SAN DIEGO - History of Scandalous Mayors

"FILNER JOINS GROWING LIST OF MAYORS WHO EXITED IN DISGRACE" by MATTHEW T. HALL, San Diego Union-Tribune 8/24/2013

Bob Filner’s disgraced departure from the mayor’s office is just the latest in a city long accustomed to controversy.

Four of the eight mayors San Diego has elected since 1963 have now succumbed to scandal, and a fifth was awash in it only recently, two decades after leaving office.

Then-Mayor Frank Curran finished a distant fourth in a 1971 re-election effort following a bribery scandal.  Roger Hedgecock resigned in 1985 after felony convictions related to campaign financing that were later overturned.  And Dick Murphy left in 2005 with federal investigators probing misleading bond disclosures and the city’s massive pension debt.

Just this past February, former Mayor Maureen O’Connor appeared in federal court to answer charges that she took $2 million from her late husband’s charitable foundation to feed a gambling addiction.  Her case is on hold for two years while she tries to pay back the money.

On hold.  That’s how many San Diegans must feel after Filner’s predecessor, Jerry Sanders, had rebuilt the city’s national reputation and financial condition after a remarkable run of trouble.

Incorporated in 1850, San Diego had its share of scandal early on.  Joshua Bean, its first mayor, “sold” City Hall and city pueblo lands to himself and a drinking buddy.  Mayor Frank Frary was arrested in a brothel in the Stingaree District in 1903.  Former Mayor William Carlson was imprisoned during World War I for mail fraud.  And in 1935, Rutherford B. Irones resigned and received a six-month jail sentence after crashing a city car into a sailor’s vehicle and fleeing the scene and the sailor’s injured wife.

In modern times, just as San Diego exploded in growth to become California’s second-mostpopulous city in 1970, it exploded in scandal again. Mayor Curran, four council members and three former council members were charged with bribery and conspiracy to increase taxi fares after accepting campaign contributions from the owner of the Yellow Cab Company.  Ultimately, all but one — a council member who pleaded no contest to a reduced misdemeanor charge — were acquitted or had the charges against them dropped.

Curran’s political career ended in the next election when voters showed him the door.

Hedgecock’s case evolved in his favor eventually — with a conviction being overturned following jury tampering charges and his record expunged — but his resignation from the mayor’s office was stunning.

At the time, Hedgecock called questions about more than $350,000 in 1983 campaign contributions “the country’s longest-running political soap opera.”  But a reporter called Hedgecock’s departure “dramatic” and “rapid-paced” after he was convicted of 13 felonies.  On appeal, Hedgecock — who now hosts a show on U-T TV — closed his casemore than five years later when a judge reduced a single remaining conspiracy conviction for campaign fraud to a misdemeanor, then dismissed it under a plea deal.  It was finally expunged from his record.

Murphy’s departure may have been the most dramatic — until Friday.

On April 17, 2005, Murphy stood in his driveway a day before 4 million copies of Time magazine hit the streets naming him one of the three worst big-city mayors in America.

“Tell Time magazine that they just don’t understand what’s going on,” he said.

Just eight days later, he stood in the press room at City Hall and said he would resign because it was “in the best interests of San Diego” and “the city needs a fresh start.”

Now it will have another.