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?

When good-guys go rogue (Installment III of III)

They say meditation clears your head and speeds you down the road to enlightenment.  I’ve tried.  Remember my mindful walks?  Breathe in…breathe out…notice…let it go. 

But letting it go doesn’t work anymore.  San Diego’s notion of progressive politics has changed a mindful walk into a walk on the wild side. 

Come notice with me and you’ll see what I mean. 

Notice that primary election day is here and the June ballot is a real turn-off.  Too many ovals to blacken, vague propositions, and mysterious candidates – who are most of them, anyway?

A couple of years ago some smart-alecks sold us a bill of goods about the civic virtues of the “open primary,” which invites unlimited numbers of candidates of every political persuasion to a free-for-all to duke it out for 1^st and 2^nd place.  Then the day after the primary, beleaguered voters submit to more rounds of fundraising, TV ads, pricey campaign mailers, and nasty bloodletting as the top two vote-getters pummel one another until November, when they’re thrown back into the ring for the final winning battle. 

Let it go?  We shouldn’t.  Not when there could be a more efficient, quicker, less expensive, and painless option for electing our representatives (back to this subject at a later date).

Now notice the unusually high number of self-proclaimed progressives on the June primary ballot.  What’s peculiar is that many are running for the same office. 

In past years, bewildered voters could count on a who’s-endorsing-whom cheat sheet to steer them in the right direction.  No longer.  Odd-couple endorsements and peculiar pairings fly all over the map. 

For example, two of my favorite do-good nonprofits tell me to vote for candidate X when I know for certain that candidate Y is the superior choice.  Democratic politicians I once respected are pimping for ineffectual, manipulable, cliché-ridden candidates.   And the local Democratic Party has sold its soul by publishing indefensibly dirty ads against a particularly qualified Democratic candidate while bestowing endorsements on flashy candidates proclaiming phantom achievements.

Let it go? Not if we care about the future of San Diego. 

And what if we notice that some of our good-guys have gone rogue, creating so much muck they’re stinking up San Diego’s fledgling progressive movement?  Are we really supposed to let it go?  

 ======================================

Let’s take a quick look backward.  San Diego is an arid, drought-prone place with a politically conservative history.  Nevertheless, various ethnic, sexual, environmental, labor, and racial streams have occasionally trickled through and fertilized the political scene.  Consider:

• our tenacious union leaders who keep up the pressure for workers rights in a city that once turned high-pressure water hoses on the wobblies (International Workers of the World) to drown out their calls for free speech.
• our decades-old tradition of electing Latinos to local office and then propelling them ASAP straight up to Sacramento.
• San Diego’s top-ranking as a gay-friendly city that elects LGBTQ candidates at home and also propels them ASAP straight up to Sacramento.
• our environmental advocates who fought for open space, regional parks, building height limits, and quality-of-life growth policies.
• and the range of woman who left their marks on San Diego history – Ellen Browning Scripps, Bertha Pendleton, Luisa Morena, Belle Benchley, Katherine Tingley, Florence Chadwick, Maureen O’Connor, Ingrid Croce, Judy the Beauty…

Looks hopeful, doesn’t it?  But who can call it progress when we see our current good-guys indulge in proxy wars… personal vendettas… obsessional political ambition… compulsion for dominance?  when they pull the rug out from under authentic good-guys? 

It comes as no surprise that even progressives can succumb to venial sins like ignorance, gullibility, or falling head-over-heels in love with sexy and seductive people.  But mortal sins (lying, coercion, defamation, bribery, hit-jobs) are something else.  

To some, it just politics.  But for progressives, when the lofty idea of intersectionality ends up looking like collusion, it's called going rogue.  Here's how it's been playing out in San Diego:

Workers unions are fighting for their collective lives all over this country.  In San Diego, they’ve become their own worst enemies.  

As it happens, a nasty internal power struggle is underway between two union chieftains – Tom Lemmon, head honcho of the SD County Building and Construction Trades Council (and BFF with San Diego's emerging #MeToo sisterhood)  and Mickey Kasparian, former president of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, current head of the San Diego Working Families Council (and exclusive target of  #MeToo).  

What was originally a cockfight has shape-shifted into a noxious proxy battle involving two candidates running for county Supervisor: professed convert to progressivism Nathan Fletcher and long-time progressive Lori Saldaña.

Mickey Kasparian had once thrown his union's support to David Alvarez for San Diego mayor, bypassing Nathan Fletcher (turns out, neither won that race).  Fletcher is once again back in the saddle as a candidate for county Supervisor.  And once again Kasparian could be a spoiler.  

