In 1994, my Dad told me that he had run for a seat on the Artesia City Council and won. I didn't know about it ahead of time, but I was excited for him. He also told me that the man who had been Artesia's Mayor since I was in second grade was planning to not run for office again in 1998. He was 82 years old at the time. I asked Dad if he was considering running for Mayor. He said he might just do it.
This actually concerned me at first. It would change everything about my trips to Artesia. I would no longer be coming back to town as Fayd, the son of a former teacher at Hermosa Elementary. I would be known as Fayd, the Mayor's son. People would be keeping their eye out me, waiting for me to goof up.
But I asked myself, why should Dad get to be the first person from our family to run for Mayor? I wanted to beat Dad at something. I decided I would be a candidate for Mayor of San Diego, even though I knew full well I didn't stand a chance of winning (because the incumbent Mayor was just too popular). I just wanted to get my name on the ballot.
In 1995, I contacted the City Clerk's office to see when I would be able to file. At the time, it was November for a primary scheduled for March 1996. (It was a Presidential primary that year and California bumped itself up to play a larger part in the nominating process.)
I showed up at the City Clerk's office on the first day to take out papers. While I was there, another potential candidate showed up. He appeared to be in his 70s and was a veteran. He talked about how he had been interviewed in the City Hall lobby by a local TV news reporter. With my long hair, he must have thought I looked kind of odd to be running for public office, but didn't say anything about my appearance. He shook my hand.
While I was waiting, the woman who was waiting on me told me I didn't qualify to run because I was not a registered voter. (One of the requirements of candidacy is that you have to have been a registered voter in the city for the previous 30 days.) I was shocked. Even though I had moved several times without leaving a forwarding address in the past couple of years, I always kept my voter registration current and voted at every election. She said the Registrar of Voters had mailed something out and I didn't respond. I asked her what they would have mailed out because we didn't have any elections in 1995. She didn't have any answers. I asked her if there was something I could do and she said no. I couldn't even register because by the time the filing deadline arrived, I would not have been registered to vote for a full 30 days. I wasn't going to be able to run.
I went home and tried to figure out what I could do. I decided to call up the Registrar of Voters to find out about my registration. The person I talked to verified they had my current address on file and there wasn't any reason for me to not have a current registration. She said they would show my status as current with no lapse. I called the City Clerk's office and spoke to the woman I saw there. She said she had just received a call from the Registrar and that I could come in the next day and pick up the papers. She did not apologize for what happened or for not telling me I could just call the Registrar myself to re-establish my registration so I could run.
Later, I figured that the woman in the office probably saw me as some sort of loose cannon fringe candidate who was going to make a mockery of the election and that I was going to advocate for the legalization of marijuana and other recreational drugs, and that I might actually get elected because of it. So, they had a contingency plan to inform candidates like me that we were not qualified to run because of a lapse in registration. Then, they don't tell us we can straighten it out by calling the Registrar of Voters and we will hopefully slink off without getting involved in debates and other opportunities to question the authority of the current office holders. I was smart enough not to fall for those tactics, much to their dismay.
I watched the news from that day. They showed a brief clip of the man I met in the office with him announcing his candidacy for Mayor. I guess the TV crew arrived after I had gone up to the office. I would have been more than happy to talk to them (but I probably would have come off like a big moron).
I went to the City Clerk's office the next day. I was waited on by the same woman. I filled out a lot of forms. She told me I needed to get the signatures of 200 registered voters in the City of San Diego and they had to have current registration effective for the last 30 days. I also needed to pay a filing fee of $500. (I did not flinch when she told me this. I had the money.) However, if I got more signatures than the required 200, I could offset the cost of the filing fee by 25 cents an extra signature up to 2,000.
I didn't think it was going to be a big deal to get 200 signatures (but I knew I couldn't get 2,000). I also thought I could recruit the services of an activist friend of mine to help out in this effort. However, she had been approached by the Peace and Freedom Party to run for US Representative in her Congressional District. This meant she wasn't going to have time to help me out. I did enlist the help of Abed and another friend to try to get the 200 signatures.
But despite all our efforts, we couldn't get more than 100 altogether. On top of that, I noticed that several of my friends who signed my petition didn't even live in San Diego! I had no choice but to give up. I wasn't going to beat my father this time. But on the bright side, I got to keep my $500.
When I received a form by the Democratic Party to fill out in order to get their endorsement (the incumbent Mayor was a Republican), I was astonished at how much I didn't know about local politics and issues. I would have looked like a complete fool if I were to participate in debates.
There was only one debate that the incumbent Mayor took part in and it was broadcast over KPBS-FM. At one point, the veteran started singing some song as a response. I really dodged a bullet.
As it turned out, the incumbent Mayor won more than 50% of the vote in the primary, so there wasn't a runoff in November. Things went crazy in 2000 in the Mayor's race. With no incumbent, 12 people ran, including my friend who had run for Congress four years earlier. At one of the televised debates, the TV station wouldn't let her or four other fringe candidates take part. They staged a protest outside the station and at least one of them got arrested.
Looking at the San Diego website, the requirements for running for Mayor are exactly the same. 200 signatures and a $500 filing fee. I am surprised that amount hasn't gone up over the last quarter century. I guess they're having too much trouble holding onto their Mayors and need as many people to run as possible.
As for my Dad, he didn't run for Mayor of Artesia. He ran for another term on the City Council (because too many other people were running for Mayor), but was defeated. It was a big turnover in Artesia's city government in 1998 and there were a lot of major problems as a result. Dad was glad he didn't have to deal with it.
I guess I have the same attitude about public office. But I like griping about it.
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