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The Race for Mayor a Dead Heat

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New Poll has Alvarez at 46% only 1% behind Faulconer

By Brent E. Beltrán

The race for mayor has gotten a lot closer as a new 10 News/San Diego Union Tribune poll has big business friendly Republican candidate, and maritime industry minion, Kevin Faulconer at 47% with surging District 8 councilman David Alvarez coming in at 46% with 7% undecided.

The poll, conducted by SurveyUSA, has a margin of error of +/- 4.4% making this race a statistical dead heat. See full poll data here.

The question that the pollsters asked was: If the runoff election for San Diego mayor were today, who would you vote for? Kevin Faulconer? Or David Alvarez?

Though polls funded by 10 News and the SDUT have historically been inaccurate in favor of Republicans (see last year’s mayor’s race when they had Carl DeMaio up by 5% over Bob Filner) it is very interesting to see a poll by them that actually shows positive numbers for the Democratic candidate.   [Read more…]

The Last Refuge of Sore Losers: UT-San Diego Proposes Splitting California in Two

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By Doug Porter

The editorial board at UT-San Diego finally crossed the line from delusional to just flat out insane this weekend.  After reading Sunday’s paper a rational human being might even be open to arguments suggesting that the satirical Onion website has surreptitiously taken over our Daily Fishwrap.  But this weekend’s fare wasn’t funny…

Our city has many pressing issues, as the many debates leading up the special mayor election prove beyond a doubt.  Now UT-SD is trying to frame the upcoming runoff in the context of our city’s desperate need for a new football stadium, saying they’ll step in from Day One to pressure our next mayor to “get it done”.

Forget those potholes, declining city services or neighborhood empowerment; a sports venue tops all those needs.

If that singularity of bad policy wasn’t enough, they’ve also come out full bore for secession. California, they reason, needs to be split in two to save us from the evils of the nanny state and excessive taxation. They’ve even published a wish list of conservative wet dreams they’d like to see included in a new constitution.   [Read more…]

Reflections on the Mayoral Race . . .

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By Larry Remer

If it hadn’t already been apparent, the Mayoral Primary clearly demonstrated seismic shifts that have taken place in recent years on the local political landscape.

San Diego is now a very solidly Blue City and Democrat David Alvarez is well positioned to compete strongly in the February Mayoral runoff.

Just look at how stunningly strong the Democratic vote was last week. Despite an abysmally low voter turnout of barely 36%, more than 55% of the vote went to 3 clearly identified Democratic candidates (Alvarez, Fletcher and Aguirre). Republican Kevin Faulconer finished with less than 43%. In other words, the combined vote of the Democrats in the low turnout primary handily beat the anointed Republican candidate by more than 12 points.

This is consistent with the 14 point registration edge the Dems hold over the Reps in the city; and this result is clearly not a transient phenomenon. When San Diego went for Obama 2008 and 2012 and for Filner in 2012, most of the punditry ascribed it to the high voter turnouts (70%-plus) that accompany Presidential elections. After Filner resigned, the “conventional wisdom” was that Republicans are more likely to vote in off year elections and GOP dominance would emerge in a low-turnout Mayoral special election.   [Read more…]

Sitting in on Papa Doug’s Gathering of the Elite to Chew on the Election of Kevin Faulconer

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By Jay Powell

Last week Voice of San Diego CEO Scott Lewis reported (“Stadiums and Pensions,” November 27) that he had been informed by a reliable source that Papa Doug Manchester was hosting a lunch for “a group of the city elite” on Monday, December 2nd to “strategize on how we can best move San Diego forward in support of Kevin Faulconer as Mayor.”

He confirmed that the invite was authentic and quoted from it:

“ We all know the need to preserve and protect San Diego from losing the Chargers, fix the pension system, and create incentives that will allow San Diego to reach its full potential and recover from what we have experienced over these past several years…”.

Scott did a fine job showing the irony of some other these assertions and reprised the exchange between Sanders and Manchester when they last convened in La Jolla to pick Kevin Faulconer as the candidate for the elite. Scott then queried his readers to write him and let him know “if you were at this U-T (lunch) meeting, what would you say should be the top priorities for city government in coming years?”