It's likely someone ordered a purge.  You may have read  about harassment charges (sexual and otherwise) lodged against Kasparian by three women in #MeToo attempts to strip him from power and send him packing.  Politics/ power/ revenge?

A true-blue labor activist once confided to me that, despite many misgivings about Nathan Fletcher and his anti-union, anti-woman, anti-taxes voting record, most unions would endorse him based on assurances that his wife Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (past political director of the Labor Council  and current state assembly-member) would make sure that that her husband would always vote the right way. 

Some simple arithmetic: Labor unions are a major funding source for the Democratic Party.  Labor is under the thumb of Lorena Gonzalez.  The Democratic Party anointed and endorsed  Nathan Fletcher, husband of Lorena Gonzalez, for county Supervisor.  Any questions about this equation?

Fold in the role of the Latino community, which remains underrepresented at the polls and only perfunctorily represented by their elected leaders here at home.  Political turf battles, controlled mostly within family lines (the Inzunzas, the Huesos), are still the norm in San Diego and the South Bay, where above-mentioned Lorena Gonzalez diligently shores up kinship alliances.

So it’s hardly a surprise that a non-family-affiliated independent Latino city official like David Alvarez gets the snake-eye from the ruling Latino establishment.  And it shouldn’t be surprising that the campaign to oust Mickey Kasparian was ferociously fueled by activists within the Latino community.

Up north you'll find environmental lawyer Marco Gonzalez, big brother of Lorena Gonzalez, defending the coastline.  He also wears the progressive label while doing his loyal best to stay on the good side of his sister.  In the past he's kept his fingerprints anonymous – for example, when helping to assemble aggrieved women to bring down Mayor Bob Filner, thereby clearing the coast for Nathan Fletcher's (ultimately unsuccessful) mayoral runs. 

The upshot for the citizens of San Diego? We got Kevin Falconer for mayor – four years of regressive planning, housing, infrastructure, homeless, and social policies – just like in the bad old days.  What more proof do we need that underhanded, murky tactics, even when they come from progressive good-guys, lead to fetid outcomes?

Now fold in San Diego’s gay community.  Once predominantly Republican, around two decades ago a contingent of organized, motivated gay activists took over the moribund county Democratic Party and infused it with new energy, money, and leadership.  A gay center was established in Hillcrest, a gay council district was created, and increasing numbers of gay elected leaders were shepherded onto the school board, city council, and upward to the state assembly and senate. 

But these Dem Party leaders were failures at multi-tasking. They ignored the party’s other obligations to cultivate, groom, and support a wide spectrum of Democratic candidates and pursue a comprehensive range of progressive goals for the region – leaving the Party vulnerable to attacks from all sides of the Democratic spectrum and bereft of a healthy pool of new, true-blue blood. 

As for the Democratic Party –  Ordinarily, I feel protective of San Diego’s Democratic Party.  But the party's unprecedented decision to freeze out highly qualified progressive candidates running for county Supervisor (two black men, Omar Passons and Ken Malbrough, and Latina Lori Saldaña) and throw huge financial resources into their anointed candidate Nathan Fletcher (whose outstanding political achievement so far is his marriage to Lorena Gonzalez) is dumbfounding – especially since the party has sidestepped a truly crucial race for the US Congress in the county’s 49^th district!

The Party’s indefensibly hateful attacks on Saldaña feel downright deviant.  This is not politics as usual.  This is not progressive. This reeks of manipulation and bullying.  This poisons the progressive well.

  

Finally, intersect our #MeToo movement in this lineup of distorted progressive values for giving full consent to being exploited as battering rams and manipulated into doing the dirty work for other people's retaliatory power games and personal agendas.  

We're smarter than that, aren't we?  We shouldn’t let ourselves be bullied... or bully others,  should we?  We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be silenced... or silence others, so why do we?

=======================================

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in a State of the Union speech in the early years of WW II, summed up what progressivism is all about.  He named Four Freedoms: freedom of speech; freedom of worship; freedom from want; and freedom from fear. 

Today’s progressives in San Diego have a much narrower view of the big picture.  We are handicapped by a high tolerance for mediocrity in our leaders... by the city's narrow-minded and self-serving business leaders... by the city's subservient devotion to developers and hoteliers...

And we handicap and cripple ourselves by ignoring unprofessional, uncoordinated, unaccountable, inefficient, and just plain sloppy city management under Mayor Faulconer’s administration.

