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!

San Diego’s mayor: past, present, and future (part 3)

 Mayoral candidate Barbara Bry (BB)

Here's a fact: San Diego is a big small town in which--at one time or another--most everyone gets into bed with most everyone else (figuratively speaking, of course, but literally sometimes).  

So when we question who’s got easy access to whom, we’re not just being nosy.  The in-and-outs of political bonding can tell us a lot about how political deals and decisions are made, or which way a vote will go.  

That's why it's important to keep an eye on endorsements, business partners, personal associations, and so on.  Didn't you learn this as a kid? birds of a feather… peas in a pod… lie down with dogs….

In a less complacent city than ours, alarm bells would be ringing over conflict-of-interest pairings that, here in San Diego, don't even raise an eyebrow.  

For example, there’s the domestic financial symbiosis between State Senator Toni Atkins, housing advocate and promoter of “smart growth” high-density development and spouse Jennifer LeSar, favored recipient of much-sought-after committee appointments and nonprofit housing contracts.  Clients of LeSar Development Consultants in our region include the SD Housing Commission, El Cajon Housing Authority, Monarch Group, and Affirmed Housing Group.

Then there’s the politically adventuresome dynamic duo of State Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez and her recent spouse County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher.  Their double-fisted grip on the local Democratic Party facilitates who gets--or gets locked out of--crucial party funding and party endorsements.   Sometimes even who gets targeted for the trash bin.
  

Headed for the trash bin, according to this week's headlines, is school board member Kevin Beiser.  He’s running for City Council against fellow-Democrat Wendy Wheatcroft, the founder of a nonprofit coalition called San Diegans for Gun Violence Prevention who once exposed the fact that the National Rifle Association gave a high rating to Nathan Fletcher. 

Shortly after it was created, her Gun Violence Prevention nonprofit did a somersault and endorsed Nathan Fletcher for County Supervisor (are 501c-4 nonprofits free to publicly endorse candidates? I think not).  

Wendy Wheatcroft--whose campaign treasurer previously worked on Fletcher’s mayoral campaign--has recently been gifted with an official endorsement by Gonzalez-Fletcher.  It's a wide bed, after all.  [It's been suggested to me that a Gonzalez-Fletcher endorsement has not officially occurred.  If I was mistaken, I regret the error.]

As for Kevin Beiser... looks like he’s toast.  Maybe he deserves it.  Maybe not.  Maybe there are newsworthy others who will also be pulled down in this drama.  Maybe not.  Maybe one day we'll know the whole story.  Probably not.  But as we already observed: most everyone's a kissing cousin in our small big town.   

Which brings us to the matter at hand--San Diego’s 2020 mayor’s race.  

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At first glance, Barbara Bry could pass for the girl next door.  But look again—she’s no pushover.  

Four decades ago BB was a business writer for the LA Times.  Between then and now she has immersed herself in the magical universe of venture capital, business innovation, and entrepreneurship.  It's a high-stakes, risk-filled, public-private cosmos, populated by angels with wads of cash in search of biotech, biomed, software, wireless, and telecommunications jackpots—keepers of the keys to the kingdom yet to come.

BB has a business degree from Harvard. She was founding editor and CEO of the online news outlet Voice of San Diego and, later, of the aborted San Diego News Network.  Her company Blackbird Ventures invested in early stage technology companies. She created an organization called Run Women Run to inspire and train “pro-choice” women to enter political life.  

Just two years ago she took her own advice and ran (successfully) to become San Diego councilmember in District 1.  Her self-identification as a business woman working to empower other women is her lucky token.  She's tossing it into the ring in the bigger race for mayor.

BB has a couple of campaign advantages over her opponent Todd Gloria in the mayor’s contest.  First, her focus on business will bring a degree of support from Republican voters.  And second, her political record is thin.  While TG has to answer for a wart-filled record during eight years on the city council, BB's paper trail is scant.  There’s not much to answer for.