I dutifully replied that if I was at the lunch meeting with Papa Doug and the other “city elite” this day (Dec 2), it wouldn’t be me…

but let’s just pretend for a moment that I was a person who was invited and attending…   [Read more…]

What’s Next in San Diego’s Mayoral Special Election Runoff?

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By Andy Cohen

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion on the mayoral special election, hosted by the Pt. Loma Democratic Club. The panelists included La Prensa’s Daniel Muñoz, San Diego Voice and Viewpoint’s Dr. John Warren, NBC San Diego’s Wendy Fry (a veritable rock star in San Diego reporting circles), and myself from the ‘lil ‘ol San Diego Free Press.

The discussion centered not only on the primary race itself, but on where we go from here? What kind of campaign are we likely to see in the coming months leading up to the February runoff to determine who will fill out the remainder of Bob Filner’s term?

Some things to consider about this race: Unlike the June 2012 primary, which featured two Republicans, a converted Independent, and only one Democrat, the 2013 primary featured three rather prominent Democrats and only one Republican. But, like 2012, the Republican frontrunner carried the day, winning a plurality of the vote.

However, in the November 2012 general election, San Diegans did something almost unprecedented: They voted for the Progressive Democrat over the neo-conservative Republican. With two extremes represented, the voters swung left. Will voters do the same in February?   [Read more…]

A Tale of Two Cities: North and South of Interstate 8

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By Doug Porter

It’s been touted as fact of life in San Diego politics: the electorate south of Interstate 8 votes heavily Democratic while those on the north side votes Republican.

After all, the northern part of San Diego is generally wealthier, older and whiter than the city’s southern half.  Even as the GOP’s partisan advantage in the city has disappeared in recent years, the party’s candidates and causes have done well, leading to the general perception that the electorate in the regions favors conservative causes.

A succession of Republican Mayors and a track record for mostly voting with that party’s positions on initiatives re-enforce that perception.  It’s a commonly accepted view in news media accounts; a local report on this weeks special election taps National University’s “policy analyst” Vince Vasquez, who says “You see that deep geographic divide among voters. It’s something not going away. If anything its more pronounced,” –

But not everything is as it seems.   [Read more…]

Looking Back at Our Special Election Coverage: Sixty One Articles by Sixteen Writers

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By Doug Porter

The email said: “You have lost me”.

The reader was presumably upset by an interview with Nathan Fletcher posted a few days ago. After posting five dozen articles by sixteen different writers, this conversation with one of the major Democratic candidates was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So today as people have their final opportunity to cast their ballots, I thought that taking a look back over our coverage might be useful.  If you haven’t voted this might prove useful.  If you have voted, good for you; send this story to a friend who might not have voted.

Mostly this column will be about short quotes and links to the articles. I strongly encourage you to click through to the original stories early and often. In case the words “Progressive Views” on the top of the page have somehow eluded you, SDFP has (and encourages) a certain point of view. We’d rather be honest about that fact than try to delude you as is the standard in much of the mainstream media.   [Read more…]

Want Your Voice Heard? GET OUT AND VOTE!

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By Andy Cohen

Today is the first—but not likely the last—in the special election to determine who will fill out the vacated first term of former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner. This is an absolutely crucial election. Voters last fall chose a candidate who represented a decidedly progressive agenda over his opponent, who represented an extremely conservative agenda.

Bob Filner was a flawed candidate when he ran for mayor in 2012. Everyone knew it—we just didn’t know how flawed. But Carl DeMaio was an equally flawed candidate. So the choice in the 2012 mayoral election came down to which candidate best represented the values of San Diego voters; after decades of conservative, Republican structured leadership, San Diego voters decided that it was high time for a change. They chose a new way of doing business at City Hall. They chose an emphasis on communities over an emphasis on Downtown. They chose fairness over favoritism. They chose people over corporations (and no, corporations are not people).

As voters head to the polls today, they face a similar choice: Do they vote for a return to the ways of previous administrations, where the wealthy business interests based Downtown will once again drive the policy agenda in whatever direction they wish it to go, or do they stick with their choice from last November and choose a mayor who is going to put his constituents first, who will stand up for the “little guy?” Will the city vote where its voter registration numbers say it will? Or will the election swing in the Republican direction, despite the fact that Republicans have 90,000 fewer registered voters in the City of San Diego, and more than 12,000 fewer than Decline-to-State? Speaking of the DTS voters, what will they do? Who do they break for?   [Read more…]

Nathan Fletcher: The Minimum Wage Must Be Raised

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Mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher lays out a surprisingly progressive policy agenda.

