By Doug Porter
Will he or won’t he? Run for mayor, that is.
It’s my contention (I’ve been wrong at least once before) that former City Councilman Carl DeMaio will not be entering the upcoming mayoral contest.
First, there’s my transactional analysis of what he’s doing on Twitter.
Yesterday his followers were invited to two fundraising events, “Young Professionals for Carl DeMaio” (tonight at the Hard Rock) and (for those who are young at heart and brain addled) a birthday celebration for the former city councilman on September 12th that specifically mentioned his candidacy for Congress.
Then there’s the blow back from the story currently making the rounds concerning acts of self-gratification that are alleged to have occurred in the royal loo located behind the city council chamber. DeMaio’s lawyers have sent the obligatory request for correction letter out to various news organizations that carried the story.
Given that the national and international media along with a huge slice of social media have jumped on the bathroom story bandwagon—77,000 results on my Google search—it’s my feeling that he’ll opt in for the political campaign occurring next year.
The arguments against my supposition include the fact that sdgln.com, the site run by DeMaio’s significant other, featured SDFP’s commentary by Jim Miller on Nathan Fletcher yesterday (three paragraphs and a link).
And then there’s this, from UT-San Diego yesterday:
Former U.S. Rep. Duncan L. Hunter had endorsed newcomer Kirk Jorgensen over Carl DeMaio in the 2014 race for the 52nd Congressional District.
Hunter, who served in the House of Representatives for 28 years and ran for president in 2008, said Jorgensen “represents qualities our community needs.” Both men are U.S. Marine Corps veterans, and Hunter is the father of current 50th Congressional District Rep. Duncan D. Hunter.
In other Carl DeMaio news, San Diego City Beat pulled back the curtains to reveal that the source of the ‘penis straw in Las Vegas story’ used by 10News as part of it ‘reporting on Bob Filner’ was none other than Jeff Leier, who worked in the Mayoral race for nine months as an “outreach manager’ for the ex-city councilman’s campaign.
Leier was also president of the SDSU College Republicans, a group that organized demonstrations mocking the San Diego’s Occupy movement.
From John Lamb’s story at City Beat:
Social media exploded after 10News decided to run the photograph, with accompanying finger-wagging from Republican-leaning political analyst John Dadian.
“She is somebody who is the public face for the mayor,” 10News quoted Dadian as saying. “You quite honestly have to have a higher standard. She should know better.”
Save for local Republican Party official Derrick Roach, Dadian seemed to stand alone in his assessment. (Roach, in an online comment, oddly suggested that if Lewis worked for “Disney or the Boy Scouts,” she would have been “reprimanded if not fired.”)
Coming Soon? Hurricane Darrell Issa
Those environmental activist types over at 350.org have come up with a wacky and fun way to get the news out about the climate change denier types in Congress standing in the way of legislation that might make a difference for the future of the planet.
They’re petitioning the World Meteorological Organization to name hurricanes after politicians who are skeptical or dismissive of manmade climate change. There a petition that you can sign here and an over-the-top video embedded below for your viewing pleasure.
Included on their list of forty plus flat-earther types nominated for these ‘honors’ is San Diego’s Darrell Issa.
The literalists in the national media are falling all over themselves in calling out 350.org for not being making the usual cut and dried arguments about climate change in this effort.
They’re missing the point. Of course this is over the top. Of course the World Meteorological Organization isn’t going to change its program for naming storms. And, horror of horrors, the science on climate change and increased intensity of tropical storms is incomplete.
For all these reasons, the campaign is being denigrated and tut-tutted. How dare these enviro-types use hyperbole to make a point!
Maybe 350.org should have proposed naming carbon dioxide reading stations after politicians.
Watching the City Council Agenda
You’ll be pleased to know the City Council has agreed to vote (Wednesday) on amending the Municipal Code’s section on recall elections to get rid of that pesky language declared unconstitutional a decade ago.
Also on the docket for August 28th will be language setting forth the dates for this fall’s special election:
Section 1. It is hereby ordered that a Municipal Special Election will be held in theCity of San Diego on Tuesday, November 19, 2013, for the purpose of electing candidates for the office of Mayor, to serve for the remainder of the current four-year term to which Mayor Bob Filner had been elected, and had served until his resignation.