Not to say that she’s blemish-free:

• BB succumbed to the seductive lure of political sirens and, with barely half a council term under her belt, decided she was ready to take over the reins of city government and steer the future of San Diego...
• BB falls back on hackneyed key words to define herself: fiscal discipline; tough decisions; stand up to special interests; fair treatment for all; comprehensive solutions; forward-looking leadership; uniter.  Also: problem-solving skills; entrepreneurial mindset; consensus builder; pragmatist... 
• BB has a campaign slogan: “I mean business.”  The question of voters is, whose business?  The Let's-Run-Government-Like-a Business meme doesn't translate well for ordinary citizens in the real world.  Private businesses frequently fail, dissolve, go bankrupt, or relocate overseas.  Entrepreneurs say they embrace failure, but failure is a luxury city government cannot afford...  

• BB has a history of cohabitation in the world of big-scale real estate development.  Her previous spouse was San Diego developer Pat Kruer--former California Coastal Commissioner and founding partner of Monarch Group, a private real estate entitlement, development, investment, and management firm.  BB’s daughter is a partner at the Monarch Group…
• BB renewed her connections to the world of real estate development via her current husband and business partner Neil Senturia--successful real estate developer of office buildings, condominiums, and hotels in Los Angeles and San Diego and loquacious founder and CEO of numerous diverse technology companies: “I have the sense that, at some level, the concept of profit has become a dirty word, I’m resentful”...

• BB’s fundraising network ranges from the city’s hi-tech/ bio-tech universe to more grounded sources like real estate developer Jennifer LeSar, the Ace Parking family (one of the city’s prime-site land owners and likely beneficiary of the proposed paid parking lot in Balboa Park, should the Jacobs Park Makeover Plan ever come to fruition), and Convention Center expansion cheerleader Bob Nelson…
• BB was an early proponent of the San Diego’s 2010 switch from a city manager form of government to the current (and in urgent need of revision) strong mayor system...
• BB supported the dubious switch of the city's pension plan to a 401(k) plan.  The Supreme Court has just thrown our costly pension mess back to the city to resolve. It's a hot potato that no city official wants to touch.  The next mayor may have to...

• BB’s chief of staff is Jamie Fox.  She was previously deputy chief of staff for convicted-and-later-acquitted councilmember Ralph Inzunza...then director of communications for ex-councilmember Kevin Faulconer...then campaign manager and chief of staff for Todd Gloria throughout the roiling days of Bob Filner’s tenure in the mayor’s office.  Now that her new boss BB is running against TG in the mayor’s race, is it unreasonable to speculate on latent conflicts of interest in her heart-of-hearts?… 
• BB’s chief policy staffer is Victoria Joes.  She was policy advisor for Mayor Jerry Sanders and director of housing policy at the well-connected firm of Jennifer LeSar Development Consultants.  It's a small world, after all...

• BB calls herself a business-savvy decisionmaker.  But cheerleading for SDSU’s open-ended expansion dreams for Mission Valley--a vision that entails a new stadium, thousands of housing units, office buildings, research facilities, magically created at no cost to taxpayers or students--is premature, at best... 
• BB lends her name to what looks like a bad business plan for the Mission Valley-SDSU (No city control over basic details. No bottom line about the price the city will accept for the sale of this coveted public land. No binding environmental agreements. No heads-up about traffic impacts. No assurances about creating the promised River Park. No timelines. No definition of “key deal points.” No financial guarantees).  It enhances BB's claim as a risk taker but could undermine her standing as a protector of the public interest... 
• BB prided herself for having “confidence” to stand up to the mayor by opposing the “Soccer City” development proposal on the site of Qualcomm Stadium in Mission Valley and supporting the alternative SDSU West ballot initiative (which won voter approval).  But neither proposal passed the smell test.  Wouldn’t a good mayor have opposed both ballot choices and gotten to work on a comprehensive public planning process?... 
• BB’s support for the expansion of the downtown Convention Center falls into the same category.  A good mayor would be wise to be skeptical about who the ultimate beneficiaries will be—the tourism industry? or the public footing the bill…

• BB’s leadership role as a city councilmember is being squashed by the mayor and council cohorts.  She joined fellow Democrats in calling for a national search for a new police chief and had to settle for a secret selection process and in-house appointee by the mayor.  She took the lead on regulating short-term vacation rentals and was sabotaged.  She stepped forward to regulate dockless scooters and was cast aside by the mayor and councilmember Mark Kersey.   She gets scant support from the new contingent of “minority” women now on the city council…
• BB went along with council decisions on granny flats, reduced parking requirements (she subsequently reversed her stand), and the mayor’s loosey-goosey proposal for a Community Choice Aggregation (energy) business plan.  She shows she can be a team player.  Can she develop the political clout to call more of the shots?… 

Could it be that BB hasn’t yet gotten her political sea legs?  Could it be that she hasn’t yet figured out San Diego's political universe?  Could it be that her trusted advisors aren’t doing a good enough job looking out for her strategic and political interests? 