By Andy Cohen

Part 2 of the SDFP interview with mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher.  See Part 1 here.

Listen to Nathan Fletcher talk about his policy ideas and positions and it’s hard to believe that he ever considered himself a conservative, a Republican.  These are not the thoughts of the anti-tax, business-is-always-right crowd.  This is a guy who has given this stuff a lot of thought and understands the historical significance of the issues.  He understands that history can tell us a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

And, he says, it’s time we started focusing more on workers and wages than on protecting and promoting business interests at all cost.  He understands that protecting the American worker is protecting business interests.  The two are inextricably tied together, a concept that evades his former colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

For example, the minimum wage.  “We should have a real conversation about minimum wage, because what you see is a real erosion of the middle class.  It’s real.  It. Is. Real.  When you look at the average hourly wage of American workers, they’re going down.  The stock market continues to go up, and the average hourly wage of American workers is going down.”   [Read more…]

What Happens If [Fill-in the Candidate’s Name] Wins the Runoff Mayoral Election?

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By Doug Porter

There will be two winners come Wednesday morning, since nobody outside of GOP Bossman Tony Krvaric’s opium dreams thinks any candidate will win more than fifty percent of the vote.  The accepted wisdom is that City Councilman Kevin Faulconer, a Republican who’d like voters to forget about that fact, will take “first place.”

Faulconer would prefer that we ignore the sources of his cash, since voter registration in San Diego is tilted in favor of the Democratic Party.  The local GOP is currently less popular than even Congress, with a mere 3% of newly registered voters willing to affiliate themselves with the Party of Lincoln.

What we’re really voting on is who makes it to the runoff election, which will take place at sometime in February… Or maybe March, depending on when this round’s votes are certified.

And it’s that runoff election I’ll be talking about today, in the hopes you’ll be further inspired to vote this time around. (Did I mention yet how important it is to vote?)   [Read more…]

Closing the Deal for David Alvarez: Your Vote Will Make a Difference

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Perhaps out of the summer of scandal and the fall of discord, new hope can be born

By Jim Miller

With less than 24 hours to go until the polls open, San Diego’s special election for mayor has turned into a contest to see who will face Republican Kevin Faulconer in the run-off. A Datamar automated poll last Wednesday showed Faulconer at 44% with Alvarez pulling in at 25.3%, way ahead of Fletcher’s 15.9%. This was followed by yesterday’s UT poll that showed Faulconer ahead as well but with Fletcher up by two over Alvarez, 24% to 22%, a statistical dead heat.

The American Federation of Teachers’ (AFT) final internal polling has the race to make the run-off at 20% for Alvarez and 14.3% for Fletcher with a big pool of undecided voters still waiting to make their call at the last minute. Thus, taking all of this into account, it’s mostly likely a dead heat leaning Alvarez heading into Tuesday. Alvarez can make the primary and win, but his voters have to show up for that to happen.

Bottom line: your vote matters a lot this time. We’ll either have a race between plutocracy and plutocracy-lite or we’ll have an opportunity to keep a bold progressive agenda alive in San Diego. It’s your choice.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Time for a 21st Century City

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By Christian Ramirez

Three generations of my family call the 8th District of the City of San Diego home. We love San Diego but could never live far from Tijuana; in fact, our clan has an unspoken rule that to live north of I-8 is akin to falling off the face of Earth. Our roots are intertwined with the border; we are proud fronterizos, borderlanders.

America’s Finest City has not always embraced our border identity; in fact many of us who live in the southern part of San Diego have always had the uneasy feeling that City Hall had its back turned towards us. That is until we elected David Alvarez as our councilmember. As soon as he took office David got to work, he understood that the border region is an economic engine and celebrated our unique cultural heritage.

When we learned that David was running for mayor, my family knew that we could finally have the opportunity to fully be engaged in the civic life of our city. A mayor that understands us, can you imagine!   [Read more…]

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