The easy part for progressives is fixing our governmental and structural handicaps.  That's what we ought to be doing.

The hard part is fixing ourselves.  That's what we must do.

What would Nancy Drew do?

Calling all sleuths!  There's a murky mystery afoot in the city of San Diego that feels oddly familiar.  In theme… plot… cast of characters… it's nearly a dead ringer for a sordid drama that took center stage in our city a few seasons ago.  

This new case involves an attempt to bump off a local labor leader, someone most San Diegans probably wouldn't recognize if they saw him in a picket line.  

According to a description provided by his associates, the targeted individual is an unshaven, intimidating, middle-aged man with a budding paunch, contentious personality, rough temper, and not-such-great looks.  The perp (aka "dirt bag") is currently in the public square being scourged and pilloried.

His name is Mickey Kasparian.  He's the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 135 and board president of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council. 

This past December two lawsuits were filed against Kasparian, one for sexual harassment that spanned a 15-year period, and the other for gender discrimination.  A third complaint has recently surfaced, this one alleging political retaliation.

The word on the street is that – when confronting a marauding menace – the good citizens of San Diego have the right to settle certain scores with frontier-style justice.  Never mind a person's constitutional right to due process.  Never mind tedious legal procedures.  

Borrowing freely from the Republican playbook (lock her up! lock her up!) some citizens want to see Kasparian lynched.  Other citizens would settle for immediate banishment from his union job.  Others call for excommunication from the ranks of the Democratic Party.   

I've never met the man.  I have no insider information about his behind-the-scenes conduct in the labor union universe, but I do have some questions:

Has Mickey Kasparian been doing a good job as labor leader?  I haven't heard, one way or another.

Does Mickey Kasparian engage in illegal or criminal activity?  He hasn't had his day in court yet so I wouldn't know. 

Is Mickey Kasparian so obnoxious, uncouth, arrogant, and ineffective that union members should vote him out of his top-dog position?  That's up to them, I would think.

Here's what I do know: there are ladders in the backrooms of union halls.  They interconnect with ladders in the backrooms of political parties.  That's where combatants clamber over one another to reach the top.  It's where political ambitions and party politics and personal grudges engage, mano a mano. 

Another thing I know is that Mr. Kasparian is no novice in the political chess game.  Maybe you've seen him at pro-labor events standing in unity alongside state assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez.   


Maybe you've also seen him step down hard on her toes to block Nathan Fletcher's second attempt to replace Bob Filner as San Diego's mayor.

And maybe you noticed that Kasparian put his money on David Alvarez in that mayoral race.  

But did that prevent him from turning his back on councilmember Alvarez in the recent skirmish over who would become this year's city council president?   

One thing you can say about Kasparian– he's got an unusual way of making friends.  And unmaking them.  Do we detect more clues to what has put him center stage in the current well-orchestrated facsimile of a kangaroo court?

So tell me, what would Nancy Drew do with these clues?

• First, she'd probably refrain from premature judgment about whether Mickey Kasparian is a scoundrel and/or a rat and encourage our good San Diego citizens to keep our own incisors in check.
• Second, she might suggest that internecine dogfights within the local Democratic Party and within the local unions threaten to become a self-imposed death sentence.
• Finally, she'd try to convince the good citizens of San Diego to cancel any and all reruns scripted by activist judge/ jury/ executioners.  She'd advise us to settle for the dry drama of lawful procedure, courtroom hearings, and election ballots to vote the bastards in or out.  And she'd plead with us to resist the addictive and very bad habit of frontier-style justice.  Too many wrongs won't make it right.

All the world's a stage

Act I:  the State of the City Address
San Diegans are about to witness a full-dress reenactment of our town’s annual civic ritual known as the State of the City Address.   

Article XV of the City Charter lays it out: On or before the 15th day of January of each year, the Mayor shall communicate by message to the City Council a statement of the conditions and affairs of the City, and make recommendations on such matters as he or she may deem expedient and proper.

You can catch a live performance at 6pm this Wednesday, January 15^th at downtown’s historic Balboa Theatre.  Alternatively, you can kick back in the comfort of your own living room and watch it on City-TV. 

Like most political rituals it’s an occasion for platitudes and cheerleading.  San Diego mayors traditionally use the opportunity to bring in the color guard… special lighting… ministers… pomp and circumstance… to showcase their recent accomplishments and bright plans for the city’s future.  

