San Diego Mayors on Parade ---- part one

Times change.  We’ve unzipped our lips.  Words that used to be taboo are now commonplace.   We can say just about anything we want: bi*ch…fu*k… bullsh*t… cu*t… scumbag… c*cksucker… (not the n-word, though--that's still a no-no).

* (But whoa...not so fast! I've been foiled by the Google Blogger censors, who won't let me say my taboo words on their platform. Darn it!  You’ll just have to fill in the blanks for yourselves.)  

One thing's for sure--all San Diegans are under a gag order when it comes to naming names and identifying the corrupt, self-serving, and unethical maneuvers of many of our city's  influential players--elected and unelected--who steer the San Diego ship.

 

Isn't it time to unzip our lips and acknowledge the scuzzy underside of our city government—particularly the incompetence and corruption that have crisscrossed the office of San Diego Mayor for generations?

Isn't it time to reckon with the fact that the past never disappears? that tainted fallout from the actions/decisions/sins of San Diego's previous political leaders still darkens our horizon? 

Isn't it time we put our mayors on parade and figure out if there's still time to change direction? 

🐘 OUR PARADE WILL START WITH MAYOR SUSAN GOLDING (1992-2000)

We should be generous about this Mayor’s environmental credentials.  But it’s been strictly taboo to acknowledge (let alone condemn) the choices she made as Mayor for the sole purpose of advancing her political career.  

Mayor Golding’s maneuvers to cater to big-money Republicans (she hosted the 1996 Republican Party national convention in San Diego) bled the city dry as she dipped into untold sums of public money.  The disastrous consequences of her political decisions haunt us, still.  

⇢ Ably assisted by her city manager Jack McGrory and her chief of staff Kris Michell (later recycled as chief operating officer for Mayor Kevin Faulconer), Mayor Golding tapped the city budget, waived SDG&E’s obligation to bury power lines via a secret side deal for a $3.4 million cash infusion into the city treasury, diverted TOT funds, and mortally wounded the municipal pension fund--ALL for personal/political gain.

 

⇢ And don’t overlook how her special relationship with San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos (a partner with John Moores on Golding’s Senate campaign finance team) was nourished by public money.  The city forked over multi-millions for over-the-top rent credits on the Chargers San Diego headquarters and for a ravenous ticket-guarantee scheme to subsidize Chargers games.

 

⇢ Mayor Golding’s use and abuse of public funds for self-serving political goals and her calamitous strategy to underfund the city’s pension system to the tune of $100 million (not counting unpaid-for retroactive benefits to city workers) created invasive tentacles that are strangling the city’s financial health to this very day. 

 

⇢ Each year since she left office it’s been an increasing challenge to balance the city budget.  Each year, cuts in city services gouge deeper.  Each year, the city creates sources of new revenue--utility user fees, storm drain fees, garbage collection fees, property transfer fees, TOTs, sales taxes-- not slated for new services but attempting temper a chronic structural imbalance.  This is Mayor Golding’s legacy.

🐘 FOLLOWING IN HER WAKE IS MAYOR DICK MURPHY (2000-2005)

Susan Golding’s successor inherited a city budget destabilized by years of mismanagement, scheming, public corruption, and fraud.  Innately unable to make difficult decisions, Mayor Murphy went along to get along… for as long as he could.  

⇢ The City Council eventually got on the ball and hired a governmental risk management firm called Kroll, Inc. to conduct an independent inquiry into possible illegalities related to the underfunding of the municipal employee pension system and misrepresentation of the city’s financial status.  Over the next few years, the city was under scrutiny by the U.S. Justice Department, the San Diego District Attorney’s office, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and an independent audit (which cost the city $20.3 million).

 

⇢ The 400-page Kroll Report excoriated San Diego politicians and upper management for financial dishonesty, securities fraud, gross lack of accountability, egregious cover-ups, non-transparency, obfuscation, and denial of fiscal reality.

⇢ According to the San Diego Business Journal: "Dozens of local officials and municipal employees put their own welfare ahead of the taxpayer for close to a decade, then tried to keep the lid on their wrongdoing…the evidence demonstrates not mere negligence, but deliberate disregard for the law, disregard for fiduciary responsibility and disregard for the financial welfare of the city's residents over an extended period of time…"  

⇢ Top city officials--former City Managers Mike Uberuaga and Jack MGrory, former City Attorney Casey Gwinn, and former Assistant City Attorney Les Girard--had their hands slapped for being “negligent in the fulfillment of their duties to the city.”  City Councilmembers of the day--Scott Peters, Toni Atkins, Jim Madaffer, Brian Maienschein, Ralph Inzunza, Byron Wear, and George Stevens (Donna Frye was justifiably excused)--were chastised for failing to ensure that complete and accurate financial data were disclosed to the bond market.  

