Council District 6 Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 3, 2001

Contact: Michael Simonsen
619-236-6616
619-884-7335 Cell

SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE FEATURES
COUNCILMEMBER DONNA FRYE
IN OCTOBER ISSUE

San Diego - San Diego City Council Member Donna Frye is featured in the October issue of San Diego Magazine.

The following is the text of the article written by Ron Donoho:

The Political Tide
By Ron Donoho

Environmental activist Donna Frye captured a spot on the San Diego City Council. Was her election about the power of grass-roots politics?

On a wall inside the 10th-floor City Hall office of San Diego's newest Councilmember hangs a small plaque bearing words by Gandhi. "First they ignore you," it reads. "Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."

Donna Frye believes that's the story of her election race. "In the beginning, it was Steve Danon and Peter Navarro," says Frye. She speaks in a quiet but confident monotone. With one hand, she flicks back long, straight blonde hair. "I was lumped into the bottom of all the newspaper articles as part of 'other candidates.' And the candidates weren't paying attention to me, either. So while I was out walking and talking and doing grass-roots effort to get out the vote, they were all beating on each other."

Recall that earlier this year it took two special elections to fill the vacant, scandal-clouded District 6 seat on the San Diego City Council. District 6 stretches across Bay Ho, Bay Park, Clairemont, Kearny Mesa, Linda Vista, Mission Valley, Mission Village, Pacific Beach, Serra Mesa and, via redistricting, part of Mission Bay. The council seat was abdicated by Valerie Stallings after a federal investigation determined she improperly accepted gifts from Padres owner John Moores.

Prior to the April 23 general election, the race focused on names more familiar in political circles-Navarro, Danon and Michael Pallamary. It was no surprise Danon, chief of staff to County Supervisor Ron Roberts, garnered the most votes. The shocker was the candidate who advanced with him to a run-off-this female surf shop owner/environmental activist.

Well, hang my chad. When the final ballots were counted June 8, Frye's tally was 12,259-1,058 more than Danon's. Rocky Balboa had beaten Apollo Creed. Don Quixote toppled the windmill.

Danon lost even after raising more than twice as much cash as Frye ($184,014 to $77,720). The story was similar last year when Judge Dick Murphy drove a gee-whiz campaign past Danon's boss, Supervisor Roberts, in the mayoral election.

Frye definitely had a constituency that was overlooked, says Tony Perry, veteran political analyst and San Diego bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. "She flew in under the radar," he says. "We tended to dismiss her. But she was an anomaly. Money still talks in elections. Donna-and Dick Murphy-took advantage of the furor over the ballpark, and talked a lot about ethics."

Frye's district-based support seemingly outweighed Danon's bigger checks from out-of-the-district donors. "I had people giving me five or 10 dollars," says Frye. "They were people in the surf community, seniors and people on a fixed income. These were people who'd never written a campaign contribution [check] in their life. Some of these people, the last thing they ever thought they'd be doing was writing a check to a politician."

A politician Frye now is-but she's loath to label herself one. Asked if she is at heart an activist or a politician, she quickly answers, "activist." And she refers to herself as an "elected official" rather than a politician.

"There is a connotation to the word 'politician,'" she says. "Generally, that politicians are 10 steps below used-car salesmen. That they have no integrity. And they don't tell the truth and they do things to get ahead, or to the next office, and that they will basically lie, cheat and steal... I want to change that, because I think this is a noble profession."

Why did a surfer chick aspire to become a City Council dame? First things first. In 1957, the Sarvis family moved to San Diego from a small town in Pennsylvania. Little Donna Sarvis grew up playing in local canyons. From the family's house on Clairemont Drive, she watched Mission Bay being dredged. She fondly recalls Lindbergh Field as "a place where they parked planes, and then you walked on the tarmac past a bunch of palm trees." (Actually, that still fairly well sums up Lindbergh.)

Ms. Sarvis met Harry "Skip" Frye in a Mexican restaurant in 1980-just after she'd gone through a divorce. They hit it off immediately. But early into their first date, Donna feared she might have misjudged her gentleman caller.

"I walked to the kitchen to get him a drink," she recalls. "I turned around, and he was pulling his pants down. I wondered if I should start hollering, you know? Before I could say anything, he says, 'I hope you don't mind, but it's really hot in here. I'm going to take my pants off.'"