It’s a feel-good event -- rarely the time for blunt assessments of the true state of the city’s fiscal, environmental, social, or economic health and well-being.  It's the time for lofty sentiments, optimistic forecasts, and a touch of political preening.  Afterwards, there’s cookies and punch in the lobby.

What sets this State of the City Address apart from all others is that the official master of ceremonies of this year’s event will be a substitute, a stand-in, a person who doesn’t happen to be the mayor. 

At this Wednesday’s big event the role of mayor will be played by the presiding officer of the City Council, Todd Gloria.  He’s been filling in as the designated seat warmer pending next month’s runoff election to replace former mayor Bob Filner, who resigned from office this past summer. 

You will remember that barely a year ago the freshly-elected mayor Bob Filner stepped onto the stage of the Balboa Theatre to deliver his first (and last) State of the City Address.  In an ironic twist to a yet-untold complex and sordid tale, Filner was ruefully introduced as the "real mayor" by his political rival, the inimitable scene stealer Nathan Fletcher.  To refresh your memory of that ill-omened event click here.  

You’ll notice that smiling stonily (ominously? cynically? conspiratorially?) upstaged in the shadows sat Councilman Todd Gloria and City Attorney Jan Goldsmith – practiced political actors already working in tandem alongside other disgruntled bigwig players to ring down the curtain ASAP on this problematic, confrontational, threatening, politically liberal change-agent of a new mayor.  Seven months later, sooner than they could have dreamed, they got their wish.

Act II: Strong Mayor Strikes Home
It’s been almost a decade since the city of San Diego converted from a “city manager” form of government to a “strong mayor” system.   The jury isn’t in yet on whether the switch was overall positive or negative, at least from the public perspective. 

But one thing’s for sure – city government now operates within a denser, darker, sweatier, more testosterone-driven political framework than ever before.  The full story about Bob Filner's demise will one day attest to that.  Meantime, the immediate aftermath of Filner’s rapidly-executed stoning gives us a tantalizing glimpse of what's awaiting us in our adopted "strong mayor" world of cutthroat politics.

For starters, take a look at the City Charter “strong mayor” section regarding how to handle a vacancy in mayor’s seat:

During the period of time when an appointment or election is pending to fill a vacancy in the Office of Mayor, the presiding officer of the Council shall be vested with the authority to supervise the staff remaining employed in the Office of the Mayor, to direct and exercise control over the City Manager in managing the affairs of the City under the purview of the Mayor and to exercise other power and authority vested in the Office of the Mayor when the exercise of such power and authority is required by law. This limited authority would include circumstances where the expeditious approval of a legislative action is necessary to meet a legal requirement imposed by a court or another governmental agency. Such limited authority would not include the exercise of the power of veto or any other discretionary privilege which is enjoyed by a person appointed or elected to the Office of Mayor.

Now consider that over the past five months the presiding officer of the Council – Councilman Todd Gloria – artfully draped himself in the robes of the mayoralty to strut his stuff and mark his territory, ignoring with impunity the intent and  limitations spelled out in the City Charter.  

With a wink and a nod from the City Attorney, the District 3 representative crowned himself mayor and embarked on reorganizing city government in his own image.  He hired, fired, rearranged, proclaimed, undid, reversed, and erased all traces of ex-mayor Filner's popular reforms and political direction in an illegitimate exercise of "discretionary privilege."  

Our soon-to-be-voter-approved-next “strong mayor” will find himself saddled with a slew of officials, appointees, directors, restructured lines of authority, policies, decisions, and hidden alliances that will prove difficult to control, let alone undo. Here's a piece of advice that might prove useful upfront: be sure to check your new office for stray bugs.

Meantime, the Councilman who recently saw fit to tweet to the world “I look amazing in animal prints” will be flashing his dazzling smile onstage this Wednesday and using the State of the City event to cement his credentials as an oh-so-flexible politician destined to go places.  We've had more than our share of quisling political opportunists in San Diego, so here's another piece of advice that might prove useful: Todd Gloria, just fuggedaboudit.

Act III: Our Next Best Chance
In one year from now San Diegans will be watching a duly-elected mayor -- either David Alvarez or Kevin Faulconer -- on the stage of the Balboa Theatre deliver the State of the City Address with a message to the people about what the city's been up to and where we ought to be headed.   Their messages would be vastly different from one another.  

Why? because the masters of political strangleholds who have traditionally straight-jacketed our city are throwing their considerable weight behind Kevin Faulconer.  