 

⇢ In other words, city officials were caught skinny-dipping in a sea of fraud, dishonesty, cover-ups, denial, negligence, and unaccountability.  Recently, a current councilmember (Joe LaCava) philosophized that those who were responsible for that debacle were long gone.  He assured us that today’s generation of city leaders had learned from past mistakes.  Surely he was kidding!  Except for deceased George Stevens, many of those irresponsible old-timers and their present-day clones are still doing their thing and wading in the same polluted waters.

 

ENTER "STRONG MAYOR"  

By 2004, San Diego voters fell for the promise that a change in San Diego’s governance system would bring about greater political accountability and transparency.  

 

⇢ Succumbing to the active urging of then-Mayor Murphy, San Diegans agreed to switch from our longstanding City Manager form of government (in which a presumably independent, credentialed, well-trained individual was hired by the City Council to oversee and run the city) to a Strong Mayor form of government (in which the management and responsibility for running the city was put in the hands of an executive Mayor (CEO)… who would then hire a Chief Operating Officer (COO)... who would then oversee and manage city departments and their chiefs).  The COO--as a political appointee-- would be working exclusively for the Mayor, not the City Council.  Presumably, the public would finally have certainty about where the buck stops in city government. 

 

 ⇢ Proponents of the switchover claimed that the City Council would be strengthened in the process.  But the opposite was true.  The new “strong mayor” now had control over city departments and operations.  Councilmembers who didn’t play ball could find themselves punished in a variety of ways (by the "strong mayor" withholding services and facilities from their council districts, for example).

 ⇢ As another consequence of a weakened city council neighborhood residents, community planning groups, and the general public lost a good deal of their clout as councilmembers fell in line and rubber-stamped most of the mayor’s directives.

 

⇢ Mayor Murphy, the congenial politician who had promoted the switch to a “strong mayor” form of government, was under-equipped to confront the calamitous fallout from the previous administration’s financial abuses.  Our bedeviled and depleted city was more than he could handle.  Having suffered national ignominy by being branded by Time magazine as one of the worst big-city mayors in America (a weak mayor? yes…one of the worst? no), Dick Murphy resigned from office at the start of his second term as Mayor. 

🐘 HERE COMES JERRY SANDERS, THE MAYOR WE LOVE TO LOVE (2005-2012).  

Jerry Sanders had initially opposed the switch to a “strong mayor” form of government.  He called it "a power grab by inside players who would drain public services…to subsidize powerful developers."  He said it "would reduce accountability of your elected officials."

 

⇢ But Jerry Sanders changed his tune once the beleaguered Mayor Murphy resigned.  Those "inside players" and "powerful developers" who had sold the voters on the strong mayor concept knew that the former police chief--with his endearing grin and flexible principles—was their man for the job.  In a special election, voters opted for Jerry Sanders to take over as successor strong mayor of the city of San Diego.

⇢ Hidden (or perhaps expunged) was Jerry Sanders’ past history when—as a SWAT commander in the San Diego Police Department--he was participating in a social gathering at Mission Bay.  A frantic call arrived reporting an ongoing massacre at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro.  By the time Sanders was able to suit up, sober up, and arrive at the scene to take credit for giving the go-ahead to a sharpshooter to target the lone gunman and end the mayhem, 21 people lay dead alongside 19 wounded… mostly Mexican-Americans.  Jerry Sanders, the mislabeled hero, was subsequently promoted to Police Chief by then-City Manager Jack McGrory and Mayor Susan Golding.  For the past three decades, an airbrushed Jerry Sanders has evaded acknowledging—much less apologizing for—his clouded, self-aggrandizing actions that devastated and destroyed so many human lives.  It’s one of San Diego’s taboo subjects.

 

⇢ Once ensconced in the mayor’s seat, Mayor Sanders hired retired Navy Rear-Admiral Ronne Froman as his first chief operating officer (COO).  They were like peas in a pod in their quasi-military approach to running the city.  Their rules of the game consisted of tight controls, rigid lines of authority, and directives to clamp down and zip up whenever conflict arose.  

 

⇢ The scent of corruption was hard to miss as Jerry Sanders once again engaged in activities that threatened public safety.  In his position of command as Mayor, he intervened on behalf of one of his major donors to permit construction of a 12-story Sunroad Enterprises office building near Montgomery Field airfield.  The problem?  The building exceeded permissible airport zone height limits and was deemed unsafe by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) and California Department of Transportation. 