My reading of the tea leaves on this item leads me to believe that the date for a subsequent runoff will be December 17th, so you’ll have time to complete your holiday shopping after you’ve voted.
Following Up on the Neighborhood Agenda
Over at Voice of San Diego Andrew Keatts has an important story up about a critical component of our soon to be departed Mayor’s neighborhoods-first agenda. It’s my contention that this will be critical area of city operations to keep an eye on over the coming weeks.
In practice, Filner’s move to reprioritize neighborhoods meant reinventing the city’s planning and development functions in his image.
That included hiring one of the country’s most highly respected urban planners, Bill Fulton, to take over a reconstituted and empowered planning department, a move that provided a glimpse at what Filner’s plan might look like if all the stars aligned perfectly.
Filner’s new Planning and Neighborhood Resources department, freed from the confines of Development Services, would outline and enforce the city’s future growth at a community level by taking on affordable housing, transportation, economic development and historic resources. It would be the Department of Quality of Life, he said.
Key to this program will be replacing the city’s out-of-date community plans, which serve as a blueprint for growth of city neighborhoods. Watch what happens here, as derailing the fast-track proposal to redo these plans will be a clear indicator of bad things happening downtown.
Another indicator to watch (and we will be) will be the City Council’s upcoming vote on Barrio Logan’s community plan. There are two options, one favored by the community because it puts some buffering between industrial operations and residential areas and another favored by the owners of those industrial operations.
There is an intense lobbying campaign going on by those favoring industrial zoning, saying the community-centric plan will impact jobs and economic development. Not being discussed are the historically high levels of toxic substances in the water and air in and around the community.
And They’re Off… Or Not
For the record, politicos Christine Kehoe, Toni Atkins, Jan Goldsmoith, Donna Frye, and Bonnie Dumanis have all declared they have no desire to take the mayoral job. Several lesser known candidates have declared their intentions with the city clerk, including David Tasem, Mark Schwatz, Jared B. Mimms, Kurt Schwab and Ashok Parameswaran.
KPBS eased into their coverage of the mayoral race with a nice soft and fuzzy piece about Nathan Fletcher’s candidacy. I’m sure the ‘KPBS is part of the conspiracy’ crowd will use this softball journalism as Exhibit A as proof of the station’s intentions and real agenda. They wouldn’t do that, would they?
From KPBS:
This isn’t Fletcher’s first run at the mayor’s race, but last time he tried for the seat he was a Republican, and then an Independent. Now he is running as a Democrat — he said the shift was a long time coming and it reflects changes in his own life.
“You know when you have children, it changes how you view things and as you prepare to put your kids in San Diego public schools, it helps you better understand the importance of a full commitment to make sure every child, regardless of race of ethnicity or neighborhood gets a quality education,” he said.
Reform Coverage Courtesy of the Koch Brothers
Now that the ultra-wealthy and notoriously right wing Koch brothers have decided not to buy the Los Angeles Times, it’s high time we started watching the other ways their minions infiltrate and influence the media.
At UT-San Diego this manifests itself thru their joint project with the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity called “Fixing California”, which tries to dress up their libertarian schemes in sheep’s clothing. Featured are “experts” like Carl DeMaio, Gloria Romero and Michelle Rhee, all doing their best to sound sane and rational as they distort or omit facts along the way towards giving us solutions that always seem to include union busting, privatized education and more economic inequality.
Columnist Steven Greenhut has made the move from Koch-land along with ‘investigative reporter” Trent Siebert to grace the pages of our daily fishwrap. So when you see either of the bylines, you can be assured there’s an agenda lurking.
In today’s UT-San Diego we learn all about the aspirations of one of the ReCall Filner’s primary funders, John Cox. Here’s the pitch:
Sacramento — One California reform group believes the best way to deal with California’s broken political system is to elect more politicians — thousands more — to statewide legislative office.
It’s a counterintuitive idea that seems wacky at first, but has surprisingly sound reasoning behind it. Such a measure might even be on the 2014 statewide ballot.
Since 2011, San Diego-area venture capitalist and former GOP presidential candidate John Cox, chairman of Rescue California, has been pitching the idea of a “neighborhood legislature.” Californians who want to fix the state’s political problems tend to focus on term limits, campaign-finance reform, open primaries and part-time legislatures. Whatever the merits of those ideas, he says, they miss the main problem, which is a lack of representation.
