No Way For Padres To Pass LaRussa In 2007 Playoffs.

The San Diego Padres can't get past Tony LaRussa in the playoffs. At the recent season-ticket holder's rally, Padres management implored the fans to withhold judgment for now. Both Sandy Alderson and Kevin Towers pointed out that the core players who led the Padres to victory in 2006 didn't join the team in trades and free-agent signings until January.

With that in mind, Towers better have some blockbuster deals in the pipeline. Today's San Diego Union-Tribune has an article that floats a trial balloon about that has Termel Sledge starting in left field and batting leadoff. (Here.) So much for going after a power-hitting outfielder.

This is the lineup that's supposed to get the Padres past LaRussa and the first round of the playoffs:

1. Termel Sledge, LF
2. Marcus Giles, 2B
3. Brian Giles, RF
4. Adrian Gonzales, 1B
5. Mike Cameron, CF
6. Kevin Kouzmanoff or Russell Branyan, 3B
7. Josh Bard, C
8. Khalil Greene, SS

This trial balloon won't fly.

Sledge may have success in the minor leagues as a leadoff hitter but he hasn't duplicated that success against major league pitching. Moreover, what the Padres really need in the lineup is a right-handed power-hitting outfielder. Alderson admitted as much at the season-ticket holder rally last month.

Marcus Giles is fine batting second but his brother is no longer a number 3 hitter. He doesn't drive the ball the way he used to and he doesn't move people along on the bases. He takes lots of walks and is an OBP machine. He should be leading off.

Gonzalez does not have the homerun pop to bat fourth but on this team no player does. If the Padres did what is necessary and went out to get a true homerun hitter, Gonzalez would be batting third.

Cameron, Kouzmanoff/Branyan and Bard are fine where they are. Greene belongs batting eighth, if for no other reason than he can't be relied upon to play an entire season. No sense putting him up in the meat of the order and really missing his bat when he inevitably goes down for a month or so. Fortunately, we've still got Geoff Blum to step in and play major league shortstop.

This team is shaping up as a disappointment. There are some really good players on the team but there are still plenty of question marks. First among them is why isn't the team spending the money management said had been freed up to sign a star performer. Instead we get rumors of interest in yesterday's superstars like Randy Johnson and David Wells. Given the Padres track record, I'm predicting that Sammy Sosa will be starting in left field and batting cleanup when the season begins.

-tdr

Republished once for editing.

Technorati: baseball, mlb, Padres.

Straight From The Lips Of Padres' Management.

The Padres held their annual party for season ticket holders and shareholders at Petco Park this evening. The team's management shows up, talks about the team's moves, and fields questions from fans. Here's the breaking news.

Asked by a fan who the team plans to offer arbitration, General Manager Kevin Towers said the team was "leaning towards" offering arbitration to:

Chan Ho Park
Ryan Klesko
Alan Embree
Dave Roberts
Todd Walker.

The team is still deciding on whether to offer arbitration to Mike Piazza.

Towers also announced that Geoff Blum will be a Padre again in 2007. Judging from the applause of the fans, that is a popular move.

Towers also took the opportunity to dispel the bizarre rumors that Jake Peavy and Adrian Gonzalez would be traded. He blamed that rumor on a local radio sports broadcaster known as Philly Billy. Towers said Philly Billy "has the best ideas that don't make sense." That drew a big laugh from the crowd.

Towers also suggested that a big part of the stories about the team going after Barry Bonds and Manny Ramirez was intended to drive up the price that San Francisco or Los Angeles would have to pay for them.

Asked about Barry Zito, Towers pointed out that the left-hander is represented by Scott Boras. He also said that the left-handed pitcher is "atractive" but he couldn't make any promises about bringing Zito to San Diego. He acknowledged that the team should have gotten the San Diego native when he was still an amateur. He concluded by saying, "when all is said and done, we'll add pieces to our rotation." Doesn't sound like Zito will be one of those pieces.

