If voters peer deeply into cyberspace, they may catch a virtual glimpse of the two candidates — San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts and Superior Court Judge Dick Murphy — competing to become the mayor of the Web Surfing Capital of America. That's right. San Diegans, reports Nielsen/NetRatings, average more time on the Internet than residents of any other city, even Bill Gates' Seattle. And hoping to reach some of those avid Internet surfers, each of the mayoral candidates has set up an official campaign Web site.

Web surfers, beware. Murphy4mayor.com and Robertsformayor.com are not the easiest sites to find. And once there, don’t expect details to pop up on the screen with the candidates' views on the e-revolution.

Perhaps that is not surprising in a year when the campaigning seems downright old-fashioned. Traditional populist issues — neighborhood services and gas prices, for instance — dominated the San Diego mayoral primary. From a field of a dozen candidates, voters chose familiar, experienced public figures for the runoff in November. Roberts, making his second mayoral bid, emerged as the top vote-getter, with 25.7 percent and Murphy, with 15.7 percent, earned the second runoff berth. Both Roberts and Murphy were previously on the San Diego City Council. But Roberts served when e-mail was still a novelty and Murphy during the early 1980s, when a lot of people thought PC stood for "politically correct."

Times have changed, of course, but not the propensity of voters to galvanize around emotionally charged political issues having nothing to do with technology and cutting edge telecommunications. In this year’s mayoral primary, for instance, opinions on marriage may have helped Murphy squeak into second place, edging out third-place finisher Peter Q. Davis by a scant 169 votes. Murphy had supported Prop. 22, the state measure preventing legal recognition of gay marriages, and political observers speculate his stand drew just enough support from Christian conservatives to help him surge past a Davis campaign that waned in the homestretch.

Nevertheless, in a city variously described as an "Internet hotbed" and the "Wireless Communications Capital of the World" and "Telecom Valley," San Diego City Council members deal with the technology important to the local economy. The council wrestles with big policy issues: How, for instance, can the city provide the infrastructure — like smoother flowing roadways — needed by the burgeoning high-tech industry? And what policies will generate affordable housing for its employees?

"There's an increasing acknowledgment that technology drives San Diego’s economy, and therefore our voice should be heard," says Kevin Carroll, executive director of American Electronics Association, San Diego Council. His organization, an umbrella group representing 200 local high-tech corporations, advocates policies and legislation designed to help the industry and has a high-powered government affairs committee poised to educate the local elected officials on high-tech's needs.

Besides its high-tech policies, city government itself is more wired than ever, installing new computer programs, e-mail and the Internet to improve public access to its services. For instance, San Diegans can use their home computers to look up City Council agendas and voting records. They can even send their public comments on an agenda item by e-mail up to half an hour before the council meets. (The trade-off is that the council has to cope with bizarre annoyances such as the cyber-squatters who commandeer the names of individual council members on the Internet.)

The library system is increasingly online, offering more access to library information from home computers. It is adding dozens of new, Internet-connected computers at the main library and the branches. The hope is that the libraries can bridge the "digital divide," bringing the Internet and e-mail to computer have-nots.

All of these changes have happened in a matter of a few years. Incumbent Mayor Susan Golding recalls that when she took office nearly eight years ago, there was one computer in the mayor's office and no ability to communicate electronically with the City Council or other officials. Two years later, at Golding's urging, the city set up its Web site and began to develop an elaborate network of internal and external communications.

Golding, who owns and uses a laptop computer, a Palm electronic organizer and a cell phone with Web access, says despite the city's progress, the next mayor will still have plenty of e-challenges to finish, including a system that would allow San Diegans to apply for city permits on-line. "I think it’s important. It’s not just something nice to do," she advises. "It’s absolutely critical for this city to deal with the new economy."

The Daily E-Mail Count

Both Murphy and Roberts say they do support the e-revolution and incorporate it into their daily lives, as well as their campaigns.

Roberts started e-mailing three or four years ago, he says, and gets about 20 to 30 e-mails daily at his county supervisor's office. His staff screens the e-mail, he says, and "when appropriate, I’ll send a reply. It’s so quick that it makes it real easy." He's also sending out an electronic newsletter to a growing list of about 600 people.

Murphy, on leave from the Superior Court bench while he runs for the mayor's seat, also uses AOL Internet service to send e-mails on his two personal computers. One he keeps at the courthouse, the other at his campaign headquarters. On average, he says he receives about 10 e-mails a day on each of his computers. Murphy recalls that he began appreciating the value of e-mail when his daughter went to Costa Rica in the mid-1990s. Instead of huge long-distance phone bills, he communicated with her through e-mail. Now the e-mail system has become an integral part of his campaign. "E-mail is a very valuable form of communication between candidates and voters because of its immediacy," Murphy says. "But you have to devote more time to it. The downside is that it eats up time."

Both have some experience with e-commerce. A history buff with Internet access through AOL at home, Roberts buys books online from the Barnes and Noble site and Amazon.com. Murphy says he also purchased a book, "Cities on the Rebound" by William Hudnut, within the past year through Amazon.com. "I think that the significance of the Internet is that it’s going to change the way we sell products in America," Murphy says.