 

⇢ Mayor Sanders was finally forced to force the Sunroad developers to abide by FAA safety regulations and lop off the building’s top tower.  (When Mike Aguirre filed suit to cut the building down to size, the Mayor’s favored horse-whisperer Fred Sainz told a reporter, “We don’t think it sends a positive message to the development community.”)

 

⇢ The designated fall-guy for this fiasco was the Mayor’s advisor Jim Waring, who dutifully resigned.  (He was soon reinstated when Sanders nominated him to the San Diego Housing Commission.  Today, Waring serves as Mayor Todd Gloria’s deputy COO (*correction: today, Jim Waring serves as executive chairman of CleanTECH San Diego)

⇢ COO Froman moved on, along with a tidal wave of senior management officials (Land Use chief Jim Waring, Parks & Recreation director Ted Medina, Development Services chief Gary Halbert and his successor Marcela Escobar-Eck, Water Department director Frank Belock, Fire Chief Jeff Bowman).  Who was left in charge of running city operations?  The folk who ran the city when Susan Golding was Mayor--operatives like Kris Michell and Fred Sainz, who had their fingers on the button for many decades to come.  

 

⇢ Despite claims of financial acuity, Mayor Sanders resisted calls for fiscal responsibility and meaningful reorganization of city finances.  He chose to feed the crippled budget by selling off “excess” city property and outsourcing city services.

 

⇢ By 2011, Mayor Sanders, propped up by his COO Jay Goldstone (replacing Ronne Froman), claimed that he had miraculously balanced the city budget and that the city was on solid financial footing.  It was a sleight-of-hand fabrication (aka creative lie).  Under the direction of Mayor Sanders, his administration fudged the numbers by eliminating internal audits, halting routine oversight of city departments, and stopping the tracking of city services.  Reality reared its ugly head when, barely one year later, San Diego was cited as having the worst crumbling infrastructure, streets, and storm drains in the entire state, perhaps even the country. 

 

⇢ The swindles multiplied.  After nearly 8 years of overseeing the deterioration of San Diego’s public infrastructure, city finances, city planning, truth in government, workplace security, and workers’ morale, our aw-shucks Mayor again assured the public that “the city’s decades-long structural budget deficit is over.”  He partnered with councilmembers Carl DeMaio and Kevin Faulconer to initiate a ballot measure called “Comprehensive Pension Reform.”  While scamming the public with a $94 million bill for an alternative 401K pension system, the ballot measure left in place the destructive abuses embedded in the old pension system.  

 

⇢ The Sanders/DeMaio/Faulconer pension reform fiasco didn’t hold up in court.  It has been dismantled and is currently costing taxpayers at least $100 million to undo and rectify. 

 

⇢ Today our streets are still crumbling.  But Jerry Sanders, in his political afterlife, thrives as the well-paid head honcho of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce.  This same man who--as Mayor--modestly self-certified that he was an honest chap who would always own up to any mistakes he might make, was recently crowned with the honorific: “Mr. San Diego.”  In a city like ours, truth can be stranger than fiction.

🦄 NEXT IN LINE IS BOB FILNER, THE MAYOR WE LOVE TO HATE (2012-2013)

Among San Diego’s most guarded taboos, speaking the whole truth about Bob Filner is a punishable no-no.  But dig we must if we are to make sense of the public opprobrium and shaming directed at him to this day.  One thing’s for sure--the story behind Filner’s truncated time as Mayor is as juicy, riveting, and malignant as local politics gets.  

 

Let’s acknowledge the positive before going in for the kill:

 

⇢ What distinguished Bob Filner from San Diego’s lineup of leaders were a few notable traits: he was an experienced politician with a lively mind, sharp wit, and ethical agenda.  His credentials as an unregenerate liberal Democrat were first-class.  

 

⇢ From the start of his abbreviated mayorship, Filner’s penchant for promoting the public interest over private interests alarmed and alienated San Diego’s entrenched power brokers.  His assertive presence on the scene also cast a shadow across the political ladder of competitors like my-time-has-come Democrat Todd Gloria, whichever-way-the-wind-blows Nathan Fletcher, and public-relations-is-my-god Republican Kevin Faulconer.