Towers said his goal is to add more arms to the front-line starting rotation of Jake Peavy, Clay Hensley, and Chris Young. He wants more depth to join Scott Linebrink, Cla Meredith, and Trevor Hoffman. And he needs to get a second baseman to join Adrian Gonzalez, Khalil Greene, and new third baseman, Kevin Kouzmanoff, in the infield. Asked who was available for that, he said the team is looking at Ray Durham, local favorite Mark Loretta, Tony Grafanino, and Todd Walker.

As for the outfield and leadoff, he said fan favorite Dave Roberts "is not gone yet" but other than considering arbitration he didn't make it sound as if the team is pursuing Roberts. Perhaps because of something Padres CEO Sandy Alerson said about the team's need for improved hitting.

Alderson said the team "needs a couple of right-handed power hitters who can hit the ball out to left field" in Petco Park. Petco has a reputation of being a pitcher's park where homeruns are scarce. Right field and center are pretty far away. But left field is just sitting there, very close and well within reach of right-handed power hitters. Dave Roberts doesn't have that kind of power. Much as Padres fans wouldn't like it, the team would probably be better off finding a left-fielder who can hit the ball out to left field than bringing back Roberts.

The big question of the night for Padres fans involved the Josh Barfield trade. It was very clear from fan reactions that the Barfield trade wasn't popular. Finally asked a respectful question about that, Towers explained the reasoning this way.

Towers said that at every level in the minor leagues Kouzmanoff's offensive numbers were better than Barfield's. He predicted that given the same opportunity to play in the majors in 2007 that Barfield got in 2006, Kouzmanoff "will deliver." More important to the team, Kouzmanoff has the right-handed power the Padres need and he has hit homeruns at every level he's played. The team projects him to be the kind of 3, 4, or 5 hitter they need. Towers said the Padres have a future second baseman in the person of Luis Cruz and that for 2007 they will fill the void at second base with a free agent signing. His reasoning made sense and will be considered brilliant if the gamble pays off.

Which brings us back to something that Alderson said early in the evening when he confronted the issue of trades and change and fan loyalty head on. He said the team's bottom line goal is to put a better product on the field and improve over last year's performance. He said management wants to field a team the fans will love and he described how fans loved Mark Loretta and were upset to see him go, but then the fans came to love his replacement, Josh Barfield.

Alderson didn't come right out and say it this way, but in other words, sports fans, Loretta left and you got used to it. Barfield is gone and you'll get used to that too. That's true. But only if the team wins. Because winning is the only thing that matters in sports.

-tdr

Technorati: Baseball, Padres, San Diego.

No Wal-Mart For You: Not Your Father's San Diego, Anymore: Part III

We are reminded once again that San Diego is no longer the Republican, pro-business, pro-developer city it once was. (Here, here, and here.) It's more Democratic than ever and the dominant special interest throwing its weight around in local politics is now Big Labor.

San Diego's City Council has a Democratic majority and the vote to ban Wal-Mart superstores, the shopping center of choice for America's working poor, was along partisan lines:

"Those supporting the ban are Democrats; those opposed are Republicans. ... A group of labor leaders and grocers proposed the ban three years ago, while pro-business organizations, including the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, fought it." (Here.)

Although supporters claimed aesthetics and the protection of local businesses motivated the ban, this was a vote about class. Costco and membership stores are exempt from the ban even though they compete with grocery stores and are large unsightly warehouse buildings surrounded by large parking lots, just as ugly as Wal-Mart. But the middle class and people just like the City Council members shop at Costco.

America went through this crisis in capitalism before when grocery stores displaced local specialty markets and department stores displaced smaller specialized businesses. Eventually grocery stores and department stores won out and came to dominate their markets. Superstores are likely to do the same. People can only be expected to spend more money than they have to for so long until the lure of low prices wins out.

But low prices for groceries will have to wait in San Diego. Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders opposes the ban and has threatened a veto but his threat means nothing. You see, San Diego has a Paper-Tiger Mayor form of government in which a veto can be defeated by a mere majority in the City Council. It took 5 votes to enact the ban and it will only take 5 votes to defeat the mayor's veto. Where's Pete Wilson when we need him?

-tdr

Republished once to fix San Diego Union-Tribune link.

Technorati: San Diego, WalMart.

None Dare Call It Christmas.

San Diego's annual Christmas celebration occurs this weekend in Balboa Park. The San Diego Union-Tribune headlines its article about the upcoming party as "Balboa Park launches 29th December Nights." (Here.)

