In last week's Part I of Sex and the City I stated that 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.
Voters are now faced with a pricey, premature election for a new mayor, presumably -- but not primarily -- due to Bob Filner's sexual / dating habits.
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 promises 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 have the economic analysts and political gurus who comment regularly in the press. (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 backer. 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 20th 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 strategy of aligning himself with the avuncular (though treacherous) Jerry Sanders 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… let's have a conversation. But he's like quicksand. Aside from raw ambition, there’s no there there.
Keep in mind that Fletcher was adopted into the Qualcomm family (metaphorically speaking) and reaps the benefits of a well-paid corporate job and faux title of 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 surely 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! Trust me!
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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. My advice is to keep watching, keep listening -- not to the pollsters, not to political pundits, not to pundits who predict the odds as a way of manipulating the outcome.
What are we listening for? less talk about smooth and sexy streets and serious attention to the unsexy time bomb ticking in our back yards -- our multi-billion dollar municipal pension deficit.
New information is coming out about the candidates every day. I intend to keep listening before I mark my choice for our next mayor.
And I intend to stay away from 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.