And the proponents of good government and progressive change -- having had a taste of what our city could and should be like -- are flexing their newly-developed muscles in support of David Alvarez.  

The political machinations in our city have become murky and devious but the best choice for the majority of San Diego voters is crystal clear: next year it must be David Alvarez on the Balboa Theatre stage in the spotlight delivering his State of the City Address.

Sex and the City

Let’s ease into this subject with a mindful autumn walk.  Notice the days getting shorter... morning air chillier... leaves turning gold on liquidamber trees.

Now notice a fact as unwavering as the seasons -- the fact that sex plays a dominant role in San Diego public affairs.  Hook it up with other San Diego mainstays (uninspired leadership, stunted civic aspirations, free-floating corruption, overinflated egos, corporate welfare, legal-establishment collusion, Republican Party strategy, dubious fidelity among leading Democrats, to name a few) and it wallops a punch potent enough to knock a new mayor out of the ring and force the city into a costly, rushed election to bring in a replacement. 

Of course this is not how the Chamber of Commerce markets our city.  It’s motto: Good for Business - Good for San Diego says it all.  Same for our Tourism Authority, which promotes the city as a clean-cut, open-air paradise: …70 miles of beautiful beaches, countless parks and gardens, and endless opportunities for pampering at one of the areas many spas and resorts… an excellent destination for some quality R+R.

I've noticed that San Diego sells itself as a trophy town of moderation, rectitude, and civility.  But scratch the surface and you’ll discover the other San Diego -- a town constantly preoccupied with commercialized sexual indulgences (move over, Las Vegas). 

• Aren’t we the fun-loving host of the over-the-line tournament, the frisky, sandy weekend of boosted beer, bouncy breasts, and bared behinds? 
• Isn’t the weekend street scene in our redeveloped Gaslamp Quarter every bit as raunchy as the notorious pre-CCDC days of sailor bars, hookers, and peepshows?
• And you wouldn't call our very own glistening rompers and exhibitionists at the summertime Pride Parade chopped liver, would you? 
• How about San Diego’s collection of privately-catered swinging establishments, open to you, me, and the lamppost? 
• And what would you say to hugh-hefner-wannabe accommodations upstairs at the U-T?
• Have you taken the oral history tour of City Hall, a behind the scenes tale of who-did-what-with-whom (or who-was-doing-what-with-himself)?  It starts at the 12th-floor Council Chambers and works its way down.
• And what about our ferociously fought-over 25-foot bayside statue immortalizing a sailor’s frontal assault on an unconsenting female – you know, the one with the woman in a headlock submitting to a forced, full-mouth kiss?  Once named “Unconditional Surrender” nowadays it’s known as felony false imprisonment.

Not bad for an upstanding city like ours that goes ape over tales of a mayor’s clumsy kiss, posterior pat, and too-tight arm around the shoulder.  (For a rare honest response from the U-T take a quick look at what Logan Jenkins has to say.)  Will we entertain similar hysteria over the next round of scandals that are bound to make headlines?

By now most of us who entertained high hopes for what an experienced, old-time liberal mayor like Bob Filner could bring to the city of San Diego have resigned ourselves to the new reality – which looks oddly like the old reality called business as usual.  Surely you've noticed what a busy beaver our interim mayor Todd Gloria has been in setting the clock back to pre-Filner time.  In fact, a time warp engineered by downtown Republicans along with select Democrats has pretty much erased all traces of what almost was but might have been.

Which brings us to the current candidates running to replace Bob Filner. 

Of the four front-running mayoral candidates, only one is being honest with the public about a core issue: the untenable financial state of the city.  The other three have chosen to avoid the subject.  They're choosing to promote the homespun San Diego fable about having our cake and eating it too. 

Mike Aguirre has taken every opportunity over the past couple of months of campaigning to make a simple but crucial point – that a big (and growing) chunk of the city’s general fund budget is set aside annually for payment into the employee pension fund.  This results in a significant reduction in the cash available to pay for routine city services.  This year's required annual pension payment is $275 million -- the bulk of which ($200 million) is eaten up as interest on the $2.3 billion pension deficit that drags the city down.  

Notice this contrast: a mere $55 million is allocated for our roads.  The decision to take from Peter (fire, police, roads, and neighborhoods) to pay off Paul (the City Employees Retirement System) was a choice made by former Mayor Jerry Sanders, abetted by the City Council, so he could fake a balanced budget and claim he had resolved the city’s fiscal crisis before leaving office.