Fear not-Sir Skip, the 24/7 wave rider, always wears surf trunks under his trousers.

Donna Sarvis started running Skip's Bay Park surf shop in 1988; she became Donna Frye in 1990. While tending the shop, Frye began hearing story after story about sick surfers. At first, she chalked up the commonality of ailments and rashes to coincidence. Eventually, she was prompted to do some research. People who surfed near storm drains that discharged onto the beaches, she found, were the ones getting sick.

"We had scientific evidence on discharging storm drains," says Frye. "I asked for warning signs to be put at the storm drains. People's health was at risk. Six months went by and I couldn't get a memo back from politicians. I was running into the school of thought that 'We don't talk about pollution because it will have an impact on our tourism industry.' But if we weren't going to admit there was a problem, it was never going to get cleaned up.

Warning signs did go up in November 1996. They were subsequently noted in an article in The New York Times. Cable's The Travel Channel covered the story. Frye, who helped found Surfers Tired of Pollution (STOP), had arrived on a national stage as an environmental crusader.

"I had a good relationship with the press because I was never an alarmist," she says. "We didn't exaggerate. We had some fun, and sometimes we got guttural." (One press conference STOP held featured a bust of Representative Brian Bilbray, with his head emerging from a toilet.) "You could rely on our research to be supported by evidence and not be hysterical."

It's not easy being green when you're a politician-or even an elected official. Councilmember Frye was, for example, the lone dissenting vote this summer on the proposal to allow SeaWorld to expand its Mission Bay operations.

"Really, if you think about it, everything we discuss and vote on in the council is an environmental issue," she says. "Police services. Schools. Libraries. Parking. Traffic. Being able to go to the beach. We should be protecting our assets... Sometimes we aren't getting good information about projects. Sometimes we don't ask the right questions. We're just saying, 'Go ahead and build.' And then the council is not following through on the promised mitigation."

Asked to name her environmental allies on the council, Frye lists Brian Maienschein, Scott Peters, Ralph Inzunza and Mayor Murphy. She includes George Stevens as an afterthought.

According to Maienschein, Frye unequivocally brings the passion of her causes to the council. But will she have to rein in the activist part of her character to be a successful elected official? "The jury is out on that; only time will tell," says Maienschein, who represents District 5. "She certainly brings a passion and an intelligence to the job."

Frye notes: "None of us agrees on everything. And that's the way it should be." She says her relationship with every Councilmember is cordial. But in a moment of candor you get only from activists-turned-elected officials, she admits to a strained political relationship with District 2's Byron Wear.

"Byron and I have an interesting history," she says. "I like Byron as a person. I disagree with his politics-SeaWorld, and the list goes on and on."

Some political observers believe it was Frye supporters who backed the recent failed bid to recall Wear. Says Frye: "I didn't help Byron, and I didn't help the recall people. I didn't want any part of it... But I think there were people who supported my campaign who are tired of politics as usual. Those are people who would be annoyed about the [District 2-based] Naval Training Center project, SeaWorld and hotels around Mission Bay."

So is Donna Frye implying Byron Wear represents politics as usual?

"Yes," she says. The politician Frye went to years ago about those beach warning signs, but who frustrated her with a perceived lack of action? An early-term Wear.

Wear did not respond to calls made to his office in late August. An aide reported Wear was on vacation.

Looking at her political future, Frye says she will run for reelection next year. She began this abbreviated term with a tenure short enough to allow her to also run again in 2006-presuming a 2002 victory.

"I just really hope that if I ever become what I've been fighting against, somebody will whack me up the side of the head," she says. "I don't ever want to get immersed in how wonderful I am because I'm a city Councilmember. Or get caught up in going to wonderful events. I want to stay grounded."

Staying grounded, she says, was accomplished after a rare, recent trip to accept an environmentalist award at a fancy ball at the new St. Regis Hotel in Dana Point. "It was wonderful," says Frye. "The hotel was gorgeous. It was black-tie. I got home, and I was carrying my award and feeling wonderful and happy. Then the dog had an accident. Basically, I had to spend an hour cleaning the poop off the dog's butt. Can you think of another thing that grounds you right back to the reality of life?

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