Lady Power in the Sunbelt

One balmy night in September 1988 San Diego's Mayor Maureen O'Connor spent the night in Balboa Park, not to take the air beneath the palm fronds but to sample the life of homeless people. In jeans and baseball cap, she watched a series of drug deals go down. She spent a second night among more vagrants at a skid row mission. Throughout most of her 48 hours on the streets, she went unrecognized -- until Sister Raymonda, a nun who has known the mayor for years, spotted her resting on a bench reading the paper and whispered, "If you want to...