Murphy claims the longest history with computers. In the 1960s, he spent his summers in Chicago doing computer programming for IBM. For his part, Roberts says his connection to local high-tech companies (daughter Christine Trimble heads Qualcomm's public relations department) will be a valuable asset if he's elected mayor. Pointing to the mammoth private contract that rapidly transformed and modernized the county's computer system, Roberts would do something similar at the city. He wants to mobilize industry leaders — among them, Irwin Jacobs of Qualcomm and Harvey White of Leap Wireless — to help bring the city to the cutting edge of technology. "In fairness, they (the city) are bringing some things on-line," says Roberts. "But there is a whole area where we can wake up local government and do a lot more."

Tech Expansion's Twin Evils

As for nurturing the growth of San Diego’s high- tech industries, both candidates acknowledge the City Council's support role. After all, it’s hard to grow a business when your employees can’t get to work or afford housing. Says Vicki Marion, chief executive officer of JABRA and chair of the San Diego Telecom Council, "I think San Diego needs a mayor who will, in partnership with the industry, build the right infrastructure within our region."

To Murphy, the key is providing the needed infrastructure, from expanding freeways, mass transit systems and airport capacity to bolstering the education system.

High-tech anxiety is mounting over the limitations of Lindbergh Field and the fact that the city and its businesses will outgrow it in a few years. Roberts and Murphy say they would work on an expansion.

Roberts, who lost his battle to have a new Twin Ports airport built on the border, still wants a new airport, but he's reluctant to say where it should go. Nevertheless, he's adamant about the need. "We ought to start by recognizing that Lindbergh has a very limited life span," he says. "No matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars we want to put into it, Lindbergh Field is not the airport of the future of San Diego." He promises to initiate a process that will bring results. "As the mayor, I intend to start that process," he says. "I intend to see it through, and I intend to have for this community ... the best location and actually implement the plan so that we see this done within the next decade."

Murphy is more precise. "First of all, we need to create the San Diego County Airport Authority, which will have responsibility for selecting a site, securing a site and attempting to allocate air traffic between airports," he says. He wants a system in San Diego patterned on Washington, D.C., where international flights arrive at Virginia's Dulles Airport and domestic commuter flights at Reagan International. In San Diego, a new airport for long-distance flights would be built on Camp Pendleton, with Lindbergh Field continuing as a commuter airport. Created as a joint venture by San Diego and Orange counties, Murphy would call the Camp Pendleton site the Southern California International Airport. He also favors the proposed cargo airport at Brown Field.

On the rush hour traffic jams plaguing commuters, Murphy and Roberts say they favor improving highways and mass transit. Roberts views mass transit pragmatically, with buses and trolleys working best when they serve central employment centers rather than suburban corporate parks. He thinks ridership would increase by creating better service, including "bus systems that don’t get stuck in traffic." Murphy, who grew up in the Chicago area and regularly rode the elevated train, thinks lack of ridership on trains, buses and trolleys is, more often than not, a psychological hurdle caused by San Diegans' car habits. "Fixed rail mass transit is good in the East," he says. "In the West, a car is good." A fan of the trolley and the Coaster commuter train — he was once chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Development Board — Murphy believes people would come to like public transit if they gave it a try.

Education is another priority in the candidates' pro-technology platforms. Murphy says that companies must "have access to a skilled labor force, and while I think that while that is primarily the role of the school system, the city needs to foster the development of technology." Roberts sounds a similar note, saying the city should continue working to bridge the "digital divide," so that children and their parents start to master computer skills. Says Roberts, "I’ve said consistently that as mayor my goals would be to make San Diego the most technologically literate city in the country."

Both Roberts and Murphy recognize how soaring housing costs could dampen the economic boom, and both believe the city must devise ways to boost the supply. Says Roberts, "The demand has skyrocketed. This is something we’ve got to come to grips with." For Roberts, the solution is making sure that new jobs don’t outstrip the amount of new housing by a huge margin. He says the city should curb suburban sprawl and focus new, denser housing in more central neighborhoods.

Murphy also thinks denser housing will help, although he wants to limit it to designated locations — Downtown, Mission Valley, University City and the neighborhoods around trolley stops. "Higher density all over the place is never going to be politically feasible," Murphy says, adding, however, that he supports a major increase in condominium construction for young professionals.

The candidates have limits on how far they will go to accommodate high-tech demands. In a recent candidates' forum, Roberts and Murphy opposed any legislation that would require private commercial property owners to grant access to telecommunications companies. "They (the telecommunications company) are like any other tenant that wants to get into your building to make money," explains Murphy, "and you should be able to pick and choose who those people are." Roberts put it more succinctly, saying, "I don’t think that government ought to be interfering with private companies, period."

The telecommunications companies, for their part, hope the next mayor will be as technology friendly as Golding, who's planning to launch a new Science and Technology Council this month to study high-tech issues and make it easier for more of these companies to move to San Diego. Carroll says he was impressed, for instance, that Golding visited the telecommunications industry representatives first when she attended the recent World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. He notes that she was one of the few local officials who opposed a tax on Internet commerce. His association will not make an endorsement in the mayor's race. But politically, he says, whoever wins the race hopefully will have a keen awareness of the industry's importance to the community. In his view, that is more important than, say, the mayor's personal e-mail skills. "You don’t have to be a geek to advocate good geek policies," Carroll says.