Birther King–and lawyer for Birther Queen Orly Taitz–Gary Kreep is about to become a San Diego Superior Court judge. The latest tally put out there by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters has Kreep leading Garland Peed by a mere 56 votes in the race for the seat in Office 34. If you’re not […]
The Starting Line – The Big Money Wins The Big Races, Filner is the Exception
June 6, 2012—It was a long night for poll watchers in San Diego. Or at least it seemed long, as the County Registrar of Voters’ computer system {wags were saying its was a pair Commodore 64’s using Compuserv} crashed right after the first batch of results were posted and didn’t come back on line until 11 pm.
In the end, there were few surprises in local races. It’s DeMaio v.Filner come November and both local Propositions passed by large margins. The one local upset was SDUSD School Board President John Evans coming in second to Mark Powell by a mere 46 votes.
Turnout throughout California was abysmal, with a mere one in four registered voters bothering to cast their ballots. It’s a new record low for the State. In minority neighborhoods turnout was even lower, often in the teens. [Read more…]
Election Night Live Blog
Join us tonight – Primary Night – here at 8:00 pm when the San Diego Free Press and OB Rag join other local online media doing a live blog of the Primary’s mysterious being unfolded over the course of the evening. We will be joining San Diego CityBeat and San Diego Rostra in this joint online media project. Andy Cohen will be downtown blogging at Election Central, and both Doug Porter and Frank Gormlie will be live blogging from home, and Annie Lane will be somewhere in between. [Read more…]
California’s Primary Election Grand Experiment
After 2010 redistricting measure voted into law, California finally gets to take its new process for a test drive.
It’s Tuesday, June 5th, 2012 today. It’s the day of the 2012 primary elections. Welcome to the dawn of a new era in California electoral politics! If you’re any kind of political junkie, and you’re a Californian, then this is a pretty exciting day. It’s a historic day. It’s the day when we finally get to peel the lid off the Petri dish and see if our experiment worked, and if so, how well. [Read more…]
A Personal Election Recommendation: Robert O. Amador for Judge
We are all tired of the campaigns; I was a year ago and tomorrow is just the primary. I truly believe most of us who vote, have made up our minds for whom or what we will cast our sacred votes long ago. The editorial board asked me to write sumthin’ about the elections. But I just really could not fire myself up about it…anymore. Politicians have their world, and I have mine. I have not been excitedly for or against someone or something for quite some time (not counting the prayers and candles I lit between 2000 and 2008 to make the Cheney administration go away). I believe Tom Hayden was the last politician I really cared about…and he turned out to be a disappointment as well.
The election of a judge has always been an interesting subject to me. I found over the years, most judges have been appointed to the bench based upon a quid pro quo with the current governor, or as a result of quasi-nobility ascendency (I believe the public might gasp at the number of sitting judges whose fathers and grandfathers were sitting judges…notice I did not say mothers and grandmothers). [Read more…]
Why Wisconsin matters to San Diego
The Wisconsin recall election could have implications in local San Diego races
Anyone who has followed national politics over the last year will be eagerly awaiting the results of the efforts in Wisconsin to recall Republican Governor Scott Walker. It is considered to be the most important pre-November general election result in the country because it represents two distinct philosophies and the direction this country could go when all the votes are tallied on November 6th. [Read more…]
The Starting Line: Look at the Big Picture, Follow the Money for California and Wisconsin Election Predictions
June 5, 2012- Today’s primaries in California and Wisconsin will be watched by pundits around the country. While predicting the actual results may seem like a crapshoot, my bet is that you’ll get the most correct predictions by keeping your eye on the big picture and following the money.
The long view of today’s voting is that this is yet another battle in an epic struggle between increasingly polarized views on government. A study released yesterday by the Pew Research Center and fronted by the Washington Post this morning, confirms that the most significant divisions in the United States are no longer based on race, class or sex but on political identity. [Read more…]
The Starting Line: DeMaio on the Front Page, UT Talking Heads Debut Panned
June 4, 2012—For the second time in this election cycle “Papa Doug” Manchester’s Union-Tribune has splashed it’s editorial endorsement of a mayoral candidate on the front page. Monday morning readers of the local daily newspaper were treated to “Editorial: The Case for Carl DeMaio” even before they could turn the page today. Blogger George J. Janczyn (@GrokSurf) pretty much summed it up when he tweeted: “Once again the U-T headlines DeMaio for mayor–and this time on the REAL front page, not on a wrap-around. U-T’s the Fox News of newspapers.”
U-T San Diego launches on-line TV station to terrible reviews… Hoping to extend his reach beyond print with “original local news, talk and lifestyle programming on cable and the Web”, publisher Doug Manchester launched UT San Diego TV this week to terrible reader reviews. [Read more…]
End San Diego’s Shadow Government
In Under the Perfect Sun, Mike Davis, Kelly Mayhew and I observe that San Diego is a city that “many conservatives extol as a utopia of patriotism and free enterprise.” Indeed it was Nixon’s “lucky city” but, as we note, “San Diego has too frequently been a town wide open to greed but closed to social justice.
Like its Sunbelt siblings—Orange County, Phoenix, and Dallas—it has a long history of weak and venal city halls dominated by powerful groups of capitalist insiders. ‘Private Government’ has long overshadowed public politics.” More recently in Paradise Plundered: Fiscal Crisis and Governance Failure in San Diego, Steve Erie, Vladimir Kogan, and Scott MacKenzie similarly illustrate how San Diego’s political and business elite have done a fantastic job of “using public resources to maximize private profit” with little to no oversight from our “shadow governments.” [Read more…]
Who the San Diego Left Has Endorsed for the California Primary
By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag / Originally published May 18, 2012
Here is a summary of the candidates and propositions that San Diego’s different left-of-center and left-wing groups and media projects are endorsing for the June 5th California Primary. (Note: not all races are covered, especially those of smaller municipalities and non-controversial propositions).
First – of course, there is a left in San Diego politics – so, those who cannot accept it, get over it. (For a refresher course on left vs right, see here and here.) The groups reviewed for their endorsements are all left or left-of-center. And by report [Read more…]
Sign Petition: Support a Resolution to Reverse Citizens United
Hello, fellow activists!
We are asking for San Diegans – and ONLY SAN DIEGANS – to help out by signing our new Change.org petition.
The petition asks that the San Diego City Council support a resolution to amend the constitution and reverse Citizens United. After all, corporations are not people and money is not free speech!
We’ll be submitting this petition list to members of the San Diego City Council in June as part of ongoing nationwide effort. For that reason it is important that only those living in the city of San Diego (ZIP code 92101-92199) sign. [Read more…]
Bill Clinton, Irwin Jacobs and San Diego – the Wisconsin of the West
President Bill Clinton was in Wisconsin on Friday, June 1, stumping for Milwaukee Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett. Barrett is running against Governor Scott Walker in the upcoming recall election on June 5th and the race is a tight one.
Walker, who rode into office with a six point victory over Barrett in the 2010 mid-term elections, immediately focused upon dismantling the public employee collective bargaining laws in the state, reducing the number of individuals eligible for BadgerCare, the state’s health insurance safety net, lowering taxes on the wealthiest, and slashing the budget for education. [Read more…]