⇢ To implement his progressive agenda, Mayor Filner came out swinging against San Diego’s powerful “establishment.”   In his first months in office, he churned out directives to:

• create solar-powered city buildings/install public toilets downtown /design bike-able and walk-able streets 
• hire a first-class planning director, Bill Fulton
• install new building standards for a 332-unit “mixed use” project near San Diego State University to prevent it from being rented "per bed" rather than per apartment
• bring in real estate broker Jason Hughes (introduced to Filner by Southwest Strategies head honcho and lobbyist Chris Wahl) on a temporary and voluntary basis “without compensation from any party” to help find additional office space for city workers
• eliminate automobiles from Balboa Park’s Plaza de Panama with minimal city expense or intrusive park redevelopment
• veto a city council decision to permit a Sunroad Enterprises project to infringe beyond its property line without requiring public benefits in return
• extract a $100,000 contribution from Sunroad for two public projects in return for the requested property line variance 
• assail the city’s routine permissiveness in code enforcement and specifically to block a Jack in the Box restaurant claim that their remodel permit allowed them to do a full rebuild 
• redirect over $30 million of public money toward better wages for hotel workers and greater benefits for the city, butting heads with the city’s influential “hotelier cabal” (the Tourism Marketing District, the Convention Center, the Tourism Authority) and then-city council president Todd Gloria, who supported the hotel industry 
• propose a 5-year freeze on pensionable pay to confront the city’s structural budget shortfall and remove budget cut exemptions that had been granted to the City Attorney’s office 
• establish San Diego’s prevailing wage law for construction projects

And now for the negatives:

 ⇢ Bob Filner’s personality has been described as prickly, peremptory, abrasive, inappropriate, disagreeable, tone deaf, disrespectful, rude, brusque, and arrogant.  

 

⇢ Add on his awkward and adolescent compulsion to play the role of ladies’ man with inappropriate flirty jokes and asking scads of women out to dinner.  He sometimes wrapped his arm around their shoulders and neck, just like the high school jocks used to do (in Filner’s case they called it assault and battery).

 

⇢ Then there were his top advisors.  Most of them were poorly grounded in city affairs.  Others had dubious loyalty to their boss.  And promoting tranquility in the mayor’s office was a bigger job--given his own volatile tendencies--than his overwhelmed chief of staff could successfully handle.

 

⇢ The coordinated anti-Filner crusade that finally pushed this Mayor out of office was quick, crude, and adroitly orchestrated by inside and outside agents.  In the process, City Attorney Jan Goldsmith crossed several ethical and professional lines (for which he should have been disbarred):

• City Attorney Jan Goldsmith put a private detective on Mayor Filner’s tail
• according to Homeland Security, the Mayor’s office was bugged
•  the City Attorney worked on obtaining a restraining order to block Mayor Filner from entering City Hall 
• then-councilmember Todd Gloria and the City Attorney jointly honed their skills at regicide and privately communicated on methods to bring down the Mayor
•  City Attorney Goldsmith coordinated with Mayor Filner’s top legal aide (who harbored mayoral dreams of her own) to change the locks on Filner’s private office to keep him out
•  City Attorney Goldsmith lied to Mayor Filner and the City Council by denying that the city was obligated to provide legal defense to the Mayor (it is--for any elected official accused of wrongdoing while in office)
• City Attorney Jan Goldsmith turned the screw a notch tighter with threats to the Mayor that if he didn’t resign he would be pauperized 

⇢ Meanwhile, an avalanche of women—some politically motivated, some coerced, some (most?) rewarded--were recruited to testify that they were victimized, harassed, and traumatized by Mayor Filner’s overtures.  Juicy accusations went viral on the local news media and were fed to the national press:

• He touched my cheek with his finger, revealed the aggrieved ex-Navy Admiral/ former COO to Mayor Sanders, Ronne Froman
• He stroked my arm and sneaked a feel of my breast with his drooping left elbow, reported a Parks & Recreaction worker 
• He jammed his tongue down my throat, testified a lunch date 
• He leered…he ogled

While it’s common knowledge that the ex-Mayor’s relentless habit of coming onto women provided his political adversaries with enough free ammunition to set him ablaze, there’s an irony here: the story that was assembled to bring down Mayor Bob Filner had less weight and substance than the seeds of his real undoing--his underestimation of what it would take for him to successfully run the city while simultaneously engaging in a lopsided battle against two strange bedfellows: San Diego’s elite power players and competitors from within his own political party.

 

Bloodied by arrows launched from all directions, Mayor Filner resigned after eight months in office.

(to be continued...)

 

Story #2—Winners and Losers: the San Diego Edition

Introduction

Stories #1 and #2 are connected by a common thread: the selective system that elevates, protects, and rewards San Diego's compliant players while throwing principled nonconformers to the wolves...

Story #1 revisited the 1984 San Ysidro massacre.  The loss and horror of that event are incalculable.  Yet those who were  responsible--directly (the shooter) or indirectly (certain city officials)--either cannot (the shooter is dead) or will never (the code of silence) answer for the depth of harm inflicted on the victims.  

Not many people think about this story anymore.


