SAN DIEGO — When her husband, surfing legend Skip Frye, got sick from surfing in polluted water, Donna Frye decided to get political.
She went to the City Council and asked that it fix the leaky sewer system and reduce the amount of dirty runoff from city streets into the ocean. She was taken aback by the response.
"Skip was really sick, but it was like the council didn't care about him and the other surfers," she said.
The council's snub pushed Frye, who was then managing her husband's surfboard business, into activism. She founded Surfers Tired of Pollution, or STOP; took her case to the press; became a regular at council meetings -- and in 2001 was elected to the City Council from a beach district.
Now, a decade after the initial rebuff, Frye, 52, may be on the verge of becoming mayor of San Diego, a rise through the political ranks that has been both improbable and meteoric.
Her insurgent write-in candidacy caught the imagination of voters angry at the financial debacle and mismanagement at City Hall.
Joining the race only six weeks before election day, she may have outpolled two establishment candidates who had been campaigning for months, if not years: Mayor Dick Murphy and county Supervisor Ron Roberts.
Election workers are still examining write-in votes as well as absentee and provisional ballots -- a process that may take weeks. Murphy loyalists still believe he may overcome Frye's 3,800-vote margin as officials sift through 250,000 write-in, absentee and provisional ballots. Still, for a woman often derided as a "surfer chick," her saga is remarkable.
San Diego political insiders think a surfing metaphor is in order.
"Donna is the classic populist politician," said consultant Cynthia Vicknair, unaligned with any of the candidates. "She caught the wave of disgust among voters about what has been happening in the city."
If success is going to change Frye, she isn't letting on. She remains her breezy, informal self. She likes to hug. In postelection appearances, she wore a plumeria lei.
"We're going to bring back the aloha spirit to San Diego," she explained in her soft, ever-cordial voice.
In many ways Donne Frye is the quintessential San Diegan: Her father was a civilian employee of the Navy. The family lived in the working-class neighborhood of Clairemont. She studied dance in hopes of becoming a ballerina.
