SAN DIEGO — Like a baseball manager arguing nose to nose with an umpire, much of this city is furious at Bruce Henderson.
If City Hall, the Chamber of Commerce and the local newspaper could spit tobacco juice, the shoes of the former city councilman turned serial litigator would be covered in glop.
At issue is Henderson's relentless opposition to the voter-approved plan to build a ballpark for the San Diego Padres as the centerpiece of the largest downtown redevelopment project in city history. Although he has not won a single round in court, his critics blame Henderson for the fact the project is stalled and its future in doubt.
Although litigation is an established part of American life, the San Diego ballpark controversy appears to be in a league of its own, and Henderson, a Republican lawyer of independent means and Libertarian tendencies, may be the Babe Ruth of opponents to public subsidies for professional sports venues.
Voters approved the ballpark by 59% in 1998. But 14 lawsuits--eight involving Henderson--have driven up costs to taxpayers by tens of millions, according to officials, and left the project at least two years behind schedule.
"We have never seen an experience as protracted as San Diego," said Susan Goodenow, vice president of Eisner-Sanderson, a Washington, D.C.-based public affairs firm hired by major league baseball to work on stadium issues.
What galls ballpark backers is their suspicion that Henderson knows his legal challenges are destined to fail in court and that his real strategy is to kill the project through interminable delays and controversy.
"What Henderson has said to the body politic is: 'You're not really running the city, I am,' " said Padres President Bob Vizas.
Henderson, 58, defeated for reelection in 1992, is unruffled by criticism. He insists that his only goal is to keep taxpayers from getting gouged.
"One of the problems these folks have in dealing with me is that they don't understand me," Henderson said in his tastefully decorated home in Pacific Beach. "To them, if you don't make money off the issue, you can't possibly be interested. But my whole motivation is a feeling there is something terribly wrong in city government."
The city and the Padres have prevailed at the trial court level in all 14 lawsuits. But unlike baseball, litigation is a sport in which it is possible to lose every game and still be declared the winner, officials complain.