Story #2 revisits the Bob Filner story.  It's a third-rate operetta compared to the San Ysidro tragedy.   But sex sells and the Filner story has morphed into a national hit.  The secret of its success is that can serve a wide audience across the political spectrum—left, right, and center.  Like the proverbial gift, it keeps on giving.  

Given its popularity, the time seems right for an updated review of this story.  It needs a thorough airing, even though the dust it raises may irritate some readers.  It’s a small price to pay when good government, transparency, and--above all--accountability are the objectives.

Part I: The Official Story

Chapter 1

The latest resurrection of the Filner story was aimed at Senator Kamala Harris, a presidential candidate from California.  It's an attempt to discredit her for her 2013 failure to throw the accused mayor Bob Filner into prison when she was state Attorney General.  It’s an ironic twist, since Senator Harris had opportunistically jumped the gun and eagerly mounted the anti-Filner bandwagon, even though she had never laid eyes on the man or exchanged a single word with him.  

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t....
  

But Harris shouldn’t take the attack personally.  The Filter trope is an equal opportunity weapon across many battle arenas.   Check out how it's used against Nancy Pelosi and her "perv problem."  Or against gay rights activists and the Sex-Creep Club.  Or by trendy authors to advance their sociopath theories.  Or by #MeToo victims as grist for a movie plot or memoir.  

And see for yourself how effective the Filner trope is here at home with men like: 

* Labor Council’s Mickey Kasparian 

* County Supervisor Dave Roberts 

* Former councilmember Carl DeMaio

* School Board trustee Kevin Beiser, and recently

* Six male members of the District Attorney's office

Chapter 2

The official storyline goes something like this: Bob Filner, a transplant from the East Coast, spent a couple of decades at SDSU as a professor of history, having made his way to San Diego many years earlier.  He was elected to the board of the San Diego Unified School District.  

In 1987 he was elected and re-elected as a San Diego city council member.  In 1992 Filner won a seat in the United States Congress to represent the San Diego/Imperial County region adjacent to the Mexican border, one of the country's most ethnically diverse districts.

The official story continues: The liberal Democrat Bob Filner was among four main candidates running in the 2012 primary election for San Diego mayor.  The others were conservative Republican Carl DeMaio, moderate Republican Bonnie Dumanis, and Republican (almost-but-not-yet Independent) Nathan Fletcher.

Filner and DeMaio advanced to the November election.  Filner was elected mayor by a margin of 52.5% to 47.5%.  He was the first Democratic mayor to hold office since Maureen O'Connor.  (The city had elected a Democratic mayor in 1899, 1905, 1911, 1913, 1915, 1955, 1963, and 1985.)

Chapter 3

The official story goes on: Within weeks in office, what started as unofficial complaints from three women against the mayor rapidly snowballed into claims from over a dozen women of crude come-ons, intimidating sexual comments, and imprisoning headlocks. 

The official story takes a pivotal turn with an account of the

July 11, 2013 afternoon press conference, organized by three former supporters of the newly-elected mayor, to call for Filner’s immediate resignation.  Two accusers (Donna Frye and Marco Gonzalez) denounced the mayor for sexual abuses.  The third (Cory Briggs) denounced him with charges of corruption.

Chapter 4
The official story tells us that City Attorney Jan Goldsmith boasted about his decisive role in getting rid of the mayor.  

When Filner took office, Goldsmith hired private detectives to trail him and sniff out improprieties.  He deceived Filner with false information and threats of financial ruin, claiming that the city was not obligated to pay for his legal defense.  He had the locks changed to the mayor's office. Did he bug Filner’s office, as some staff members claimed?   

Chapter 5

The story progresses with a steady stream of graphic accounts of Filner's crude behavior. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office launched a hotline so women could register sexual harassment allegations against the mayor.  

The local public news station assembled a phalanx of aggrieved women for explicit interviews.  The services of national celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred were employed.  A news agency on the political right ran this catchy headline: Mayor Filner Grabbed Breasts, A$$, "Shoved Tongue Down Her Throat."

Chapter 6

The official story relates that, effective August 30, 2013, Filner resigned.  On cue, city council president Todd Gloria took over the coveted mayor’s suite to assume the role of acting mayor.  Gloria retained a few of Filner's staffers (e.g., Irene McCormack--the first woman to file a sexual harassment lawsuit), terminated others, and set about reversing a slew of Filner’s executive decisions and policies. 

The official storyline climaxes a few months later when councilmember Kevin Faulconer (formerly a Democrat who turned Republican as an undergraduate at SDSU—any chance he sat in on one of Filner’s history classes??) was elected as San Diego’s new mayor.

Part II: The Unofficial Story

Chapter 7

The unofficial storyline of the rise and fall of Bob Filner reads like plagiarized lift from the movie Chinatown.

