Almost a year before the voters will go to the polls, Paul Eckert has launched what he calls a "preemptive campaign" to quell the hopes of anyone who might deprive him of a third term on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.
Eckert is raising money, seeking community support and crisscrossing his sprawling North County district to speak and cut ribbons, reminding his 400,000 constituents of what he's done for them since he was first elected in 1978.
Since October, Eckert has had political consultant Herb Williams on a $1,000-a-month retainer to help chart the coming campaign. And the supervisor, never known as glib, has been taking private lessons for several months to help improve his speech-making ability.
At the same time, at least four North County political figures are exploring the waters to find out what chance they have of beating Eckert, the 51-year-old moving company owner who went to the county board as an outsider but has since become increasingly identified with the status quo.
Carlsbad City Councilman Richard Chick announced Thursday that he will challenge Eckert. Oceanside City Councilman John MacDonald, Vista Mayor Michael Flick and Clyde Romney, an aide to Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), have also said they are considering running for Eckert's seat. The primary election will be held next June.
If any of them decides to run, he will be hoping to string together a coalition of anti-Eckert voters ranging from coastal residents upset with rapid growth to inlanders bothered by Eckert's support for a controversial trash-fired power plant.
Any campaign against Eckert would likely try to tie him to the county's ongoing problems, including a scandal involving the letting of a $25-million contract for a telephone system and continuing crises in the Department of Health Services. Eckert's opponents also say they will have no qualms about bringing up his brief association in 1983 with a woman indicted on prostitution charges, an incident that may loom larger in the eyes of politicos than in the memories of the voters.
For now, though, those thinking of challenging Eckert are hard-pressed to cite specific issues or events they believe will hurt his chances of winning a third term. Instead, they talk about a nebulous, gut-level feeling they have that Eckert's hard-hitting style has offended enough voters in seven years to make him vulnerable.
"Paul seems to alienate people," Chick said. "He seems to have a problem saying the wrong thing at the right time and getting people upset."
"There's an indication that the people are not being heard, not being listened to," MacDonald said. "There's an underlying dissatisfaction."
Romney added: "There's a strong feeling that Paul Eckert represents the old politics and that it's time for a change."
Romney, a former Solana Beach school board member, is the top aide to Packard, the former Carlsbad mayor who in 1982 became only the fourth man in U.S. history to win a congressional seat on a write-in vote. Packard has never been an Eckert ally, and two years ago he ran his own "preemptive campaign" to discourage Eckert from challenging him for Congress. He said he would endorse a Romney bid for county supervisor.
"Clyde has demonstrated himself to be a very, very astute political figure," Packard said. "If he chooses to run, he would have my support."
The three other most likely challengers--MacDonald, Flick and Chick--are locally elected officials who hope to expand their small bases of support into organizations powerful enough to threaten Eckert, forcing him into a general election by depriving him of a majority in the primary. But they have a long way to go.
If the election included only San Dieguito and south San Marcos, Eckert might be more vulnerable. The rapid pace of growth in Encinitas and Leucadia, unincorporated coastal communities governed by the Board of Supervisors, has long spurred resentment toward Eckert, a property rights advocate who many beach-area residents believe has tuned out their concerns.
In San Marcos, a cadre of residents--from several hundred to several thousand, depending on whom one talks to--has vowed to unseat Eckert because of his enthusiastic support for the San Marcos trash-to-energy plant, a controversial project that won final approval from the Board of Supervisors June 4. The privately run plant, when it opens in 1988, will burn 1,000 tons of trash a day in a five-acre building that will have a 300-foot-tall smokestack.
Bruce Hamilton, an electronics company executive and president of North County Concerned Citizens--an anti-trash-plant group--said he doubts any of the 2,000 people his group represents would vote for Eckert next year.
"He has not listened to the will of the people," Hamilton said, repeating an oft-stated criticism of Eckert. "He has listened to the big money."
