Spinning records

“Wow,” the Democratic candidate for San Diego City Council says.

The mailers—all attacking Wayne or supporting his opponent—were received by one Republican household in the lead-up to the June primary. Wayne, a state prosecutor, begins thumbing furiously through the stack.

“Wow,” he says again. “There are a lot here.” There are 19 in all—four mailers from Republican opponent Lorie Zapf ’s campaign committee, two “member communications” from the Republican Party of San Diego County and seven from the nominally nonpartisan but conservative Lincoln Club. There are also six slate mailers.

Wayne says he sent out five mailers before the primary. The local Democratic Party and a city employees’ union each sent out a mailer, as well, but they were only a fraction of the size of the Lincoln Club’s 12-by-15-inch cards.

Wayne, a member of the state Assembly from 1996 to 2002, was considered the frontrunner in the primary for District 6, which includes Linda Vista, Mission Valley, Serra Mesa, Kearny Mesa and Clairemont. And yet, Zapf, an inexperienced newcomer, trounced Wayne by more than 12 percentage points, and they’ll face each other on the November ballot.

Wayne starts picking up mailers at random to address the accusations leveled against him. In many cases, the mailers use his votes on budget bills to prove that he’s a “bigspending liberal politician.” Wayne shrugs it off as “Tea Party” propaganda.

“It says you can’t be extreme enough for them,” Wayne says. “You have to vote against the budget to keep them happy.”

Wayne then discredits a claim in one mailer that he voted for the “early release of violent felons” by supporting AB 375. No such bill existed while Wayne was in the Legislature.

That’s Wayne on the defense. Here’s Wayne on the offense: “You look at this thing and it looks like an independent expenditure, but it’s not,” Wayne says, holding up a Lincoln Club mailer. “Let’s call this organization what it is. Let’s not hide behind a distinguished president. This is the ‘George Bush Society.’ It is the ‘Union of Economic Royalists and Social Conservatives.’” Then Wayne pushes it a step further: “They’re spending a lot of money here in pretty much unlimited and unreported quantities. I just wonder if the [San Diego] Ethics Commission would want to take a look at the Bush Society and just figure out how much coordination there really was and whether these do count as independent expenditures or, in fact, they are impermissible campaign contributions.”

Indeed, the phrasing is similar between the mailers. In addition, the Lincoln Club and the Zapf campaign share a treasurer, April Boling, and Lincoln Club honchos have hosted fundraisers for Zapf. Provided a transcript of Wayne’s accusation, the Lincoln Club’s “distinguished president,” T.J. Zane, said that Wayne is “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”

“I was looking at the quote you sent me, and I couldn’t stop laughing,” Zane tells CityBeat. “I welcome it if he wants to file a complaint.”

Wayne has his own record when it comes to campaign violations. In 2008, Ethics Commission auditors identified 18 instances in which Wayne’s 2003 campaign for San Diego city attorney violated campaign regulations.

The audit found that Wayne’s short-lived campaign (he withdrew his candidacy months before the election) did not maintain adequate records regarding 12 expenditures totaling more than $32,000—61 percent of his spending—to two fundraising consultants. The audit also found six occasions in which campaign donors wrote checks with business accounts in violation of a prohibition on donations from organizations.

In the press release announcing a $1,000 fine, Ethics Commission Chair Gil Cabrera said, “Record-keeping may seem like a technical issue, but without proper documentation it is impossible to assure the public that a candidate is adhering to the City’s campaign laws.”

Now an attorney in private practice, Cabrera has endorsed Wayne in the race.

“I’ve always said we shouldn’t call it the ‘Ethics Commission’ because a fine doesn’t mean you’re unethical,” Cabrera says. Wayne “was fined for not following all the rules of our campaign ordinances, and, in my mind, it wasn’t a big fine or a big error on his part.”

For big errors, Wayne’s opponents say voters should look to his legislative record.

Howard Kaloogian was a San Diego Republican who served alongside Wayne in the Assembly between 1996 and 2000. They jokingly referred to themselves as the “Howard Caucus.” That may be the only fond memory Kaloogian has of Wayne.

“Some guys get up and make very impassioned pleas for different things—I don’t ever remember Howard doing that,” Kaloogian says. “I don’t want to say anything bad about him because he was the other half of the Howard Caucus, but I don’t remember him advancing anything other than being supportive to the unions.”

Wayne says his passion was the environment. He passed several bills on coastal cleanup and curbside recycling. He is so proud of his legislation to require water quality testing of the beaches that he uses the bill—AB 411—as his license-place number on his Chrysler 300.

Wayne passed more than 60 bills in his three terms, not including resolutions. These included laws to allow front-mounted bike racks on buses and to make it a misdemeanor for a hospital employee to have sex with an inmate being treated at a health facility. He also sponsored the privacy law that Republicans say the community organization acorn violated when it left tens of thousands of sensitive documents near a dumpster. (Assembly candidate Derrick Roach, a Republican, made national news when he scooped them up.)

Former Assemblymember Dick Ackerman, an Orange County Republican who often voted against Wayne’s legislation, remembers the Democrat in a kinder light.

“Some people sit around and don’t do much,” Ackerman says. Wayne “was engaged in the process, and I recall him giving a number of floor speeches. He was a friendly-enough guy.”

Asked about his labor connections, Wayne says he’s happy to have the support of “working people” but points to his recent record of bucking union positions: He opposed term limits for county supervisors, supported the “strong mayor” form of government and will vote against Proposition D, the proposed sales-tax increase in San Diego. Even on this issue, the Lincoln Club won’t meet Wayne on anti-tax common ground.

Wayne “is well aware of the public sentiment regarding Prop. D and finds it advantageous to take that position now,” Zane says.

“Howard’s record of voting for tax increases belies his public statements about Proposition D.”

After Wayne claimed at a forum in April that he only once voted for a tax increase—on cigarettes—several riled-up conservatives e- mailed CityBeat lists of bills they say prove that Wayne lied. Some on the list are fee increases, which Wayne argues are different from taxes. Others were votes to allow regions, such as the Bay Area and San Diego, to decide whether to increase local taxes, which Wayne also says shouldn’t count.

However, Wayne concedes he had forgotten his 2002 vote to raise the electricity-rate surcharge by $.0001 per kilowatt-hour.

At the top of conservatives’ list of reasons to despise Wayne is his vote for SB 400, the 1999 bill that spiked government pensions and ultimately plunged California into its current fiscal crisis. To City Councilmember Carl DeMaio, that’s an unforgivable sin.

“Simple, he voted for SB400,” DeMaio posted on Twitter in response to a question about why he opposes Wayne (DeMaio refused multiple interview requests). “SB400 has resulted in billions in unfunded pension liabilities at the state level and is from the same playbook used in SD.”

Wayne calls DeMaio an “ideologue” and a “fanatic” with “delusions of being mayor.” He also defends his vote on SB 400—using the same argument former U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton used to defend her Iraq War authorization vote.

“We had to ask the question at the time: Was it actuarially sound? And CalPERS said it was,” Wayne says. “It was the best decision made on the information we had.”

Kaloogian says he knew SB 400 was a “real mess” and spoke out against it. Ackerman doesn’t even remember the bill—in an interview with another outlet, Ackerman says he had to ask the reporter how he voted and whether he was on the right side.

“I think if you’re right 80 to 90 percent of the time, you’re doing pretty good,” Wayne says. “If you’re wrong 10, 15, 20 percent, you go back and correct it.”

Don’t be surprised if that last quote appears on a mailer this fall.

Write to davem@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.