hear what eight of the 11 candidates for San Diego mayor had to say at The Center’s community-wide mayoral forum last Friday, June 17. The event was part of The Center’s monthly Community Coalition Lunch series, this month sponsored by Wells Fargo and the Gay & Lesbian Times.

A special primary July 26 election will be held to replace Mayor Dick Murphy, who resigned in April five months into his second term. His last day in office is July 15. If no candidate wins a majority of the vote (50 percent plus one) during this election, a special runoff election would be necessary between the top two candidates.

The mayoral candidates included: ecological designer Jim Bell, San Diego City Councilmember Donna Frye, attorney Shawn McMillan, mediator-negotiator Ed Kolker, tax activist Richard Rider, former San Diego Police Chief Jerry Sanders, business executive Steve Francis and attorney Pat Shea.

Candidates were given one-minute response times to deliver answers as Gay & Lesbian Times Publisher Michael Portantino acted as a moderator, taking questions submitted from the audience for over 90 minutes.

Sanders explained why he thinks he’s the city’s top choice, citing his extensive experience in turning around financially struggling organizations such as the United Way and the Red Cross.

“We need a mayor who’s willing to make tough decisions no matter how hard they are. I’ve done that with the police department. I’ve done that with Red Cross. I’ve done that with United Way,” Sanders said.

Frye said she stands for a more open-door policy at City Hall in order to build more trust with citizens and relishes the opportunity to provide that.

“I want to stop all the closed doors. I want to stop the closed meetings. I want to stop the closed books, which have led to our current financial crisis,” she said. “I want to give everyone a place at San Diego’s political table – everyone.”

Francis, CEO of AMN Healthcare, the largest nationwide provider of travel nurse staffing services, cited his leadership qualities in building a 7,000-employee enterprise as one of his strongest assets, along with his prior political experience. Before moving to San Diego in 1987 from Nevada, he served in the state Assembly in the 1980’s and was elected majority leader at the age of 30 in 1985.

“I’m the candidate who says no new taxes and no bankruptcy and with will power, political risk and to do the right thing. It’s all about leadership. We can fix this problem at City Hall if I’m elected mayor,” said Francis.

Chapter 9 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code is reserved for municipalities and Shea is a strong supporter of using that process to get out of the $1.7 billion estimated deficit San Diego’s pension systems is in right now. In 1994 he was appointed by a federal court to represent 215 agencies in the Orange County bankruptcy case, which is the U.S.’s largest municipal bankruptcy at $2 billion.

“In 18 months without raising taxes and without selling property, we got out of that with a new financial condition,” said Shea. “None of this scares me. This is the optimistic way to solve our problems quickly and move on and starting focusing on the future.”

Shea is married to former pension board member Diann Shipione, who blew the whistle on San Diego’s pension practices prompting the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office to investigate.

While all candidates said they would support domestic partnership benefits, many of them danced around the questions, which asked specifically whether same-sex couples should have marriage equality in California.

Shea said he supports conventional marriage and explained same-sex marriage should have the support of voters, not to be decided by a judge. Francis, Sanders and McMillan all said they support civil unions, but did not mention marriage directly in their responses. Bell implied that he would support marriage equality. However, Frye was the only one who answered yes directly. She then used her minute response time to attack Francis. “It’s interesting to hear from a Las Vegas politician who claims to be an outsider when actually the outsider has all the insider support,” Frye said. “Every single person that came here today was provided basic city services in order to get here – the traffic lights, stop lights, people who take up your trash… Those are city services and Mr. Francis, they cost money, just like the temporary nurses that you provide. I’m sure they’re not free,” she said.

Francis had earlier spoken out against Frye’s voting record responding to a question regarding whether or not they would support a tax increase for the city.

“She’s [Frye] consistently put taxes on the ballot and raised fees. I’m opposed to tax increases. We cannot do this. These people [City Council] do not have a sense of reality of what these voters and taxpayers want,” Francis said.

On a question regarding whether or not they would support rolling back pension benefits to help solve the crisis, most said they would investigate if those benefits were created legally in the first place before making any decisions one way or another.