The headline is false. This is Balboa Park's fifth year celebrating something called December Nights. For 24 years until 2002, the celebration was called Christmas on the Prado. Why the change to December Nights? "A park spokeswoman says the name is meant to reflect San Diego's diversity and the fact that events are now held all over the park, not only on the Prado." (Here.)

In reality the change was made because Balboa Park is a city-owned park and governments don't celebrate Christmas anymore. Now we celebrate December and diversity. Of course, the only reason we celebrate one of the coldest and darkest months of the year is because of Christmas. But none dare call it Christmas because diversity is a one-way street that requires the majority to suppress itself so as not to give offense. So, Happy December to you and yours.

-tdr

Technorati: Christmas, San Diego.

Mister Americano Goes To The Polls

Mister Americano headed to the San Diego County Registrar of Voters on Saturday to vote early. Not often, unfortunately. (Don't tell Lou Dobbs but the overweight security guards protecting the polling place spoke Spanish. Yet another mortal threat to our fragile democracy and not a Minute Man in sight. Don't forget, that's pronounced "my newt" as in small and insignificant.)

Statewide offices in California show the consequences of term limits. Two offices, Governor and Secretary of State have Republican incumbents running. The rest are open seats. Most candidates for the other offices are professional politicians term limited out of one position and running for another. Term limits hasn't led to the rise of citizen politicians who serve and then return to private life. Instead we get a political version of musical chairs.

Perhaps the most pathetic candidate this year is Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante. He failed to beat Arnold in the recall election, he's term limited out of his current office, and so he's running for, drumroll please, Insurance Commissioner. And he stands a good chance of losing to one of the few neophytes in the election, businessman Steve Poizner. We can only hope.

You've to to look to the federal ballots for the other pathetic candidate. Dianne Feinstein's opponent, Richard "Dick" Mountjoy. He is such a nobody that he lists his occupation on the ballot as, get this, "Immigration Control Consultant." These border security types have got their heads in a very dark place. Five years after 9/11 they suddenly have decided Mexico is the enemy. Wrong! It ain't Catholic workers from Mexico that the US has to worry about. It's those other monotheists who thnk God has a harem of 72 virgins waiting for them in heaven if they blow themselves up and kill a few Jews and Christians in the bargain. Mountjoy is the one Republican Mister Americano refused to vote for.

As usual California voters had to decide on a long list of ballot propositions. Mister Americano surprised himself and voted in favor of increasing property taxes in order to fund education. All the bond propositions to upgrade California's infrastructure got a thumbs up too, except for the one to build so-called affordable housing. Housing is not the government's job. You want affordable housing? Let developers build lots more houses, condos, and apartments.

The hot button propositions this year involve, what else, abortion and the issue of the moment, sexual predators. Of course parents should be notified if their minor daughter is seeking an abortion so Proposition 85 got a "yes" vote. Mister Americano works in criminal law. Contrary to popular belief, sexual predators do not get off easy in California. Proposition 83, which among other things will force all paroled sex offenders to live in the countryside to avoid living within 2,000 feet of a school and require them to wear a GPS tag for life, is overkill. That got a big "no" vote from this Republican.

And speaking of overkill, the proposition to tax cigarettes an additional $2.60 per pack got a big "thumbs down." Cigarettes are taxed enough. We've already got enough of a crime problem with the real illegal drugs in California, we don't need to create a black market for tobacco.

Proposition 90, which will curb government's eminent domain power and also give property owners the right to compensation from so-called regulatory takings, got a thumbs up. Proposition 90 is California's answer to the United States Supreme Court's Kelo decision that upheld an overly expansive interpretation of eminent domain. The national movement to curb eminent domain is an example of how the states will handle the abortion issue if the US Supremes ever get around to throwing out Roe v. Wade.

Locally, San Diego's biggest time waster on the ballot is Proposition A, which is solely an advisory vote on whether San Diego should pursue Miramar as the site for a new commercial airport. Right now Miramar belongs to the Marines but the movers and shakers in San Diego's political and business communities want the base. Five years after 9/11 in the midst of a shooting war in Iraq and a terror war with no end in sight, the Marines need the air base just a bit more than San Diego does. So, Proposition A got a very big thumbs down. When the Marines no longer need the airbase, maybe then San Diego can put a commercial airport there.

