SAN DIEGO — A former police chief was elected mayor of scandal-plagued San Diego Tuesday, defeating a maverick councilwoman and surf-shop owner with a campaign that trumpeted his record of turning around troubled organizations.

Jerry Sanders, a mild-mannered Republican who was San Diego's youngest police chief, will inherit a $1.37 billion pension deficit that has triggered federal investigations of the nation's seventh-biggest city and fueled talk of bankruptcy.

"The city's problems won't be solved in eight weeks, they won't be solved in eight months, but the pursuit of solutions will begin tomorrow," Sanders told cheering supporters at his campaign headquarters.

In early absentee voting and with 94 percent of the precincts reporting, Sanders had 139,503 votes or 54 percent, while Councilwoman Donna Frye had 117,441 votes or 46 percent.

Sanders, 55, led the San Diego Police Department as chief from 1993 to 1999 and later, held leadership positions at the American Red Cross and United Way local chapters. He hired a veteran local political consultant who helped two former Republican mayors win office.

His fiscal recipe includes freezing salaries and hiring, potential layoffs, outsourcing some services and selling pension bonds.

Frye, 53, who is married to the legendary surfer Skip Frye, was almost elected mayor in November 2004 in a write-in bid that garnered her 34 percent of the vote in a disputed contest. She lost to Republican Dick Murphy only after a judge refused to allow more than 5,500 ballots on which voters wrote her name but failed to darken the adjoining bubble.

Murphy resigned in July — only seven months into his second term — after failing to tackle the pension mess.

Frye finished first in the July primary with 43 percent of the vote, short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff. Sanders finished second with 27 percent and Steve Francis, a Republican businessman who quickly endorsed Sanders, captured 24 percent.

Frye who began her political career with the support of San Diego's surfing community became more polished, replacing her familiar hairstyle parted straight down the middle with a dyed haircut she calls a "mayor-do." She said she might ask voters in tax-averse San Diego to approve a half-cent sales tax increase and spent much of her campaign trying to dispel her image as a lightweight surfer chick.

Voters also cast ballots in two council districts to choose replacements for Michael Zucchet and Ralph Inzunza, who were convicted in July on federal corruption charges. They are due to be sentenced Thursday.