San Diego County Elections

With San Diego voters saying they don't want to pay a higher sales tax to fund new courts and jails, county supervisors on Wednesday began searching for another way to raise the money it will take to build criminal justice facilities needed through the year 2005.

Ed Miller, who served as San Diego County district attorney for 24 years and, beginning in the scandal-ridden 1970s, was a major figure in reforming the city's political, business and law enforcement establishment, has died. He was 87. Miller died Sunday of liver cancer at his La Jolla home, said his son, Stephen. The Democrat served in the San Diego city attorney's office in the 1960s and was appointed U.S. attorney in 1966 by President Lyndon Johnson. After being ousted by Johnson's Republican successor, Richard Nixon, Miller went into private practice.

Disappointment tempered by optimism permeated the campuses of the San Diego Community College District on Wednesday as faculty members who waged a bitter, costly campaign to unseat two trustees assessed their tantalizingly close loss in one race and a bad defeat in another. Dr.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has appointed the top San Diego County elections official to the county's vacant position of registrar-recorder/county clerk. Conny B. McCormack was chosen over four other finalists, including former California Secretary of State Tony Miller. The registrar supervises elections and oversees many administrative functions. McCormack, who was registrar-recorder in San Diego County for seven years, is on leave from that position.

Facing the people's vote in the midst of the most heated judicial retention election in memory, Justice Edward T. Butler of the 4th District Court of Appeal devised an uncharacteristically judicious campaign strategy. He left the country. While California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird was taking to the tube to appeal for support, Butler was touring India. While Associate Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin were stumping the state, Butler was sightseeing in Thailand and Nepal.

A weakened slow-growth majority Wednesday clung to its narrow victory on Escondido's City Council, but uncounted ballots could still tilt the balance. Mayor Jerry Harmon defeated his lone opponent, but candidates Lori Holt Pfeiler and Elmer Cameron, who said the council's slow-growth majority went overboard, apparently captured two council seats, and a virtual three-way tie left a fourth seat in limbo.

County Supervisor Brian Bilbray appeared headed for an easy reelection victory Tuesday night, while two other tightly contested supervisorial races seemed destined for November runoff elections. Bilbray, seeking a third term representing the South Bay, had a commanding lead over his only opponent, maintenance supervisor Fred Latham, in early returns.

Ignoring conventional legal wisdom, voters in this small, dusty East County suburb--until now better known for pickup trucks and urban cowboys--did it their way Election Day and banned all adult businesses such as topless bars, adult bookstores and X-rated theaters from their community. "We don't have any of these businesses here now, and we have no desire to see any," Santee Mayor Jack Doyle said Wednesday, reflecting on the 3-to-1 victory margin for Proposition G.

After months of debate and Gov. Pete Wilson's intervention had made it a major subplot in this week's primaries, the much-awaited showdown between the Republican Party's feuding conservative and moderate factions appears to have ended in a standoff in San Diego.

The "Year of the Woman" made itself felt with a vengeance in San Diego elections this week, as apparent primary victories by Lynn Schenk and Judy Jarvis in the 49th Congressional District race all but ensured that the county will send its first woman ever to Congress next year. With women winning several other congressional and state legislative primaries in San Diego County, the upcoming Schenk-Jarvis matchup underscored an unusually strong showing by female candidates in Tuesday's primary.

Should Treasurer Be Appointed?: The San Diego County Board of Supervisors will vote tomorrow on whether to add a March 26 ballot measure asking countywide voters to change the treasurer-tax collector job from an elected to an appointed position. Paul Boland, the current county treasurer-tax collector, has come under fire for management of the county's $3.

San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller Jr., the dean of California prosecutors, was trailing three challengers Tuesday and apparently headed for an inglorious end to an illustrious career. Miller, 68, who was first elected in 1970, was trailing former star prosecutor Paul Pfingst, Municipal Judge Larry Stirling and Deputy City Atty. Casey Gwinn. Miller was barely ahead of a perennial candidate, Michael Schaefer, who has a quixotic history that includes a wife-beating conviction.

Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista) has apparently beaten Republican businessman Joseph Ghougassian for a vacant state Senate seat from southern San Diego County. In unofficial returns from Tuesday's election, Peace had 30,487 votes and Ghougassian 28,186 in a race to fill the final year of Democrat Wadie Deddeh's third term in the 40th Senate District. Deddeh retired to return to teaching at Southwest Community College in Chula Vista.

After an expensive and bitter campaign, Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista) apparently has defeated Republican businessman Joseph Ghougassian in a special election Tuesday for a vacant state Senate seat from southern San Diego County. With all 170 precincts counted, Peace had a 52% to 48% lead. That reflected a 2,300 vote margin, but 4,800 absentee ballots were yet to be counted.

Make a new entry on the list of California political stratagems: Santa spin. Both combatants are invoking the bipartisan charisma of Old St. Nick in a high-spending and oddly timed special election set for Tuesday to fill a state Senate seat from southern San Diego County. Steve Peace, a Democratic assemblyman seeking to move up after 11 years, has Santa's cap hanging from the A in his last name on his red-and-white campaign signs.

Two San Diego congressmen's central role in President Bush's attack on Democratic rival Bill Clinton's patriotism, a gambit that has dominated the presidential race for the last week, has begun to show signs of becoming a major issue in their own reelection bids. By having helped to orchestrate an attack that Clinton has characterized as reminiscent of McCarthyism, Republican Reps.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has appointed the top San Diego County elections official to the county's vacant position of registrar-recorder/county clerk. Conny B. McCormack was chosen over four other finalists, including former California Secretary of State Tony Miller. The registrar supervises elections and oversees many administrative functions. McCormack, who was registrar-recorder in San Diego County for seven years, is on leave from that position.

Should Treasurer Be Appointed?: The San Diego County Board of Supervisors will vote tomorrow on whether to add a March 26 ballot measure asking countywide voters to change the treasurer-tax collector job from an elected to an appointed position. Paul Boland, the current county treasurer-tax collector, has come under fire for management of the county's $3.

An initiative that would enable parents to spend tax dollars on private school tuition qualified for the June, 1994, ballot Thursday, but supporters vowed to continue trying to get it on this November's ballot even if it means going to court for a fourth time. The San Diego County registrar of voters said Thursday that there was evidence of fraud on some ballot petitions, killing the measure's chances to get on this fall's ballot.

Pleased and somewhat surprised San Diego Unified School District administrators said Wednesday that they will move as quickly as they can to carry out construction and remodeling plans embodied in Proposition O, approved by district voters on Tuesday. But they cautioned that it won't seem very quick to students at crowded schools.