By recruiting Bob Filner to run for mayor in 2012, San Diego's Democratic establishment was able to kill two birds with one stone:  

1. Filner was a safe bet to defeat Carl DeMaio, the candidate Democrats (as well as the city's moderate Republicans) were most worried about; and 
2. A mayoral win by Filner would initiate a longed-for game of political dominoes.  South Bay politics would be secured as a Latino stronghold when Filner’s seat in the US Congress was freed up for Juan Vargas.  Then Vargas’s State Senate seat would become available for Ben Hueso.  Then Hueso’s State Assembly seat would fall into the lap of Lorena Gonzalez.  

And so it came to pass.

Chapter 8
The unofficial story is a reminder that plenty of people wanted Filner out--ASAP.  Too progressive and brash for Democratic operatives and too threatening for San Diego's Republicans and other business elites, Filner never stood a chance.

Once DeMaio was defeated and the Vargas/Hueso/Gonzalez deal was duly consummated, Filner's usefulness was gone.  Before long, a Recall Filner website was set up and ready to go.   He was a dead man walking.    

Filner had crossed swords with too many of the city's heavyweights.  For starters: the San Diego Chargers; downtown hoteliers; Lorena Gonzalez; Irwin Jacobs (in a harakiri moment, Filner dissed him in public); Todd Gloria; City Attorney Jan Goldsmith; Carl DeMaio; U-T's Doug Manchester...

The story says that interim mayor Todd Gloria played a key role in the Filner ouster, working hand-in-glove with City Attorney Jan Goldsmith.  Other schemers included Tom Story of Sunroad Enterprises, who hatched a plot with then-councilmember Faulconer to initiate bogus kickback accusations against him.  Yelling corruption! Cory Briggs hurled this fictitious bombshell at mayor Filner.
  

Chapter 9

The story plods on: Filner made himself an easy target.

While the personal pursuits of numerous city officials and bigwigs have always been discreetly tolerated, Filner’s pursuit of female company was fair game for exploitation.  The gentleman’s agreement in San Diego was selective.  Its rules would never apply to him.

The unofficial story does not minimize Filner's role in his brutal ouster.  He kidded around too much.  He flirted incessantly.  He lost his temper and berated city personnel.  He was demanding and insensitive to his office staff.  He was bad at delegating authority.  He ignored the warnings of friends and allies.  For an unusually smart man, Filner could be socially inept, retarded, and obtuse.

It wouldn't matter that he was getting good things done for his constituents; that he was a reformer and advocate for the environment, workers, neighborhoods, and cross-border cooperation; that he was making sound decisions on behalf of the public.  His record could not save him.

Chapter 10

The unofficial story gets a boost when foes came up with a surefire formula to get rid of Filner: a massive dose of unrelenting, no holds barred, prurient accusations.  The more bizarre, the more implausible the better.  As predicted, it proved as effective as a sledgehammer.

The unofficial story takes note that Nathan Fletcher—cognizant of the plan and fully confident that the mayor's seat was soon be vacated and could be his--switched his party affiliation for a second time in one year to prepare for another run for mayor, this time as a Democrat.  His political conversion was announced in May, 2013, three months before Filner stepped down.  

Denouement

Chapter 11

The unofficial story continues as Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, impatiently chafing at the bit,  organized a private meeting of a dozen Democratic politicians to speed up the process of a) getting rid of Filner and b) choosing his successor.

By July, a letter was circulated from a generous Democratic fundraiser (Christine Forester) that read "...we would like to be prepared to immediately call for Nathan Fletcher to run for the office ... to have a letter ready to send to Nathan... (It) would allow him to say that he has received a letter from a bi-partisan group of highly respected leaders in the community (including his current employer QUALCOMM) calling on him to declare as a candidate.” 

Filner resigned a month later.  

But it didn’t work out as planned for Fletcher (much less for the Democrats).  He came in third in the subsequent mayoral primary, behind Democrat David Alvarez.  Then Alvarez lost in the November election to Republican Kevin Faulconer.  And that is how San Diego got from there to here. 

Epilogue

Such is the story of a duly-elected mayor who was taken out—NOT because he was a monster, NOT because he was a fake, NOT because he failed to act in good faith on behalf of his constituents—but because he was not (and would never be) a member of San Diego’s selective gentleman’s club.  

Filner is gone but the game goes on.  With Nathan Fletcher ensconced as a County Supervisor, the city's anointed mayoral contender is now Todd Gloria.  He’s in the bag as San Diego’s latest go-along guy and dependable team player.