  

The primary election for mayor is one year down the road.  Is there time for Barbara Bry to grow? Spread her wings? Expand her scope? Be a risk taker by speaking truth to San Diego voters? Emerge as a multi-dimensional public-minded political leader?

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Our final installment looks at mayoral candidate Cory Briggs.

San Diego’s mayor: present, past, and future (part 2)

Mayoral candidate Todd Gloria (TG)

Origin stories are the rage nowadays, but do they make one person intrinsically more worthy than another?  Do they reliably predict the abilities, values, ethical yardstick, or qualifications a person develops over the years? 

Take Todd Gloria, for example. You may already have a mental image of him as a likable, winsome, up-and-coming kind of guy.  He self-identifies as a gay person of color: ½ Alaskan tribal- native American, 1/4 Filipino, a tad Dutch, and a touch Latino (Puerto Rican), nestled in a home-grown man from an economically disadvantaged background.  

In other words, our man for all seasons.  

TG was elected as heir apparent to the District 3 seat of the San Diego City Council following a particularly nasty primary battle against opponent Stephen Whitburn (who's running once again).  The LGBTQ baton was passed to him by Toni Atkins, who had received it from Chris Kehoe.  

At the end of their respective terms, Kehoe, Atkins, and then Gloria advanced to the CA State Assembly.  Kehoe and Atkins eventually mounted the next rung to CA State Senate.  Not TG.  He's been hankering after Susan Davis's seat in the US Congress but she hasn't budged.  

(Correction added) Starting in 2012, assemblymembers can serve a lifetime maximum of 12 years or a combined total of 12 years in both the State Assembly and Senate.  So TG could conceivably hang out in Sacramento for another 8 years.  But he's back to San Diego to run for mayor.  

That’s not to say that being mayor hasn’t been on TG’s mind for a while.  He clearly enjoyed--and made the most of--his 6-month stint as San Diego’s interim mayor, a post he held in 2013 following his dubious partnership with former City Attorney Jan Goldsmith during the orchestrated undoing of Mayor Bob Filner.  

That wasn't the only odd coupling in the saga of Filner’s election as mayor (although it was the most toxic).  TG’s domestic partner Jason Barsi had hooked up professionally with the mayoral campaign of Filner’s Republican opponent Bonnie Dumanis.  

Meantime, the high school daughter of not-yet assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez made a surprisingly sizable campaign contribution to Nathan Fletcher, at that time also one of Filner's Republican opponents.  Fletcher's budding relationship with Gonzalez was already bearing fruit.  

(Targeted from the start by presumed Democratic allies, the hapless super-liberal Bob Filner never stood a chance.  But that’s a story for another day.)

In today’s mayoral race, here’s what distinguishes TG from his opponents: TG is a seasoned city politician who has already captured early support among Democratic Party regulars, labor unions, the hotel industry, and major developers.
  

The assortment of power-brokers and lobbyists in his corner is impressive.  Financial backers include hoteliers Bill Evans, C. Terry Brown, and Richard Bartell, SeaWorld, Sempra Energy, Ace Parking, Cox Communications, Cush Enterprises, CA Association of Realtors, CA Building Industry Association, Chevron, CA State Building & Construction Trades Council, OliverMcMillan, and--recently in the news--private prison contractors doing business with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  

But there’s a flip side to being a seasoned city politician.   After two terms as city councilmember TG left a paper trail, a political record, for all to see.  Once you refresh your memory about his time on the city council you'll be faced with a thorny question: would TG make a good mayor, anyway… despite much of his recorded performance? 

