It appears that after nearly two decades of service as both an appointed and elected public official, ex-San Diego mayor Susan Golding’s lasting impression will be her love of football and baseball.
While both the Chargers’ ticket guarantee fiasco and the Padres’ unbuilt stadium have yet to completely unfold , it could be 20 years until we see the ultimate impact from these deals , we have nonetheless learned some valuable lessons after watching our politicians bend over backwards to appease the owners of professional sports teams in town.
Paint it any way you want, but as mayor of San Diego, Golding led the charge. After the Chargers made their run to the Super Bowl in 1995, she was there on the podium, hand in hand with Chargers ownership telling us the stadium had to be expanded and the ticket guarantee she brokered was necessary to keep the then-AFC champions in town.
Golding also was rooting just as hard when the Padres made their incredible run to the World Series in 1998. That summer she ramrodded the memorandum of understanding through City Hall, which led to Proposition C being placed on the ballot that fall so the Padres would be able to build a new yard to pitch and catch.
As we look back at those deals, what was Golding really guilty of? What did she have to gain personally from the agreements with the Chargers and Padres?
If she was guilty of anything, it may have been an overwhelming sense of civic pride. She wasn’t the only San Diegan cheering wildly when the Chargers painted the town blue and gold. And it was awfully hard for anyone to ignore the Padres’ championship run in that summer of ’98.
Sure, she did a bit of strong-arming and a lot of politicking to get those deals done. As a mayor though, that was a big part of her job.
Call it ego, call it arrogance, but she accomplished her mission. Now only time will tell if her vision of pro sports’ role in San Diego’s psyche is skewed.
Shortly into her first term, Golding pushed for a new sports arena to attract the NBA and NHL. Fortunately, that vision fizzled, and while the Sports Arena is a relic, we do have Cox Arena at San Diego State and the Jenny Craig Pavilion at USD. Both will host major college basketball tournaments early next year.
They aren’t palaces on the scale of the Staples Center in L.A., but San Diego has never proven itself worthy of hosting another NBA team. Think the Qualcomm Stadium deal was a debacle? Imagine an 18,000-seat arena hosting minor-league sporting events and the odd Disney on Ice show. That would have been a white elephant.
Golding did fail to push through a main library in Downtown. That’s not hard to understand, though, considering City Hall’s full attention at the time was turned toward the ballpark.
Throughout her tenure Golding spoke in grandiose terms of a new library; unfortunately as the price tag climbed above the $100 million mark, it became clear such a facility wouldn’t be built during her term.
But take a look along the harbor as the Convention Center nears completion. Despite the howls of many against the $100 million expansion that finally got under way in 1998, it is obvious such a facility will be an immediate economic boon to the region.
Perhaps most importantly, Golding’s administration also shepherded what was arguably the most crucial economic transition in the city’s history. Not since San Diego became a world-class military hub in the late 1940s has there been such a radical overhaul in the city’s economic fabric.
Upon taking office in 1992, Golding was faced with unemployment figures above 7 percent; the military was making massive cuts in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. Worse, the aerospace industry, which along with the Navy acted as San Diego’s economic backbone, was scaling back, shutting down or just plain leaving town.
Golding instituted a more business-friendly atmosphere at City Hall, and eight years later, San Diego has spawned a high-tech industry that ranks among the nation’s elite regions. Along with that transformation, unemployment dropped to just under 3 percent this year.
Golding didn’t do it alone. She didn’t single-handedly preside over San Diego’s economic renaissance. Her role as the city’s mayor, however, can’t be overlooked. Imagine if her opponent in 1992, no-growth advocate Peter Navarro, had won the mayorship. It’s safe to say San Diego’s economic landscape would have a radically different look.
Much as Golding should shoulder the blame for the Charger ticket guarantee and the recurring woes with the ballpark, she deserves a lot of credit for our bustling economy.
She was never the easiest politician to deal with, from a media standpoint, and her staff often was contentious, aloof and unresponsive.
New mayor Dick Murphy would do well to correct that attitude at City Hall immediately. He will also expend a good deal of energy cleaning up several messes the previous administration leaves behind.
One burden he doesn’t face , quite possibly the greatest measure of Golding’s legacy , is repairing a broken economy. For that, Murphy , and the citizens of San Diego , have Susan Golding to thank.
Bell is the managing editor of the Business Journal.