Proposition B, requiring a vote of the people before city workers can get a big retirement increase again, and Proposition C, allowing for outsourcing city jobs, got hearty "yes" votes. Government workers should get 401K's like the rest of us and businesses should be allowed to compete for non-essential government jobs. It's the American way.

Now get out there and cancel my votes.

-tdr

Technorati: Politics, Elections, San Diego.

San Diego's City Attorney/Wannabe Mayor

San Diego's City Attorney Michael Aguirre continues to believe he was elected to set policy for the city. His most recent misguided venture involves a lawsuit regarding the city's homeless policy. (Here.) He defends his attempt to settle the case on his own terms in a letter to the San Diego Union-Tribune's editor.

"Unfortunately, the problems of homelessness have not been adequately addressed by our municipality. Our police have unfairly been asked to manage the problem. We are using our county jail as a homeless shelter, which puts additional stress on our criminal justice system. The problem has gotten so out of hand that it has now become a question of cruel and unusual punishment. The U-T cites the creation of Petco Park as having transformed 'the East Village and much of the rest of downtown into a livable, family-friendly environment.' Excuse me, but have you seen or visited the streets of downtown San Diego lately? We already have de facto areas where the homeless congregate. Addressing complex issues such as these are never easy. I believe advancing real solutions that comply with the law are what San Diegans would like to see." (Here.)

Aguirre continues to be confused about the difference between a client and a lawyer. He forgets that the client is the city and the city's policy-makers are the City Council and Mayor not the city attorney. His job is to advise the client what to do but if the client chooses a different course of action, he has to abide by it.

This is not the first time this politically ambitious city attorney has apparently tried to implement his own policy preferences through a lawsuit settlement. One time before Aguirre, who represented the city, sided with the plaintiffs who filed suit attacking the city's condo conversion policy. (Here.) In that case, a third party sought to intervene in order to "prevent collusion between the Office of the City Attorney and the plaintiffs, which would harm the city and the condominium conversion industry." (Here.)

San Diego needs an appointed city attorney.

-tdr

Technorati: San Diego.

The Wrath Of Aguirre Continued: Why San Diego Needs An Appointed Not Elected City Attorney.

Face it San Diegans, you made a mistake when you elected Michael Aguirre to be our city attorney. I'm excluding myself because I voted against the guy. Today's Union-Tribune article about Aguirre's management has led to excessive turnover and a loss of expertise is just the latest example of the serious problems in the city attorney's office. (Here.)

Being city attorney should not be a political position. The city attorney is a lawyer for the city not a politician or a policy maker. The position should be an appointed job. It's time for San Diego to stop electing our city attorneys and start hiring them instead.

-tdr

There's Wildfire Fuel In Those San Diego Canyons Too.

Several years ago wildfires decimated San Diego County. (Here.) Many homes in the backcountry and on the outskirts of the city were destroyed. Their proximity to the fuel, brush and trees, doomed the homes. Three years later some in San Diego are pushing an initiative to preserve the many canyons that exist within the city limits. (Here.)

It's not known to many outside San Diego that our city is not just a coastal town. The attraction of a canyon view within San Diego's city limits rivals the best coastal views along our beaches. There are many canyons running throughout the city bringing a bit of the backcounty into urban neighborhoods. My densely populated neighborhood is flanked by canyons and is three miles from downtown and the harbor. In my twenty years of living here I've seen possums, racoons, skunks, and squirrels cross my backyard. One summer a pair of small foxes spent their days lounging on a ledge of the cliff that encloses my yard. Once a hawk swooped down to my patio and grabbed a dove that was feeding there.

I have to admit I like the canyons, the skunks notwithstanding. Canyon preservationists use a pretty metaphor to describe the canyons as "the lungs" of San Diego and relentlessly accentuate the positive. (Here.)

Yet there's something else about canyons that isn't so benign. The vegetation in the canyons is fuel for wildfires. And these canyons aren't far away in the backcountry next to a few scattered homes here and there. These canyons are found throughout the city right next to thousands of homes.

