The Gold Shovel Guy…I’ve been thinking about Mike Gotch lately. The former Mission Beach resident died last month at the all-too-young age of 60, the fair-skinned victim of skin cancer.
For more recent readers, Mike was City Councilman for PB from 1979 to ’87. (His district then included PB, Mission Beach, OB and West Clairemont.) His election was fortuitous for several reasons. First, despite being outspent four to one, he squeaked in by a nerve-wrackingly close 79 votes. And more importantly, he took office when big plans for the beach area had millions of city dollars to back them up.
Looking through old photos, Mike was often shown wielding a shovel. Groundbreaking for Ocean Boulevard’s first phase; then the second. Mike beaming as bulldozers began building beaches for the path around Sail Bay. Sharing the gold shovel with Vern and Mary Taylor for PB’s new library on the old Farnum school site.
When we met in 1978, Mike was president of Mission Beach Town Council, while I led PB Town Council. We shared similar idealistic goals of empowering the local folks. Then he confided his dream: to run for City Council. Would I manage his campaign? Gulp. Mike was told if a local person ran his primary (back then, you ran in the district in September, then citywide in November), money would come in for a professional manager later.
The Feet First Campaign”¦So we rented and repainted an old pizza place on Ingraham, just north of the bridge. And organized the feet-first campaign. Lots of feet for walking all 159 precincts, some of them two or three times.
Our supporters were unusually diverse, thanks to Mike’s day job as executive director of LAFCO, the County’s boundary-setting agency. They included Supervisors Lucille Moore and our local environmentally concerned rep, Roger Hedgecock. Our office manager was a well-organized, pleasant young mother from Kensington; you know her today as Congresswoman Susan Davis. Precinct manager Margaret Schlessinger was later mayor of Solana Beach; Assemblyman Larry Kapiloff eventually became a judge.
Kapiloff’s young aide Steve became our media consultant. We liked most of his ideas, but some ” well, we’d roll our eyes. Apparently that wasn’t unusual for Steve Peace.
Through the hot summer, we walked. Neighbors, like Al Strohlein, wandered in to volunteer and they walked, too. The money never rolled in after September, so we kept walking and telling voters about the boyishly good-looking candidate until we surprised everyone and won.