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The Starting Line – Clinton Gives Thumbs Up As Poll Puts Filner in Front

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Congressman Bob Filner used the final debate of the 2012 Mayoral campaign to announce an endorsement by former President Bill Clinton. The face off at the local Fox affiliate was the last of twenty nine joint appearances by Congressman Filner and City Councilman DeMaio. SD Free Press blogger Andy Cohen was there, and I’m assuming he’ll weigh in with more coverage.

Meanwhile, a poll by the Pharos Research Group shows Congressman Bob Filner leading by seven points in San Diego’s hotly contested race for mayor. An analysis of the results says that 708 likely voters answered a live call (meaning that it wasn’t a robo-poll) from October 19 to October 21; 52% of the respondents were men and party identifications closely mirrored that of the city’s electorate.

The survey indicated that 47.46% indicated a preference for Filner, while 40.68% preferred City Councilman Carl DeMaio.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Zombie Attack in San Diego Underway

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Halloween is more than a trick or treating event for hundreds of Marines, Navy special ops types, soldiers, police and firefighters in San Diego today as they confront a nightmarish invasion of the living dead.

The 44 acre Paradise Point Resort on Mission Bay will be the site of a Hollywood-style production of a zombie attack as part of an emergency response training program. It’s just one part of five-day counterterrorism summit run by the Halo Corporation as an approved training event by the Homeland Security Grant Program and the Urban Areas Security Initiative. Participants (or in most cases, government agencies) are coughing up a $1,000 registration fee. The session runs through Friday.

In keeping with the holiday aura surrounding this program, the keynote speaker at the conference is a retired top spook — former CIA Director Michael Hayden.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – 17,000 Readers Said “No More”: UT-San Diego Sunday Circulation Plunges (UPDATED)

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Since taking over ownership of San Diego’s daily newspaper last year Publisher Doug Manchester and CEO John Lynch have responded to criticisms that their style of far right advocacy might be alienating readers by claiming that readership was rising.

Sorry guys. The people don’t love your act. The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) numbers for the year ending this last September are in. Last years’ Sunday circulation beats this year’s Sunday circulation by 17,051 copies, including digital and ‘branded’ editions.

Sunday editions in the newspaper world are critical barometers. Sunday is the day that advertisers crave. Readers typically have more time to peruse the paper and copies of the paper are more likely to be shared. So losing readership on a Sunday is a big deal.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line –Three Halloween Stories About Politics That Should Send Chills Up Your Spine

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Politics takes a back seat today as the nation casts its eyes towards the East Coast and mid-west , which are under assault by Hurricane Sandy barreling from the southeast and an early winter storm coming in from the northwest. Here on the left coast life goes on and there are headlines to report.

The Giants won, the Chargers suck and there are too many political commercials on TV this week. That about covers it for today.

In the absence of any major breaking news, I’m putting out three stories that illustrate what a tangled web the media can spin when it comes to politics.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line— DeMaio Campaign Tactic Backfires, US Atty Under Investigation as Calls for Resignation Mount

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It all started with “a staff member” from Carl DeMaio’s mayoral campaign leaking an email from U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy, who was unhappy with Congressman Bob Filner for lashing out in response to attacks by the City Councilman, who had just re-stated his oft disproved claims about Filner’s pension.

This ‘leak’ was to be yet another salvo in a last ditch campaign to portray Filner as too unreasonable and hostile to be Mayor of San Diego. Instead, it’s blown up in his face. Questions about whether Duffy was in violation of the Hatch Act, which restricts the activities of government employees in partisan political campaigns, are now at the forefront of the controversy.

Now this action by the DeMaio campaign has led to calls for the U.S. Attorney to resign and a review of her actions by Justice Department officials   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Voting Rights; Don’t Take Them for Granted

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In case you haven’t noticed, San Diego Free Press has a terrific story up here about local efforts at “Poll Watching” underway via the Election Integrity Project and True The Vote, organizations with connections to the Tea Party movement. Our citizen journalists have been ‘watching the watchers’ over the past few months.

It’s pretty obvious from reading their materials that the underlying idea behind these ‘watchers’ is voter intimidation of certain classes of people that they have deemed to be suspicious. In practice—despite claims to the contrary—this has generally meant people of color, students, and other groups whose voting history runs counter to the conservative cause.

Despite promises from True The Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht earlier this year to recruit and train a million volunteers to watch the polls, the group has fallen far short of that goal. For example, Election Integrity Maryland has only about 200 recruits. Nevada Clean Up the Vote has about 700. And our SDFP observers also report a sharp decline in volunteer participation in local efforts More Inside…

Also: LA Mass Transit Exploring San Diego Link, Encinitas’ Parents Still Threatening Legal Action Over Yoga Classes

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The Starting Line –San Diego Mayoral Education Debate Fails to Advance USD Power Play on Schools

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There have been so many debates between City Councilman Carl DeMaio and Congressman Bob Filner that even an earnest politico like myself has become inured to them. DeMaio and Filner have circled around each other like snarling cats, making lots of noise but not really inflicting much damage. One candidate sneers. The other becomes combative. And so forth.