You can hear plenty of campaign chatter about paved roads, upgraded libraries, recreation centers, parks, decent streets (smooth streets, in the words of Nathan Fletcher; sexy streets, per temporary-mayor Todd Gloria), homeless facilities, and other neighborhood needs.  You'll get a deafening silence from the others when Aguirre starts talking about the city's crippling pension problem. 

Aguirre is tackling the difficult financial issues head-on (despite sniping from candidate Fletcher).  The other candidates won’t touch it.  So far, neither has the U-T nor our other news and opinion providers.  Neither have the economic analysts and political gurus who comment regularly on city business.  (I noticed with dismay that then-mayor Filner also steered away from the same time bomb that's already detonating in other U.S. cities.  Detroit, anyone?)

David Alvarez has been denigrated as too young by Democrats who’ve been smitten by Nathan Fletcher.  But notice that there’s a mere three-year age difference between them -- Alvarez is 33, Fletcher is 36.  Notice that interim-mayor Todd Gloria is only 35.   Also notice that Alvarez has an upper hand in understanding how the city works and what makes it tick – an important qualification for anyone wanting to be mayor.  (Yes, I also noticed that the lack of municipal government expertise was a fatal shortcoming in the Filner administration.) 

Others question Alvarez’s independence from the Labor Council, his primary financial backers.  It’s a fair question that should be asked of all candidates running for office: Will you be free and strong enough to balance the demands of your friends and major financial backers with the good of the city at large?  While it seems to me that committed Democrats ought not to distance themselves from the union movement -- the most important ally American working people have ever had -- there's a lot of work to do by Democrats as well as labor unions before they reemerge as comprehensive, progressive, visionary leaders of the future.

Kevin Faulconer blithely sails by without anyone questioning who his keepers are.  He’s best described as San Diego’s retrograde candidate of the 20^th century – a cordial, sunburned, amorphous kind of guy sporting the Chamber of Commerce logo on his sleeve.  He may well have an underside (and who among us does not?) but so far his passive, follow-the-leader style has protected him from getting bitten where it hurts. 

Here’s one good thing about Faulconer: you know exactly what you’ll get… exactly who’ll be whispering in his ear… exactly what his agenda will be… and exactly what you’ll be fighting against.  He’s someone you can depend on to deliver what he and his financial backers know how to do best: the downtown fraternity two-step (one for you, one for me, more for you, more for me).

Nathan Fletcher is a cipher.  He’s been described as a changeling, a switch hitter, a chameleon adept at overnight transformation.  Other than a photogenic face and military boasts (what kind of person capitalizes on the business of interrogating prisoners of war?) you have no idea what you’re getting… who’s whispering in his ear… what his agenda will be.   Trendy clichés spill effortlessly from his lips: innovation... creativity... we put a man on the moon.  But he's like quicksand: there’s no there there. 

Keep in mind that Fletcher was adopted (metaphorically speaking) into the Qualcomm family and reaps the benefits of a well-paid corporate job and faux UCSD professorship. His wealthy and influential backers pave the way for him to scoop up high-profile Democratic endorsements like handfuls of Halloween candy.  We've all noticed that money wields inordinate influence over the political fortunes of seated elected officials as well as most of those who'd like to be.  He's belongs to somebody, but it's not the public.

Fletcher's political message boils down to this: I’m your man, San Diego!  Forget my past voting record!  Look into my eyes and trust me!

Sex and the city... the mayor's race... what's the connection?  There's no mystery to this one.  Sex has great commercial and utilitarian value in our town.  We either pretend not to notice it, or we use it as a political battering ram.  Notice that sex was the weapon of choice for deposing former-mayor Bob Filner.  It's precisely what brings us here today as we contemplate the mayor's race.  

San Diego voters will be making a choice about who will be our next mayor (notice that not choosing is a choice that permits someone else to choose for you).  My advice is to wait a while before turning in your vote.  Keep listening -- but not to the pollsters, not to political pundits, not to anyone's subjective calculus predicting the odds and trying to manipulate the outcome.

What are we listening for? less talk about smooth and sexy streets and a whole new conversation about the unsexy time bomb ticking in our back yards -- our multi-billion dollar municipal pension deficit.  

Any mayoral candidate who pretends he can fulfill his campaign promises of neighborhood improvements and safety protection by shutting his eyes to the way the city cooks the books guarantees bad consequences for all of us.  

I’ve never been good at playing the numbers (neither was my father -- though I named this blog in his honor, anyway).  I know what I've already heard and I intend to keep listening before I confirm my choice for our next mayor.