The 2012 San Diego mayoral race is quite possibly the most important in this city’s history.  It is a choice between two very different candidates with two nearly completely divergent visions of what this city’s future looks like.

It is a choice between one candidate who believes that government is always incompetent and incapable and that the private sector is always better and more efficient than the public sector; and another who believes that government can be a positive and productive force in advancing a community’s interests.

It is a choice between one candidate who believes government should function merely to facilitate business and corporate interests, and another who believes that government’s job is to represent the best interests of the people.

It is a choice between one candidate who believes government services should be privatized, and another who believes that government services should be left in the hands of the people who pay for and depend on those services.

It is the choice between one candidate who believes that government should serve the interests of primarily the people with the wealth and power to purchase influence, and another who believes that government functions to serve those without extraordinary wealth and power whose voices otherwise would not be heard.

Bob Filner has spent over 30 years faithfully and diligently serving the interests of the people of San Diego.  He has been a crusader for civil rights, dating back to his days as a very young adult marching with the Freedom Riders and Dr. Martin Luther King.  As a member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, he has passionately fought to provide support and much needed services to our nation’s heroes, taking the cause of veterans’ homelessness as a personal slap in the face and an affront to the country those veterans served.  It is an issue especially important in San Diego, a community that is so intertwined with our nation’s military and so heavily populated with veterans.

His opponent, Carl DeMaio, doesn’t believe that there’s anything we can do about homelessness, and anything that we do won’t make a difference anyway, so why should we bother?

For his entire career, Bob Filner has stood up for the common man, the common worker.  Carl DeMaio has spent the last decade—the only decade he’s lived in San Diego—vilifying the city’s workers, blaming them for all of this city’s problems, past and present.  In fact, we believe that in a Carl DeMaio utopia, the city’s public workforce would be completely wiped out.

Bob Filner believes in a livable wage, and in making sure that even those at the bottom of the wage scale can still survive in this city in reasonable comfort, because when more people have more money to spend it benefits everyone.  Carl DeMaio, on the other hand, believes that all of the economic power should remain in the hands of the wealthiest few, and that purely market forces should decide what kind of wages and benefits the workers deserve.  Mr. DeMaio believes that by concentrating wealth in the hands of the few that it will magically and mystically trickle down into the pockets of everyone else; that the world is dependent on the benevolence of the Doug Manchesters of the world.

Carl DeMaio believes that the major decisions of this city should be left in the hands of those who have contributed the most to his campaign.  Look no further than the convention center deal that he brokered, putting a public asset purely in the hands of private hotel interests.  Bob Filner, on the other hand, believes that the major decisions that affect this city should be left in the hands of the voters and the elected representatives the voters have chosen to speak for them.

We do not agree with everything that Bob Filner has put forward during this mayoral campaign.  But his vision for this city is one that values people over money, unlike his opponent.  Mr. Filner’s focus on neighborhoods represents a bright and prosperous future for all San Diegans, and not just the rich developers eager to get their hands on prime waterfront property.

Bob Filner has been working to make San Diego a better place for 30 years, while Carl DeMaio has been one of the most divisive and destructive figures since he swooped into this city from the Washington D.C. area nearly a decade ago.  Carl DeMaio is a slick, smooth talking devil with a Cheshire cat grin.  He has run one of the most dishonest and dishonorable campaigns in recent memory.  He has deliberately and repeatedly misled San Diego voters about himself and his record.  As Donna Frye herself said, a Carl DeMaio mayoral tenure, “it would be a highway to Hell!”

The choice on Nov. 6 for San Diego is clear:  Elect Bob Filner for Mayor of San Diego.