But let's step away from politics for a moment and do some soul-searching:

• Once, we tarred and feathered a mayor for his reprehensible, unacceptable, and obnoxious behavior toward a number of women. 
• Once, we elected and rewarded a mayor whose incompetence and hubris may well have contributed to the preventable deaths of many innocent San Diegans in San Ysidro. 
• Once, we elected and reelected a mayor whose incompetence and neglect may have precipitated the deaths of many homeless people on the streets of San Diego. 

The question is: why weren’t they ALL run out of town?

San Diego’s mayor: past, present, and future (part 4)

Mayoral candidate Cory Briggs (CB)

Once upon a time in the city of San Diego a much-heralded and wondrous happening took place.  

From a crowded field of mayoral candidates (including three sturdy Republicans--Nathan Fletcher, Bonnie Dumanis, Carl DeMaio), voters chose to elect a brash, iconoclastic, independent, politically progressive Democrat to become the city’s mayor. 

That person was Bob Filner.  It was the first and only time in recorded history that an authentic liberal came to power in San Diego.  

Personally, he was a flawed agent.  Politically, his record was clean.  But before the public had a chance to see what our city could become with progressive-minded people in charge, he was run out of town.

Today there’s another brash, iconoclastic, (seemingly) independent, (sort of) politically progressive candidate running for mayor of San Diego.  His name is Cory Briggs.  Over the past couple of decades, attorney Briggs has been laboring at loosening the stranglehold of San Diego’s old-boys-club over city politics. 

In an ironic twist to this tempestuous tale, the former-mayor Filner was in the process of confronting the same entrenched powerbrokers before he was ejected from office.  

In another ironic twist, CB and TG--the two politically liberal male candidates now running for mayor--were pivotal participants (alongside fellow-travelers who lurked behind a lineup of outraged women and powerful business interests) in the friendly fire that brought down the aforementioned ex-mayor, who lacked a civilian army capable of advancing his cause or of defending him from the onslaught.  Depending on what is really motivating CB to run for mayor, he, too, may be vulnerable to similar deadly assaults.  

It’s a hot potato.  Before we drop it, there are a few related questions that still need honest answers from the candidate:

1. Filner's personal proclivities were not an area of concern for CB.  So what triggered CB's lethal attack? 
2. Was CB (like Todd Gloria) suffering the agonies of thwarted personal ambition, having been spurned by the new mayor?
3. Or might it be that CB was simply doing friends a political favor by getting rid of this mayor in order to speed up Nathan Fletcher’s second attempt to take over the vacated mayor's seat?  
4. Whatever the motivation, was CB’s choice to overthrow the mayor a rational decision?
5. When he and his partners held a press conference to call for the mayor's resignation, did anyone have a backup plan?  Or did CB spontaneously mount the diving board, hold his nose, and jump... to hell with the consequences?  

In other words, what can we deduce about the political judgment of a mayoral candidate who helped precipitate Plan A (a palace coup) without a Plan B (after storming the Bastille, what comes next)?  After all, coups have consequences.  

Keep this in mind: in the aftermath of the political crusade to bring down a duly-elected mayor, the city suffered six years of failed leadership, deteriorating public services across the city, and a score of needless deaths on the streets.

Does CB, in some way, share responsibility with other actors in this riotous plotline for what would come after they achieved their short-term political goal?

And yet… Cory Briggs may be the perfect candidate for the 2020 race for mayor in San Diego.  He's one of an exceedingly small group of San Diegans with a reputation as an advocate for the public good.  He’s got a tight combination of guts, smarts, ability, and stamina that props him up in the face of the political and financial power brokers who have traditionally shaped San Diego’s politics and policies.  

As a leading candidate in the mayor’s race, his presence will open the debate to a full range of city issues and force other mayoral candidates to confront controversial subjects they might otherwise try to avoid. 

In this moment in time, and for these reasons, CB qualifies as this season’s “it man.”  

Of course, being a perfect candidate does not automatically lead to being a good mayor.   CB has a proliferation of warts.  Are they harder to tolerate than those of his blemished opponent Todd Gloria? Or Barbara Bry?  What do they tell us about the odds of CB becoming a good mayor? 