The people who lost homes in the Cedar fires three years ago mostly lived in rural San Diego County. But back in 1985 residents of Normal Heights, a neighborhood well within the city limits of San Diego, saw their homes burned to the ground by a fire that started in a nearby canyon. (Here.) Perhaps preserving the canyons isn't such a great idea, after all.

-tdr

Technorati: San Diego, wildfires, environmentalism,

Mount Soledad Cross Closer To Fate Of Bamiyan Buddhas.

The City of San Diego suffered another legal defeat in its fight to keep a cross displayed on top of Mount Soledad. (Here.) Unless the cross is removed by August 1, 2006, the city will have to pay a fine of $5,000 for each day the cross remains. San Diego will lose an historical landmark once the cross is removed. There has been a cross on top of Mount Soledad since 1913; not quite as long as the Sixth Century Buddha statues at Bamiyan in Afghanistan, which the Taliban destroyed in 2001. (Here.) But once the cross is removed the result will be the same.









-tdr

Technorati: ACLU, Atheism, Taliban.

Good News In San Diego Election Results

The results are still unofficial because some 24,000 absentee ballots still need counting but they are looking good so far for voters opposed to Donna Frye. (Click here for results.) In this primary election Frye was only able to muster 43 percent of the vote. A full 50 percent of the vote went to Republican candidates. The remaining 7 percent of the vote was split between the candidate favoring bankruptcy now, the libertarian, the populist radio show host, and some fringies.

WIth voter registration favoring Democrats over Republicans 39 to 33 percent, Frye was only able to muster 4 percentage points over that base, while the Republican candidates got 17 percent over that base.

Obviously, turnout makes all the difference in these elections because the partisan percentages of voters casting ballots will differ from the registration percentages. But the key points to keep in mind with this result are that Frye sought to win a majority in this election not just the lead, the Democratic Party in San Diego is pushing her candidacy hard, and still all she could muster was a measly 4 percentage points over her base.

A lot can happen between now and the runoff in November but as of today the prospects are looking better for Frye to lose.

-tdr

A Tipping Point For San Diego's Democrats.

San Diego's Democratic candidate for mayor picked up an endorsement from a Democratic state official, Treasurer Phil Angelides. This is not the first such endorsement Donna Frye has received.

"Three weeks ago, Frye was endorsed by Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi. The two endorsements signal the probability of strong support from statewide Democratic interests if Frye is in a Nov. 8 runoff election."

(Click here for San Diego Union Tribune story.)

The mayoral campaign is nominally non-partisan. Candidates run on their own not as party standard bearers. But that doesn't mean local politics is free from partisanship. Frye is the only Democratic candidate in the mayoral race. At a work lunch last week every one of my colleagues said they were voting for her. No surprise there; all were Democrats and they tend to toe the party line.

San Diego is changing from a Republican to a Democratic city. The 9 member City Council has 6 Democrats. Well, the 6 member City Council has 4 Democrats, now that the Republican mayor has resigned and two Democratic council members have been convicted of crimes and are likely to be out of office soon. The city's voter rolls show that the Democratic voters outnumber Republican voters 39 percent to 33 percent. (Click here for registrar's report.)

This mayoral race is a test of the strength of the new Democratic dominance in San Diego. The election is going to be a partisan affair. Frye will have a very hard time getting Republican votes because of the ill feelings many still have over the aftermath of the last mayoral election when she refused to concede despite receiving fewer votes than the winner. Instead she allowed her followers to pursue a divisive and meritless lawsuit that sought to have invalid write-in ballots be declared legal votes. Not coincidentally that suit was only dismissed when Mayor Dick Murphy agreed to resign.

Frye is pretty much guaranteed to reach the primary by holding Democratic voters. The big question for her is whether she can win in the two-candidate runoff in which she will have to reach beyond the 39 percent of the electorate that belongs to her party. In order to win she's going to have to appeal to that 22 percent of San Diego's voters who decline to state a party when they register.