As councilmember:

• TG engineered the establishment of the Balboa Park Conservancy, whose mission is to raise funds to maintain and improve the park (Balboa Park is in TG’s council district).  But the Conservancy stumbled, sputtered, and languished under his negligent supervision…
• TG defied 1) public objections, 2) a lawsuit brought by Cory Briggs, and 3) strong opposition from incoming mayor Bob Filner by forging ahead with an unprecedented 40-year lease extension to the Bahia Hotel in Mission Bay, owned by financial backer Bill Evans... 
• TG actively supported the Qualcomm/Irwin Jacobs makeover plan in Balboa Park for a bypass bridge and city-financed paid parking lot.  Filner opposed the plan and, after becoming mayor, took steps to create a pedestrian friendly Plaza de Panama by eliminating surface parking spots… 

As council president:

• TG chafed mightily under Bob Filner’s ascendency as San Diego’s progressive new mayor.  The two engaged in a fierce public rivalry over who was the city’s rightful top dog… 
• TG conspired with the City Attorney to deny legal support to Bob Filner, an underhanded and unethical tactic to force the mayor to resign or face bankruptcy...
• TG climbed to the top of the bandwagon in support of public funding for the Convention Center expansion...
• TG sidestepped honest analysis of the San Diego worker pension morass, replicating evasive practices of previous city councils to conceal damaging budget impacts from public view…
• TG improperly pressured a city planner (according to court documents) to reverse report findings over a disputed expansion of the Academy of our Lady of Peace, a private religious school.  This unethical manipulation cost the city more than half a million dollars in legal settlement fees...

As interim mayor: 

• TG used his 6-month stint as interim mayor to speedily reverse, undo, and overturn numerous decisions and processes put into place by the elected Mayor Filner… 
• TG put up roadblocks to renegotiating improved terms for the city regarding a tourism marketing deal with San Diego hoteliers, dismantling Filner’s early efforts…
• TG overstepped his job description as temporary mayor and hired consultant Stephen Goldsmith to reorganize city government.  Goldsmith was an "efficiency expert" in privatizing government services and in the sale of city functions to the private sector... 
• TG promptly rehired two lobbying firms, previously rejected by ex-mayor Filner but favored by Jerry Sanders and the Chamber of Commerce.  Peculiar choices for a progressive politician…
• TG rescinded a stop-use order issued by ex-Mayor Filner to prevent zoning code violations by the neighborhood restaurant chain Jack in the Box.  In doing so he overstepped his authority as interim caretaker, turned his back on North Park residents, and reassured big-business backers...
• TG reversed a program--previously funded by Mayor Filner--to keep shelters open year-round, thus impeding the city's ability to provide emergency shelters as needed.  Closing cold weather shelters eventually led to a deadly outbreak of Hepatitis A just a few years later…

More as councilmember:

• TG boldly claimed credit for promoting a much-sought after minimum wage law—an ordinance that had, months earlier, been achieved for contractors doing work for the city by then-Mayor Filner.  In a bizarre twist, TG negotiated worse terms by scaling back the wage increase from Filner’s $13/hour to $11/hour.  Who had the last laugh on this one?...
• TG claimed authorship of San Diego’s Climate Action Plan, which must come as a big surprise to the plan originator Nicole Capretz, who had coordinated with ex-Mayor Filner… 
• TG dropped the ball in creating San Diego's Balboa Park Centennial Celebration, which was to be a spectacular citywide festival.  Through failed leadership and lack of oversight it landed as a disastrous flop.  TG promptly blamed ousted Mayor Filner for having unduly raised expectations...

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If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's this: bad things happen to a city under bad leadership and bad management.   Next time around we need a good mayor.

So the question for voters remains: is Todd Gloria's proliferation of political warts--scattered across many unexpected places--a dependable indicator of what we can expect from him in the future?  Nobody’s perfect.  The question is, would he be good enough?  

Our next installment looks at mayoral candidate Barbara Bry.

San Diego's mayor: present, past, and future

Part 1 of 4: Mayor Kevin Faulconer

Kevin Faulconer, San Diego’s 36th mayor, is finishing up his last term in office.  Recently, I was taken to task over my choice of adjectives when describing our mayor.  I was criticized for being too negative.

It’s true that I’ve called him a lightweight.  An embarrassment to his constituents.  An elected official lacking independence, imagination, backbone, and the political moxie to do right by our city.  I even referred to him as a chip off the old Jerry Sanders block.  

