Crossed Up

San Diego — When he's not out on the hustings praising the merits of the Kroll report on past malfeasance at city hall or plugging his privatization measure, one of San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders's biggest causes of late has been keeping the Mount Soledad Cross. But not every member of his family agrees. So reports Don Harrison on Jewishsightseeing, a website dedicated to coverage of local people and issues of that faith. Last month Harrison, a onetime political consultant, lobbyist, Union-Tribune writer, and top aide to the late city councilman Bill Cleator, interviewed Sanders and his wife Rana Sampson, an academic-minded ex-cop from New York whom Sanders says he met at a police convention. "One of the reasons that I love the United States is that there's respect for all religions, and the separation of state and church is something I feel very comfortable with," Harrison quoted Sampson as saying about her opposition to retaining the controversial religious symbol on public land. "I just happen to be on the opposite side of this issue with Jerry." Despite that difference of opinion, Sanders, who Harrison reports has visited his wife's sister on a kibbutz near Eilat in Israel, closed ranks, sort of, with Rana on the issue of Hezbollah versus the Jewish state: "I think the issue is really peace for everybody, and, as I said that day at the event, it is extremists that are trying to take that away from us, and that is just unfair."