Given Frye's large party base all she has to do to win is carry half of the non-partisans. She has a very good chance of winning the election. The Republican candidates Jerry Sanders and Steve Francis both trail her in the polls. They start from weakness with a party base of only 33 percent of the electorate. Sanders has run the least partisan campaign of the two so he could have more appeal to non-partisan voters but there is little about him to motivate Republicans to support him. On the other hand, Francis has run a bread and butter anti-tax, anti-spending Republican campaign. He could energize the party base more than Sanders but his partisan appeal is less likely to lure non-partisan voters.

The numbers paint a bleak picture for Republicans hoping to hold on to the mayor's office. To win the Republicans have to hold all their voters and take nearly all of the independents or they have to peel off Democratic voters from Frye. That's probably not going to happen because the Democrats are going to go all out to put Frye into office. Here's what San Diego County's Democratic Party website (website here)says about the mayoral election:

"Democrats from here in San Diego to Sacramento, even to Washington, need to be looking at the bigger picture in the race for mayor of San Diego.

"As you know, Donna Frye is poised to be the city's first Democratic mayor in 13 years. That's important to the Party for two reasons. First, because we want our values represented on issues like affordable housing, a living wage, environmental protection, open government, and so many other matters where Councilmember Donna Frye has shown her commitment.

"Second, having a Democrat in charge at City Hall is important because it would deprive Republicans of their only big-city mayor in the state. Regardless of what happens in the 2006 gubernatorial election, the Republicans will be desperate for a candidate for governor in 2010.

"Let's assume that following the 2006 General Election, Democrats continue to hold the statewide offices we now have and that we regain the Secretary of State office. Let's also assume the Democrats have maintained control of both houses of the legislature and therefore the high-profile legislative-leadership positions.

"If we Democrats hold all those positions going into the 2010 election, where do the Republicans go for a candidate for governor (or for that matter any statewide office)?

"The Republicans from Sacramento to D.C. are desperately looking at the mayoral special election in San Diego because they are looking down the road to 2010. We need to do the same and deny them their future gubernatorial candidate by electing Democrat Donna Frye now."

The bigger question for Frye and her party is not whether they can win the election, it's whether they can manage the city and bring its finances back into order after they win. It's no coincidence that San Diego's descent into fiscal ruin has come as a Democratic majority has emerged on the City Council. San Diego's problems all stem from overly generous contracts given to city workers. Those problems are not going to go away easily because those same workers' unions are the power base of the council members and because the unions are in no mood to do anything but fight to keep their benefits, the taxpayers and the city be damned.

Chapter 9 Bankruptcy is looking like a better option every day.

-tdr

Should Aguirre resign now too?

When San Diego's pension board voted not to waive its attorney-client privilege recently City Attorney Mike Aguirre called on Mayor Dick Murphy to resign. As we all know Murphy subsequently did resign, although not in response to Aguirre's demand.

Given Aguirre's disdain for the attorney-client privilege it's interesting that this story (click here) in the San Diego Union-Tribune ends with the following paragraph about a legal memo leaked to the press about the city's bankruptcy option:

"Aguirre was in Yuma, Ariz., on a working vacation yesterday and said he was disappointed that a document protected by attorney-client privilege was distributed ..."

The irony is almost unbearable.

-tdr

Dick Murphy's Resignation: A Good Man Takes The Fall.

Monday San Diego's Mayor Dick Murphy resigned his office. It's a shame really. San Diego's problems can hardly be laid at his feet. The financial problems facing the city began well before his first term in office began. He became a convenient scapegoat, however, simply because he was the mayor. It didn't matter that under San Diego's weak mayor form of government Murphy was essentially just another city council member.

The bottom line on his tenure though appears to be that when the city's politics became overtly political he was unable to fight back. It started with the November election when City Councilmember Donna Frye ran as a write-in candidate and nearly won. She got fewer votes than Murphy did but a sizable percentage of San Diego's voters still believe she got more votes. When she lost and it became clear that some voters had failed to cast a legal vote for her, Frye's supporters took action and sued to have the election law be ignored and count the illegal votes for Frye. Street protests were part of the campaign. It was Florida 2000 in miniature. Murphy's legal team won the lawsuit but his failure to wage a PR campaign gave Frye a political victory and he entered office with the mantle of illegitimacy because people believed that Frye got more votes. He never recovered. Tuesday's San Diego Union Tribune printed 8 letters on the resignation and 5 of them mentioned Donna Frye as having "won" the election.

