Debunking 7 Myths About San Diego
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2. San Diego’s mayor has a serial groping problem.
It may not be hard to believe that a man with this smile could be a serial groper of women, an arrogant bully, and a convicted felon. But sadly, it’s also true that San Diego once called Bob Filner its mayor.
But no longer.
Filner resigned from office back in August, after less than eight months in office, following revelations by more than twenty women that he had variously groped them, patted their buttocks, and smeared sloppy kisses over their faces.
Although he insisted he was really just badly misunderstood and actually a perfect gentleman, he later pled guilty to a felony and two misdemeanors, and is currently serving a sentence of three month’s home confinement.
Filner’s abrupt resignation has left San Diego without an elected mayor, but that doesn’t mean that . . .
3. San Diego has sunk into a state of mass chaos and disorder without a mayor.
Living in a democracy where so much attention is paid to the candidates and so little to their policies can make you think that governments are run on the sheer cult of personality that surrounds elected officials. But San Diego is doing just fine without a duly elected mayor, thank you very much.
Since Filner’s resignation the president of the City Council, a Democrat named Todd Gloria, has served in a limited capacity as what he calls the “iMayor.” (That’s for “interim mayor,” get it? Ha ha, he probably conducts city business on an iPhone, too).
Aside from having a decidedly uncreepy smile, Gloria has earned generally good marks from local pundits for his leadership. He’s also openly gay, making San Diego the second largest city (after Houston) in the U.S. to have an openly gay mayor, if you count an iMayor as a real mayor.
But Gloria has decided not to run for actual mayor, and San Diego is currently in the final stages of an election to decide who will finish out Filner’s term.
And believe it or not, though Filner was the first Democratic mayor of the city in twenty years, his groping scandal doesn’t seem to have rubbed off (sorry) on his fellow Democrats. The Democrat who made it through the first round of voting back in November is a political newcomer named David Alvarez, and most polls show that he’s neck in neck with the Republican he’s running against.
In fact, despite the disaster that was Mayor Filner, this is actual a very good time to be a Democrat in San Diego, because it is no longer the case that . . .
4. San Diego is a bastion of the Republican Party.
For years San Diego has been a reliably red city. The region is home to two Navy bases, a Marine base, a Marine recruiting depot, and a Marine Air Station, so it’s no surprise that it’s also home to a lot of Republican voters.
But the demographics of the city have changed drastically in the last couple of decades, and today San Diego is more diverse than it has ever been, with thriving Latino, Asian, and LGBT communities, as well as a highly educated workforce who come from all over the world to work in its biotech and communications industries.
Of course, not all of these minorities and well-educated San Diegans vote Democrat, but many of them do, which is why San Diego’s city council currently has a Democratic majority, all the projected demographic changes in the future favor Democrats.
Which is why you could be forgiven for thinking that . . .
5. The Republican running for mayor is actually a Democrat.
The Republican in the race is a city councilor named Kevin Faulconer, whose pre-political days were spent crafting PR campaigns for big business. He’s been a Republican his whole life, but his campaign for mayor has taken great pains to disguise this fact. Everything from his blue lawn signs to his website carefully scrubbed of any reference to the fact that he’s a Republican has been carefully calculated to make Faulconer appear to be a Democrat. His campaign is betting he’ll get enough votes to win from a combination of solidly Republican voters who know he’s really in their camp and swing voters or Democrats who aren’t paying close enough attention.
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http://blue-sandiego.com/2014/01/29/debunking-7-myths-about-san-diego/
(cross-posted in Politics)
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