MARSHALL INSTITUTE Blog

In 1998, Mr. Haddad served briefly as the president and chief executive officer of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce. He is currently the Vice Chair of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Chamber’s Management Council and Board of Directors. During the previous two years, Mr. Haddad was deputy chief of staff and Cabinet secretary to California’s former governor, Pete Wilson. Mr. Haddad’s responsibilities included the development, coordination and implementation of the governor’s policy agenda, working directly with the administration’s twelve cabinet heads and seventy-five department directors.

This was Mr. Haddad’s second tour with the Wilson Administration, having directed California’s Washington, D.C. Office from 1991 to 1993, then moving to Sacramento to assume the position of Deputy Secretary and General Counsel at the California Resources Agency. Following Governor Wilson’s re-election in 1994, Mr. Haddad was named chief-of-staff to San Diego Mayor Susan Golding. As the mayor’s top aide, he served as her primary liaison to the community at large. Highlights of his tenure with Mayor Golding include her re-election to a second term by a whopping 78% of the electorate, and the successful staging of the 1996 Republican National Convention.

The following is a brief interview with him.

You have led a fascinating career in public service and government. Have you noticed a significant change in how the political dynamic has changed in San Diego since the mid 1990s and can you also address the budgetary problems facing the city in current times?

I have seen San Diego’s political dynamic change in many ways since my first experiences in the late 1970’s. In fact, having spent considerable time in the political arenas of Washington, D.C., Sacramento and San Diego, I would say the dynamic has changed significantly at all three levels of government. Some of the changes have been spurred by technology — when I started, fax machines were a rarity and computers even more scarce. As technology has sped the free flow of information in countless ways, it has significantly altered the way in which politicians and their staffs respond to constituents. This can be a good thing, particularly in terms of processing routine requests, but it can also be a bad thing in terms of the quality of the work being done.

Term limits have also caused a significant shift in the political dynamic, particularly at the State level here in California. Both legislative houses are impacted, but the problem is particularly acute in the lower house, where Assemblymembers are held to six years (three terms). Again, we may be sacrificing quality for the sake of expediency.

Actually, the reason the public imposed term limits goes to the heart of the matter — the erosion of the public’s trust in its own government institutions. There are many reasons for this erosion, including embarrassing abuses of power, corruption, and arrogance. I fear the erosion will continue before it is checked because I see little being done by those in office to change their ways. Special interests still have too much sway over the common good and some legislators still believe they are entitled to favors not available to their constituents.

You mentioned the budget situation in the city. There isn’t enough space here to give it adequate due, but in the context of the foregoing paragraphs, it is worth noting the political climate in which Mayor Sanders and the City Council are working. There is little debate over the fact that Sanders inherited a budget that was seriously out of whack and mostly out of view. He has attempted to reform the budgetary processes of the city, by providing greater transparency, while at the same time restoring its credit rating, grappling with pension deficiencies and balancing its budget each year. He has been thanked for his effort by a five million dollar campaign attack which plays on the public’s distrust of government — evil developers dictating city business, a budget “crisis,” and lobbyists sitting on boards and commissions. I am sure the doubters and the partisans of Mr. Francis will quickly jump on my statements, and point out to your readers that 1) I have contributed to the mayor’s re-election, 2) I am a lobbyist, and 3) Sanders has done a lousy job.

I will say that before I lobbied, I served the public for over twenty years. That is still where my heart is. So I am comfortable telling your readers that Mayor Sanders is a good man. He is not perfect. He has made mistakes and admitted to them. The budget remains a challenge. The pension remains a challenge. Could someone else have done better with the hand that Sanders was dealt? Perhaps. Could that someone be Mr. Francis? Not a chance.

Since you know D.C. very well, is there any reality to the classic 1939 Frank Capra film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? And should we go back to a 1939 sensibility?

I love Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. However, I don’t suspect it reflected the reality of 1939, and it certainly doesn’t reflect the reality of 2008. And I think we all know that even if there was a certain innocence in the pre-WWII years, we aren’t going back there…ever.

That said, I did witness an occasional act of selfless valor now and again while working on Capitol Hill. Those special moments that stirred my passion for our republic and the intent of our founders didn’t occur on the House or Senate floors, as in the movie, but in various meetings that led to congressional action. I can’t possibly recreate the moment for your readers, but I did see and hear individual elected officials that would have reminded you of Jimmy Stewart…if only for a few precious minutes!

What role did you play in bringing and staging the 1996 Republican National Convention to San Diego?

Regarding my role in the 1996 Republican National Convention that took place in San Diego, I had virtually nothing to do with convincing the Party to come here. I became chief-of-staff to Mayor Susan Golding in early 1995, a few months after the Republicans chose San Diego.

Of course, from the time I began my job, right on through the end of the Convention, this event kept me busy. The mayor and I created a special liaison position within our office to carry out the day-to-day details, but I still spent a signficant amount of time on it.

It has become part of local political folklore that the city’s pension problems are due to the Convention. It is true that the Convention presented its share of budget challenges, but it is not true that it caused the pension crisis.

I will say that the Convention did have a profound effect on how the outside world sees San Diego, because I heard this from so many visiting national media correspondents both during and after the event. We had a feeling that San Diego was regarded as a sleepy, retirement community with a strong Navy presence. It had been a long time since the nation took a look at us, and a very long time since the summer of 1972, when the Republican Party snubbed us for Miami.

San Diego did itself proud in 1996. Everyone pitched in, regardless of political persuasion, to make sure the rest of the world took notice. We had grown up and it was time for all to see.

Why do lobbyist have such a bad public image in 2008? And are you a lobbyist?

I cannot remember a time when lobbyists had a good image. I am about to give a lecture to the current class of LEAD San Diego, and the subject is lobbying. The title of the lecture is “Lobbyist: Dirty Word or Indispensable?” Even though lobbying is grounded in the First Amendment’s right of petitioning our government, I think lobbyists are disliked for several reasons, and I will just outline two of them here. First, there are the bad actors who have broken the law or who have behaved unethically, so the public figures if one is bad, they all are. Second, the very nature of a lobbyist’s work puts them in close contact with elected officials, and as the public’s esteem for the latter has waned, so it has for the former.

Part of my job with California Strategies, LLC is lobbying, though that is by no means how I spend the bulk of my time. I also served as California’s chief lobbyist in Washington, D.C. This is probably a lobbying job that most people don’t think about because it involves one public entity, the State, lobbying another public entity, the Federal Government.