J. Stacey Sullivan, 90, is one of the last of San Diego’s old-time movers and shakers.

As a 35-year-old attorney, newly arrived in San Diego from San Francisco in 1959, he quickly met politicians; chamber members; Jack Murphy, the sports editor of The San Diego Union; and Al Anderson, chairman of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce’s sports committee.

Among Sullivan’s new clients was Barron Hilton, the owner of the Hilton Hotel chain and the newly formed Los Angeles Chargers. But L.A. was in love with the Rams, not the Chargers. So, Hilton asked Sullivan if San Diego would be a better home.

“Do you think we can do this?” Hilton asked Sullivan, and Sullivan consulted Anderson, Murphy and a handful of local leaders.


“We thought, why not?” Sullivan said.

The rest is history. The team moved to Balboa Stadium at San Diego High School in 1961, which was expanded to meet seat demand, and then to San Diego Stadium, now Qualcomm Stadium, which opened in 1967.

Now, Sullivan’s at it again.

Over brunch at Hob Nob Hill, a restaurant he frequented many times when he practiced law at Third Avenue and Juniper Street, he sprang to life like a candidate on fire.


He’s burning through his cellphone minutes, calling some of those 1960s movers and shakers, now in their 70s and 80s, to see if they can change history once again and keep the Chargers from moving to LA.

“What if there was a real big leader, some important people in San Diego, who care about San Diego and who are willing to say, enough of this dancing around, let us keep our team and let us figure out a way to do it?” he said.

He’s calling Hilton and developer Malin Burnham, Qualcomm’s Irwin Jacobs and former Union-Tribune publisher Doug Manchester, even Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis, whose father Sullivan knew well.

He wants to enlist them in lighting a fire under some super-booster who can make the case to Chargers owner Dean Spanos that moving is a mistake, for the Spanos family, for the team and for San Diego.


“I’m a dreamer,” he said. “I was a dreamer before, and I have put it together.”

He helped win San Diego’s needed passage of state water bonds in the 1960s. He chaired the Old Globe Theatre when it needed to raise $6 million to replace its playhouse destroyed by arson in 1978.

And at one point, he persuaded Gene Klein, who bought the team from Hilton and later sold it to Spanos, not to move it to Seattle.

He gets Spanos’ moving logic: An L.A. home could mean an instant increase in team value and family wealth.


Here’s the question he’d like to pose to the franchise’s leader:

“How do we get you (Spanos) to sacrifice the big windfall that you think you will get in LA — and it’s not a sure thing — by making yourself the hero of San Diego’s future? You want to be the guy who’s beloved by your city?”

Spanos’ father, Alex, bought the team in 1984 for $70 million, and Forbes now values it at $1.53 billion. Some estimates say the team could be worth $3 billion in L.A.

Who knows what argument will win over Spanos — tough talk and threats and warnings or pleadings and bowing and appeals to his higher angels. Sullivan tried out a potential pitch, pointed and blunt:


“Goddam it, Spanos, it’s just money. How much money do you need? You want to have your statue put up in Horton Plaza? I’ll guarantee you that. You come around and be a big man and say, ‘I am going to stay in San Diego, and I’m going to buy my legacy that way.’”

In Sullivan’s experience, rich people don’t really want more money, they want to rub shoulders with the other rich and famous. They want immortality.

Sullivan recalls one wealthy San Diego leader, John Scripps, who just wanted a field pass and then a trip to the Chargers’ locker room to see the team up close and personal.

Earlier, a Mission Valley farmer had refused to sell his piece of land needed to complete the Qualcomm Stadium site. But he agreed to sell when Sullivan promised to erect a plaque in his memory on the building.


“That’s what important to them, preserving their legacy,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan does not know Dean Spanos personally but hopes some of the people he contacts do and that they will be able to make a convincing pitch.

“What are the chances? It’s a long shot,” he said. “But I’m not going to give up.”