Kevin Faulconer, Republican, Wins San Diego Election For Mayor

[a kennedy]

I kinda thought San Diego was a fairly progressive city.......

A moderate Republican city councilman has been elected mayor of San Diego in a special election to fill the unexpired term of Bob Filner, who resigned amid a torrent of sexual harassment allegations.

San Diego becomes the nation's largest city with a Republican mayor, and Kevin Faulconer will be the only Republican to lead a major city in California, where Democrats hold all statewide offices. Filner was San Diego's first Democratic leader in 20 years.

With all precincts reporting, the two-term councilman and former public relations executive led Democratic Councilman David Alvarez by 54.5 percent to 45.5 percent.

Alvarez, 33, congratulated Faulconer late Tuesday, tweeting, "It's clear that he will be the next Mayor of San Diego. I look forward to working with him."

Faulconer, 47, stopped just short of declaring victory when he addressed supporters as results trickled in Tuesday night. He promised to work across party lines in an increasingly Democratic city.

"It's never been about partisanship, it's been about leadership," he said. "It's not about Republicans, Democrats or independents. It's about us being San Diegans and moving this city together."

Faulconer portrayed Alvarez during the campaign as a tool of labor unions. Alvarez, who sought to become the city's first Latino mayor, attacked Faulconer as a shill for corporate interests. He sought to keep the office for Democ

Despite sharp ideological differences, few issues separated the candidates. Both promised more attention to neighborhood priorities like street repairs, library hours and emergency response times, putting less emphasis on ambitious civic projects like building a new City Hall and bringing a new stadium for the NFL's Chargers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/12/kevin-faulconer-san-diego-mayor_n_4772269.html

[JayhawkSD]

1. No surprizes in San Diego.

"I kinda thought San Diego was a fairly progressive city."

I don't know why you thought that. Sure we have Susan Davis, but even she has voted "yes" on every bill that adds to "national security" in the form of spying on citizens or waging war world wide. We also have no fewer than two generations of Duncan Hunter, although I remain convinced that many who voted for the son thought they were voting for the father.

We voted for Obama, but only barely, and prior to that the last Democrat who got our presidential vote was FDR.

This city has twice voted for business over unions, recently voting against the union pensions and supporting "outsourcing" of city functions to bidding by for-profit businesses. Ciy employees have won the bids so far, but only by significantly reducing wages and benefits to meet competition. Our ambulance service is provided on a no-bid basis by an Arizona corporation. Electing Faulconer was just another step in the same direction.

Huffington says "few issues separated the candidates," but Alvarez supported raising the minimum wage, increasing developer fees for affordable housing projects and asking voters to approve the sale of bonds to fund infrastructure projects, all of which Faulconer opposed. Faulconer supports putting certain city services up for competitive bid with the private sector, replacing pensions with 401(k)-style plans for most new city hires and financing the new convention center expansion with a hotelier-approved surcharge on hotel guests. all of which Alvarez opposed.

[bemildred]

2. San Diego tends conservative.

The surprise was Filner winning there.

[SmittynMo]

3. I've heard this many times before. It's all bullshit

Faulconer, 47, stopped just short of declaring victory when he addressed supporters as results trickled in Tuesday night. He promised to work across party lines in an increasingly Democratic city.

"It's never been about partisanship, it's been about leadership," he said. "It's not about Republicans, Democrats or independents. It's about us being San Diegans and moving this city together."

[stuffmatters]

4. A very difficult campaign for the Democratic candidate

I do think that San Diego has grown a much stronger Democratic soul than this election demonstrates. Keep in mind that our City ballots are not allowed to identify the candidates by party, and Faulconer labelled himself constantly as an independent, a bipartisan; he ran from his Republican identity at every opportunity. Behind him was a Republican controlled media; think that "Papa" Manchester owns the main newspapers, and tv coverage also favors Republicans.

I think Alvarez made some very serious mistakes in terms of campaigning. He should have cut off the Republican Union Hate from the beginning, citing the Union movement as important as Civil Rights, Women's and Gay Movements in building our country. Then gone straight at Faulconer over his Republican values (like privatization and opposing minimum, fair wage) Faulconner ran a very typical
Rove/Koch campaign...at the end of which all the media were mindlessly validating F's anti union stance and even, really disgustingly, openly dividing SD into a very racist North of 8 and South of 8. Alvarez never labelled Faulconer as receiving funds from Koch and Rove, where it's impossible he did not. Alvarez should have made this a campaign on very serious differences in issues and backers not on personalities. Instead Faulconer got to masquerade as the bipartisan saint with no "special interests" backing who was going to save us from those boogeyman unions.

Faulconer simply out platituded Alvarez. And the day before the election, our Champion passive aggressive, City Attn'y Jan Goldsmith, announced the $250,000 City pay out to the main Filner harassment victim. This strategically timed news the night before the election was knee capping to Alvarez.

[JayhawkSD]

9. You make a good point

He tried to run away from his union support. His problem is that much has been made of union pensions, a lot of it false, and public sector unions are seriously unpopular in San Diego.

[ConsSoLoca]

5. SD Progressive???

Have you read the San Diego Union Tribune recently? Despite the name, they're as anti-union as they come, and their editorial page backed Faulconer all the way. As a previous poster mentioned, there was a lot of unions-as-boogeymen propaganda going on. One sentence even asked if we could trust Alvarez to "put the public interest over union interests" as if union interests were somehow detrimental to the public interest.

Where is this liberal media the right wingers complain about so much and how can I bring it to San Diego?

I also think Alvarez and his policies were tainted by his association with Filner. Filner kind of ruined the Democrat brand in San Diego, to put it mildly.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Well the UT was bought by Papa Doug Manchester

Current leader of the downtown mafia. He has also bought (and closed) a couple other small papers. (Like La Jolla Light and North County News) He made no bones about buying the UT to advance his pet development downtown projects and be a local king maker. He makes me wish for the Copleys to be honest. And they were bad.

Now you know circulation is so bad they literally give some away to maintain numbers, right?

I was not going to point this out, since shit, local people involved in independent media would not know any of this.

As to analysis of the election, pretty much still off DU. By the way, that article the huff post wrote is just the facts, as understood out of the city, with zero analysis. All I gotta say, divided government, whoohoo, every pothole is safe!

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I could explain this to you

But DU does not want analysis from local reporters. Suffice it to say, there is a tale of two cities in this town, and 37% final turnout does not help.

[KamaAina]

8. Low-turnout special election EPIC FAIL.

It's Scott Brown on a smaller scale.