Now San Diego has lost its mayor. We'll either have a special election or the City Council will appoint a temporary replacement. The odds are leaning toward a special election. Frye has already said she'll run and others on the council, and perhaps County Supervisor Ron Roberts, will run as well. If we're lucky whoever wins will have the temperment and political skills to be successful as San Diego's first mayor under the city's new strong-mayor system.

We don't know who our new mayor will be yet. We do know this though. The scapegoat has been slaughtered. Dick Murphy didn't create the city's financial crisis and his power as mayor was so limited by the City Charter that he could not solve the crisis on his own. But he's the one who's leaving. Left behind is a City Council increasingly beholden to the labor unions that are becoming the real power brokers in this town; the same labor unions whose greed contributed to San Diego's financial crisis due to unreasonable increases in their pension benefits.

Watch your wallets everybody.

-tdr

Update On Not Your Father's San Diego Anymore

Click here to read a story from the San Diego Daily Transcript that describes in more detail the power shift in the City of San Diego from business to labor.

Click here to see the County Registrar's online report on voter registration. Democratic registration leads Republican 39 to 33 percent in the city. The interesting thing is that Decline to State is the 3d largest "party" at 22 percent.

San Diego County registration tells a different story with Republicans leading Democrats 40 to 35 percent and Decline to State at 20 percent.

Republican strength is strongest in the unincorporated rural areas where the party has a lead over the Democrats 51 to 27 percent. Democrats do best in several of the county's more ethnically diverse cities.

Another interesting stat. The two military cities in the county, Coronado (North Island Naval Air Station and all those retired officers) and Oceanside (Camp Pendleton), show substantial Republican leads over Democrats. If you want to see what your father's San Diego was like, those two are the towns to visit.

-tdr

Not Your Father's San Diego Anymore.

San Diego is thought to be a Republican town run by developers. The emerging political story of the past few years involves the rise of a Democratic majority on the City Council run by local labor unions. The latest example is the passage of the so-called living wage law by the City Council. It's not just the ocean that's blue in San Diego anymore. More and more, it's the politics, which is leaving local business feeling blue.

-tdr

Aguirre: The Wrath Of An Attorney

Last week I wrote about the conflict that boiled over at a City Council meeting between San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre and the District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis over who should prosecute misdemeanors in the City of San Diego. I speculated that Mayor Dick Murphy might be behind the latest brouhaha, and that if he wasn't, it would be an advantageous political tactic to push Aguirre's buttons, which would cause him to lose control, thereby discrediting himself and making Murphy look really good in comparison. This article suggests such a strategy is in play and points to former Murphy chief of staff as the orchestrator, a role he denies.

A side benefit of the strategy is how it puts Murphy's main political rival Donna Frye in the corner with Aguirre. Frye generally supports Aguirre and whenever there is a conflict between him and the mayor or somebody else Frye can be counted on for a supportive quote.

In this instance, she blasts Dumanis for not giving Aguirre a heads up before Dumanis spoke to the City Council about taking over misdemeanor prosecutions from Aguirre. As she put it, "I'm seriously thinking of sending her a book on etiquette. That was conduct unbecoming an elected official, especially somebody that was a judge. Guess what? She may not use my name for her re-election and I will not be attending her fundraiser." She's going to send the DA a book on etiquette? That sounds like a very juvenile comment for an elected official to make.

Murphy reaps a political advantage whenever Frye jumps on Aguirre's self-burning ship because she ends up looking nearly as bad as Aguirre does. And in comparison, Murphy looks like the adult that neither Frye nor Aguirre appear to be.

-tdr

The Very Flappable Mr. Aguirre

Political junkies in San Diego have been on a high since the election. We had a close election, with a recount, and a lawsuit, and protests that "every vote should be counted." It was a mini-Florida 2000 right here in America's Finest City. The gift that keeps on giving is the election of Mike Aguirre as City Attorney.