 Lately he's been parading around the country as a moderate politician destined for greater things (and who knows? one day he might take a tip from Nathan Fletcher--that other photo-ready manikin who knows tricks Faulconer's public relations firm never dreamed of--and get reborn as a barnstorming Democrat).
  

But ask yourself: what has Mayor Faulconer accomplished FOR our city? (uh...hmm...well...)

Now compare that to what has happened TO our city under his watch: 

• thousands of people grossly overcharged on their water bills… city departments using sloppy standards, rules, and procedures… faulty road repairs… unfunded sidewalk upgrades… 
•  lazy oversight of basic city operations… unmaintained city property… failure to monitor city contracts… frequent failure to compensate vendors … 
• inconsistent planning, permitting, and building enforcement policies… messy vacillation over deals to expand the Convention Center… humiliating miscalculations over the Chargers Stadium land deal… ditto for the Soccer City land deal… 
• years of inaction over the city’s vacant and abandoned downtown central library…misleading financial reporting of our employee pension morass… neglect and growing decay of San Diego’s centerpiece Balboa Park… 
• gross mismanagement of real estate deals… purchase of a skydiving center without prior appraisal… botched lease-to-own deal for vacant SDG&E/Sempra Energy headquarters… 
• chronic lag in city response to public complaints about potholes, sinkholes, missing streetlights, illegal dumping… skyrocketing costs at a Sherman Heights facility to store homeless people’s possessions… 
• unconscionable switchback policies to alleviate homelessness… preventable deaths on the streets from exposure, Hepatitis A… ongoing absence of secure public toilets… broken and abandoned shower facilities at the city’s sole day center for unhoused people who sleep on downtown streets…

This is what's happening to our city under a mayor who lacks leadership ability, management skills, and accountability.  

No one says we need perfection in our elected officials.  We're not demanding brilliance or purity.  

If you care about the quality of your daily life, your family's welfare, how your taxes are spent, the health/ safety/ wellbeing of the people around you, then good would more than suffice. 

So what would a good mayor would look like? 

Someone with the smarts, energy, ambition, and cunning to know how to kill two birds with one stone.  That is, someone who understands that promoting the greatest good for the greatest number of San Diegans would inevitably promote the greatest good for her/his personal political future.  It’s a win-win setup.

San Diego voters will elect a new mayor in 2020 (the primary election is March 4).  Frontrunners include Todd Gloria, Barbara Bry, and Cory Briggs.  Is any one of them good enough to be San Diego’s next mayor?
  

Before we answer that question or jump onto anyone’s bandwagon, shouldn't we have a three-dimensional picture of these candidates?  I’ll leave it to them to figure out how to put their best feet forward and publicize their own strengths, records, accomplishments, and goals. 
   

As for us voters, we can honor this year's Sunshine Week by checking out the next three installments of San Diego's mayor: present, past, and future.  They will deliver a candid look at the undersides of San Diego's potential mayors... unsightly warts and all. 

The despair of highly motivated voters

I’m what’s called a "highly motivated" voter.  Most of the people I hang out with are highly motivated voters.  We vote in every election.  

And I try to be informed.  I read and re-read the ballot initiatives… investigate and double-check the small print… pay attention to which group endorses which measure.  Sometimes, I gather friends and neighbors to comb through the ballot.  But let’s be honest: it still feels like a crapshoot.

The initiative process gives us regular citizens the option of by-passing our elected representatives (whenever deemed necessary) and taking matters into our own hands to make laws on our own.  It's a romanticized notion of vigorous direct democracy.

Wanna hear a dirty secret?  Ballot propositions are never clear-cut, transparent, or exempt from unintended consequences.  They demand value judgments – the same as all political actions. 

Wanna hear another dirty secret?  Ballot propositions have been known to send “highly motivated” voters into paroxysms of anxiety and guilt as they try to figure out the right answers to what are often trick or tricky questions. 

With 11 state proposals, 4 county measures, and 9 city initiatives on San Diego's current November ballot does it surprise anyone that “low propensity” voters (Latinos, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, ages 18-30, and low-income residents – statistically speaking) would rather skip the whole thing?  Haven’t you ever been tempted?