Look for this plan as a ballot proposition in 2014. I haven’t read the fine print yet, but doubt there’s much in the way of good news there.
Bang! Bang! ‘We’re Not Racist’
Wikipedia
Tomorrow marks the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at which Rev. Martin Luther King gave his famous ‘I Have a Dream Speech’. This evening at 8pm KPBS will feature a documentary about that day entitled “The March”.
Civil rights and organized labor groups staged an event this past weekend commemorating that day, which many historians believe helped in passing the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965).
It was also a day for the ‘I Am Not a Racist’ types like Laura Ingraham at Fox News and talk radio to strut their stuff. From Media Matters:
On her August 26 radio broadcast, Ingraham criticized the event and its speakers, saying the goal “was to co-opt the legacy of Martin Luther King into a modern-day liberal agenda,” and scoffing at the topics speakers supposedly discussed: “From gay marriage, to immigration — amnesty, was thrown in for good measure. We talked about the Voting Rights Act.”
Ingraham ran through a list of African-American crime rates before hosting Pat Buchanan, a prominent racist with white nationalist ties. Buchanan dismissed the idea that minorities suffer any disadvantages in contemporary America, calling the idea “absurd” because “black folks excel and are hugely popular figures in everything from sports to entertainment to athletics to politics. Everywhere you go … So the progress has been enormous.”
At one point during her broadcast, Ingraham began playing a clip of Lewis’ speech from the 50th anniversary rally, before interrupting the playback of his comments with the sound of a loud gunshot.
On This Day: 1984 – President Ronald Reagan announced that the first citizen to go into space would be a teacher. The teacher that was eventually chosen was Christa McAuliffe. She died in the Challenger disaster. 1990 – Stevie Ray Vaughn and three members of Eric Clapton’s band were killed in a helicopter crash in Wisconsin. 1996 – California Governor Pete Wilson signed an order that would halt state benefits to illegal immigrants.
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Doug Porter
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With respect to KPBS’ “soft and fuzzy” coverage of the impending election: During yesterday morning’s news, they reported the results of a SurveyUSA poll about which potential mayoral candidates have the most public support. Apparently, 18% of 513 voters want Carl DeMaio, while 16% of that same 513 want Fletcher. (That is 92 and 82 not-very-smart people, respectively. Gotta love that sample size and the Very Important Results.) Is this really meaningful? Or…is this just the beginning of saying something so frequently and in a certain pitch as to make it come true? FOX5 gave , so it must be true.
“Like” Lori Saldana for Mayor”on facebook?
Dear Jim-I, too, support Lori Saldana for Mayor. She is a very well organized person who has headed up nonprofit and educational organizations to their benefit. In her legislative career, in less than two terms she quickly rose up to be the Assembly speaker-Pro Temp, leading the legislature during the many times that Speaker, Karen Bass, was away. She is great as a campaigner as she demonstrated by raising the necessary funds, and wresting the Democratic Assembly Nomination from two experienced male Democrats in her initial race. For her second term she campaigned hard, raised all the funds needed, and went on to win, handily. She only lost to Scott Peters in her Congressional race when, seeing that he was behind in the polls, he threw a Million dollars of his own family money at her in the last week of the campaign. This included a questionable mailer that she had no time to answer, effectively. Even then, he won by only a few hundred votes. She is a woman of great integrity; her voting record is exemplary on the issues that count. Moreover, she has never cow towed to special interests, and has held her ground against Bob Filner, Jess Durfee, and Lorena Gonzalez. In a campaign for Mayor she would, rightfully, defend women against the violence and sexual harassment that they suffer. She very much deserves our support for Mayor of San Diego.
Looks like a no-brainer to me. After all, who else is there: Nathan Todd?
Todd Nathan?
Wasn’t this the state famed (or whatever) for that “demon sheep” TV political spot? We still know ’em when we see (or hear or smell) ’em – “fix” THAT, Kochies! HAH HAH HAH!!!
The last sentence of a Reader story says “An aide to former Mayor Jerry Sanders also mentioned DeMaio’s autoeroticism in a 2011 memo.” Curious how DeMaio’s “rebuttal” didn’t mention this, but only served as another vehicle for him to deliver a sham of an attack against unions.
Is the only thing he stands for is union busting?
He can run for either office, for he’ll be elected to none.