1) Donna Frye's activism and leadership with regard to keeping beaches cleaned up has helped make sure that the San Diego Beaches are amongst the cleanest in the country. I have an article link where statistics on numbers of environmental claims being down here are cited to back this claim up. Shows both her ability to get things done leadership-wise (the media keeps focusing on Sander's experience with rebuilding charities, and ignore her efforts here). Also shows that she does have strong values to protect our environment in pragmatic ways.
2) Donna Frye was the main backer of that one "open government" proposition that passed in last election, which speaks for her quest to open up to the public the messes that happened here because of the obfuscation of the pension board's business, etc. She has also even boycotted a number of meetings with Toni Atkins earlier to protest the earlier efforts to hide what was going on in meeting minutes, etc.
3) Donna Frye is looking to strike down the illegally negotiated pension benefits, per the recommendation of City Attorney Aguirre, whereas Sanders is "avoiding" talking about it other than trying to say that Frye can't do this without getting sued. Now unions might not like this, but this whole cycle of creating pension benefits that are not being funded properly has to stop. The city keeps trying to put off the inevitable legal questions here so that we can put this behind us. As long as they don't face this issue, San Diego will continue to have this affect their credit ratings and other bad images of our city. I believe ultimately that Donna will do more to protect city worker's jobs and their salaries as much as she is able to and is able to raise revenue to do so.
4) Donna Frye has pushed for more accessability of local government processes and participation in them to the public. She wants more public votes on key issues (kinda like Gavin Newsome did with San Francisco's pension fund), and is trying to have City Council meetings on weekends or in the evenings to allow more city residents to be able to attend them.
5) Donna Frye doesn't support usage of eminent domain to push out local businesses and industrial parkland unfairly. It is one thing to use eminent domain for something that's critical to all residents (like the airport perhaps in the future). It is another to reward developers land through eminent domain, or other big city contracts to build expensive housing as payback for their campaign donations. That's what has been happening in the past in this city with other corrupt politicians and looks to be repeating itself with Sanders, with him getting 2-3 times as much political contributions than Donna's been getting.
6) Foes will say she's "anti-chargers", but she met her present husband watching a Chargers game, and has never said she wants the Chargers to leave, which they would have you believe. She DOES want to drive a hard bargain with them and not "give away" city property or other benefits without getting something fair back in return. She also wants to plan for all alternatives to new stadium proposals and not just be talked to in private like other pols are doing around here to curry favors with them that aren't privy to public scrutiny.
In short, the big reason to vote for Donna is to break the pattern of voting for people that are heavily promoted by people that buy them off with campaign financing and other favors, and put in place someone that is more answerable to the people and is trying to represent what they want. Some try to make her out as being in the pocket of the unions or trying to just bring in her own "lib" values to government. She's taking on the unions with her pension benefit fixes (and I think in a way that it has to be done), and I believe she wants to be more answerable to what WE want to do, not what SHE wants to do. That is what this city needs now.
http://www.cafepress.com/reelectdonna