Here’s a sampling of what we're looking at:

• CB has zero experience in elected political office,  He claims that his legal battles with the city have educated him about running the city: “You have to know how the gears work to know where to put the monkey wrench.”  But being a good mayor calls for leadership and professional management skills (fatally lacking in our current mayor and his appointees).  CB’s lack of a political record means we have nothing to go on in those crucial areas…
• CB says he will shatter the establishment and shake up the status quo.  Yes, he has achieved some success through skillful lawsuits against the city. But the litigation process focuses on winning.  It deals in short term goals and strategies.  Running a city involves long-term, multifaceted thinking and planning.  Ideally, it involves respect for the public good.  Does CB have what it takes to switch from blocking bad projects to creating proposals that serve the long-range broad public interest?...
• CB has many admirers within the environmental and planning communities.  He also has unforgiving detractors who accuse him of turning his back on them in client negotiations and settlements.  Their gripes often spin around the notion of trust.  Lack of trust in a lawyer or mayor poisons the waters…
• CB has undergone in-depth investigation (some call a public reaming) in the past few years by Voice of San Diego, public radio station KPBS, and its collaborative arm inewsource.  Their reporters wrote exhaustively about CB's business practices, ethics, and use of self-created nonprofit organizations as plaintiffs when launching lawsuits.  CB’s wife did not escape allegations from the same investigative outlets.   A vendetta by San Diego’s tourism industry, a prime target of Briggs’ lawsuits?  Noxious fumes from the office of former-City Attorney Jan Goldsmith?  These past investigations have an upside: CB comes to the mayor’s race with few, if any, unexamined ghosts cowering in his closet…
• CB takes a contrarian position on the current rage known as build-baby-build.  He calls out the mayor, along with other pro-density housing advocates, for misleading the public with claims that higher density housing projects will alleviate the city’s affordable (workforce) housing crisis.  Is his approach an opportunistic wooing of neighborhood and community groups (aka “nimbys”) or has he widened his focus from litigating civic misdeeds to creating broader neighborhood-centered policies?...
• CB calls out the mayor for misleading the public about the severity of the city’s crumbling infrastructure and unconscionable missteps in alleviating our homelessness crisis.  CB is inexperienced in overseeing city administration issues like these.  And could he come up to speed on the city's pension debacle (yes, it's baaaaack) that once again might raise the specter of municipal bankruptcy?...  

• CB wields his brand as crusader for public accountability and open government, and as advocate for the voter class over the donor class.  He publicly challenges most of San Diego’s powerful business mainstays: the Chamber of Corruption (that’s his spelling), Downtown Partnership, Civic San Diego, Taxpayers Association, Tourism Authority, Hotel-Motel Association, BIA, and prominent public relations/ lobbying groups.  A good mayor needs the judgment to know the difference between working with these special interests and working  for them.  

But there have been troubling signs…

• CB hopped into bed three years ago with a consortium of land development honchos: master manipulator Steve Peace, JMI Realty’s John Moores, SD Chargers special council Mark Fabiani, land developer Fred Maas, and Chargers honcho Dean Spano, authors of  a ballot initiative called “The Citizens’ Plan for the Responsible Management of Major Tourism and Entertainment Resources.”  (This initiative would have given the go-ahead to public financing of a new football stadium, imposed privately-managed “improvement districts” throughout the city, and expedited open-ended SDSU redevelopment in Mission Valley--all without public environmental review or control! Hardly the hallmark of transparency and public interest advocacy.)

• CB added his name to this deceptive “citizens’ plan.”  When he joined the team did he forget there is no vaccine against fleas?  His participation cast doubts about the depth of his judgment and commitment to the public interest.  Fortunately, voters exercised wiser judgment and rejected the initiative…

• CB will be a valuable catalyst in the mayor’s race, that's for sure.  Beyond that, the prognosis is murky.  CB stares down the same black hole that once engulfed ex-Mayor Filner: the absence of essential supportive scaffolding.  Yes, a successful mayor requires strong executive skills.  But it's even more crucial to be surrounded by a skilled team of expert advisors with training and commitment to run a city efficiently and humanely.  Without that, the city inevitably suffers.

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There you have it: mayoral candidates Todd Gloria, Barbara Bry, and Cory Briggs--warts and all.   As I said in the beginning of this 4-part series: it's up to them to put their best feet forward and publicize their particular strengths, records, accomplishments, and goals.   My contribution is to round out the picture by providing an unadorned sketch of what may lay ahead.

But we're not quite done.  Tasha Williamson has also declared her candidacy in San Diego’s 2020 race for mayor.  She's a welcome addition, someone to enrich and expand the debate by bringing new perspectives to city issues.  I’ll be writing about her shortly.  

So far, no Republican candidates have revealed themselves. If and when that happens, you’ll read about them here.

Parting question: ...is that all there is?  The pool of choices in San Diego’s 2020 mayor’s race is still woefully shallow.   Despite plentiful rainfall this winter season, San Diego remains a sparsely-endowed political desert.   

Surely there are a few good men... and women... sufficiently qualified to jump into the race.  Why settle for good enough?  How about electing a NOTEWORTHY mayor?  Wouldn't that be a revolution in America's finest city!