So it comes as a real shocker that these aspirants actually agreed on something, rising above the partisan fray at a University of San Diego debate last night to concur that the job of Mayor in San Diego does Not include expanding the power of that office to oversee city schools. And the debate must have been a real disappointment for USD’s Center for Education and Law Policy (CEPAL) which has tried repeatedly to sell local policy makers and voters on the idea that undermining the power of an elected school board was the only way to ‘save’ San Diego Schools.

One local reporter Tweeted this characterization of the debate: “Moderator: Do you support mayoral control of schools? Candidates: No. Moderator: But c’mon, do you support mayoral control of schools?”   [Read more…]

The Starting Line –How the Taxpayers Association Enabled the ‘$2500’ iPads Being Used in San Diego Schools

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The email has been everywhere. It’s at the center of the campaign against San Diego Unified’s School District’s Proposition Z, a measure asking the voters for additional financing for capital improvements and repairs to school properties.

The headline screams “School Board is Buying iPads for $2,500, New San Diego County Taxpayers Association Analysis Shows”. We’re quickly told that SDUSD “is using 40-year Capital Appreciation Bonds, the same risky, long-term financing notoriously used by the Poway Unified School District.” Without skipping a beat we’re breathlessly told that every dollar spent by the Board will cost taxpayers seven dollars.

But what the “No on Z” people (who are basically the same as the Taxpayers Association) aren’t telling us about is the role that they played in approving this “risky financing”. Or that the financing deal really isn’t the same as Poway’s. And that there’s a really big “IF” underlying their financial assumptions.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – The Mechanics of Voter Manipulation as Practiced by San Diego’s Daily Paper

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The point of all this misinformation is to discourage or encourage, as the case may be, certain blocs of voters from exercising their privilege.  The best way to beat this is just to go vote.

The UT-San Diego continues to work hard to prove their marketing claim that they are no longer a general circulation newspaper.  Between the (front page editorials), their nurturing of a cultural wasteland that celebrates white male privilege and the blatant misrepresentations masquerading as news they have destroyed whatever “goodwill” the business may have accumulated over the last century.

Today’s UT mediaplex is nothing more than a megalomaniacal metaphor for a megaphone used by one man and his toadies to trumpet their twisted view of the universe, a universe where the basic tenants of civilization are under assault by unwashed hordes who will -no doubt- steal their money, take ‘their’ women and weaken the very DNA of the species through miscegenation.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line— Weekend Wingnut Gathering Slated for Balboa Park

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Come Stand in Defense of Your Church!” is the rallying cry for the San Diego Tea Party’s event at the intersection of Park Boulevard and President’s Way Saturday morning, October 20th.

More than a dozen speakers, representing a variety of groups with theocratic agendas, will take the stage to rail against the Obama administration’s so-called assaults on religious freedom. Speakers include radio host Gina Loudon, whose claims to fame include comparing gay marriage to people marrying animals and suggesting people who wanted to build an Islamic Community Center in New York City were Nazis; local gay basher Charles LiMandri; Dr. Jim Garlow, Senior pastor at Skyline Church; Anti-Abortion activist Timmerie Millington, and President Steven Pynes of the Mormons.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – The Sordid Saga of Judicial Candidate Jim Miller, Jr.

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San Diego’s legal establishment is rolling out the big guns today at a noon press conference on the sidewalk in front of the Superior Court building downtown. They’re gathering a gaggle of retired judges, prominent attorneys and past heads of the local Bar Association to make sure that the public is aware that judicial candidate Jim Miller, Jr. has been rated as “Lacking qualifications” in the race for Office 25 of the San Diego Superior Court.

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The Starting Line – San Diego Zoo Expansion Plan: Make 61% of Balboa Park’s Parking Paid

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Now that (it appears) plans for construction of a paid parking garage adjacent to the Plaza de Panama are moving forward, the San Diego Zoo has dusted off an eight year old project involving construction of a fee based 4800 space underground garage and will eliminating the free 2500 space surface lot currently in use.

The announcement for the latest proposal came via a very carefully controlled roll out with members of the Balboa Park conservancy and the UT-San Diego editorial board being given a ‘first look’ at the revived plan. Today’s newspaper features a front page article putting a positive spin on the Zoo’s parking scheme, stressing an alleged paucity of parking in Balboa Park. It will be very interesting to see if any opposition develops.

INSIDE: Fletcher Blesses Prop Z, Undecided Voters Who Have Already Voted, Adios NC Times, Munger Pulls Negative Ads

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