Here’s my attempt to ease the pain for voters who'll be giving it their best shot at their neighborhood polling places this Tuesday.  First, a few points to keep in mind when deciding your vote: 

1. Sometimes elected state, county, or city lawmakers put items on the ballot when they want to sidestep responsibility.
2. Often, powerful interest groups (with cash to burn) turn the initiative process to their own advantage.  With a multi-million dollar professional signature-gathering syndicate at their fingertips, private players can secure a place on the ballot for almost any one of their measures.  
3. Occasionally, community or nonprofit groups successfully turn to the initiative or referendum to assert public interests.
4. Maybe one day some reputable, civic-minded citizen groups will put their heads together and come up with workable ideas for repairing the initiative/referendum process. 

Now for a look at the State Propositions:

• Propositions 1 and 2 are bond measures which (like all bond measures) require a vote of the public.  Both deal with special housing assistance needs and both seem deserving.
• Props 3 and 4 are also bond measures.  Both found their way to the ballot through signature-raising petitions.  Prop 3 focuses on repairing groundwater infrastructure over-used by central valley agricultural interests and probably should be financed locally rather than statewide.  Prop 4 funds private and public childrens hospitals – a worthy cause, of course – but fundraising goals might readily be met through private endowments rather than long-term public debt.  

• Props 5 and 6 were put on the ballot by private interests.  Prop 5 involves preferential property taxes and Prop 6 involves gas taxes. Both would undo important provisions in previous initiatives and both are unwise.  

• Prop 7 gives the go-ahead to state lawmakers to fiddle with daylight savings time.  It's a popularity poll but why exhaust voters with yet another proposition to wrestle with?

• Prop 8 is a labor dispute involving dialysis clinics that asks voters to butt in on one side or the other.  Vote No on items that don’t belong on the ballot in the first place.

• (Prop 9 was mercifully removed from the ballot)

• Prop 10 is the rare case of a worthy measure placed on the ballot by public-interest signature gatherers.  It gives cities the right to set their own policies and laws concerning upwardly-spiraling rents.  I say Yes.

• Prop 11 (like Prop 8) is a labor dispute, placed on the ballot by private ambulance companies to get the public to intercede on their behalf on money issues.  It doesn’t belong on the ballot and gets a No vote from me.

• Prop 12 returns to an issue involving the humane treatment of farm animals that voters already considered in 2008.  The Humane Society and other groups put this initiative on the ballot to tighten and enforce standards and restrictions.  The inflexible nature of propositions is a good reason why some dilemmas should not be legislated and controlled through the initiative process.  Rule of thumb: when in doubt… vote No.

Now for a look at the County Propositions:

• Measure A is a “clean-up” Charter amendment that looks fine to me.

• Measure B is a bit sinister.  It would require gerrymandering county district lines to ensure that a majority of Supervisors will have a personal stake in the County’s rural back-country (perennially under pressure for denser development).   No, not a good idea.      

• Measure C wants voters to assume the role of fiscal taskmasters and put County pension stabilization funds in a lockbox.  yes? no? no? yes?  When in doubt… I vote No.

• Measure D brings standard voting practices to the County by requiring a runoff by the two top winners in a primary election to run again in the general election.  Fine with me.

Finally, San Diego City Propositions:

• Measures E and G are competing proposals to develop a huge chunk of city-owned property in Mission Valley at the site of (the former) Qualcomm Stadium.  Both are big on shiny promises but shockingly short on guarantees of what we’d end up with.  Land use planning by initiative, and surely on this scale, should be outlawed (if only…).  A hearty No on both of them.

• Measures J, K, L, and M are charter amendments that (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) deserve voter approval. 

• Measure N amends the municipal code (city's book of laws) to reinstate certain benefits to police officers.  It’s fine.

Oops… almost forgot the SD Unified School District:

• Measure H is a screwy response to a set of needed reforms that were recently recommended to – but ignored by – the San Diego School Board.  So this one is a No.

• Measure YY is the 3^rd and largest bond measure to be put to the voters in the past 10 years (previous measures were voter-approved).  Because of their high repayment costs, 30-year bonds should be reserved for durable capital improvement projects.  Long-term bond borrowing should not be used for routine acquisitions and day-to-day maintenance purposes.  Truth is, I have never turned down a school bond measure.  This may be my first.

And that's it.  Congratulations for hanging in there.  The rest of the day is all yours. 

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?  

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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?

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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.