He ran as a muckraking outsider who would use his office to ferret out official corruption on the City Council and get to the bottom of the San Diego's financial scandals. His bull in a china shop tactics have been the best political entertainment San Diegans have ever had. His relationship with the City has been so adversarial that the Council flirted with obtaining their own private counsel.

Aguirre's latest excellent adventure occurred at yesterday's City Council meeting when District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis made a presentation to have her office handle misdemeanors in San Diego that are currently prosecuted by the City Attorney's office.

As San Diegans have come to expect Aguirre went ballistic. He claimed the presentation violated California's Open Meetings Act. He called the presentation "a political assassination attempt" and alleged that Dumanis was in a "conspiracy" with the Council.

This is great stuff. Perhaps mild compared to other cities but for San Diego it's practically deserving of the suffix "gate."

Meanwhile, San Diego's fiscal crisis continues and the clock is ticking down to the date when supporters of City Council member Donna Frye can begin to collect signatures to recall Mayor Dick Murphy.

Murphy has been under the gun politically since the November election when he ended up with more legal votes than Frye, even though she would have won if several thousand incorrectly cast write-in votes had been counted in her favor. The city's financial scandal is also casting a pall over the mayor's tenure.

Frye and Aguirre are political allies in San Diego. Murphy has not done much overtly to undermine their political power base. Murphy is a very understated politician who presents an image of remaining above the fray. His problem, however, is that he is very vulnerable politically due to the financial scandals and Frye's supporters are waiting in the wings to take him down.

There is no evidence that Dumanis's presentation was a politically motivated shot at Aguirre. Yet it served Murphy's political purposes. Aguirre demonstrated once again that he has a very thin skin. By overreacting to Dumanis's presentation he showed a remarkable lack of self-control for a public official. And this is not the first time he has overreacted to actions by the City Council.

Perhaps that's the strategy. Keep pushing Aguirre's buttons to get him to lose control and undermine his own credibility. In comparison, Murphy looks like an adult.

-tdr

Who really needs a mayor and city council anyway?

Here's the short version of San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre's 21 page, 8 point plan to save the city from its financial crisis: "Make me the mayor."

Night of the Living Dims: Rule of Law Vindicated; Politics Keeps Rolling Along.

Ruling immediately after hearing oral argument the judge in the San Diego mayoral election lawsuit rejected the challenges filed by supporters of losing candidate Donna Frye. This blog predicted the result from the beginning. State law is very clear that a vote only occurs when a voter makes a mark in the oval provided for the candidate or write-in line. The state constitution also makes it clear that a voter has a right to have his or her vote counted so long as that vote is cast in accordance with state law. (See prior posts here and here.) Those Frye supporters who failed to mark the oval failed to vote and their rights weren't violated by not having their non-votes counted.

From the beginning these lawsuits had no chance of victory. Yet the attorneys vow to appeal the decision and keep this controversy alive. Frye has done nothing to put an end to this controversy and help the city move forward. In the linked article she puts more fuel on the fire with this answer to whether she would now concede the election: "Concede what? He's the mayor. Everybody knows [that more people] voted for me than for the other candidates."

In point of fact, more people did not vote for Frye than the other candidates. The two other candidates combined received over 60 percent of the vote. Frye's share of the vote was somewhere around 33-35 percent. Thus, her statement that more people voted for her than the other candidates is false.

If she meant that she got more votes than each of the other candidates then her point is even worse. Under the law, she did not get more votes than either of the other candidates. She got more than Ron Roberts but fewer than Dick Murphy. Her statement reflects her apparent belief that the people who wrote in her name but who did not properly vote actually cast votes for her. Her persistence in making statements along these lines demonstrates an unwillingness on her part to recognize the legitimacy of the laws that govern our elections.

Under the law, Frye lost the election.

The only way Frye could have been declared the winner of the election would have been if the registrar of voters and the courts had disregarded the law. Perhaps that's what Frye believes should have been done. Her insistence on claiming that she got more votes suggests that's exactly what she believes.

Frye ought to concede the election and admit that she got fewer votes than the other candidates in order to demonstrate that she accepts the rule of law. It's doubtful that she will.

As this blog has argued before the political strategy in play now is to keep the election controversy alive in order to undermine Murphy's political legitimacy as the mayor and set the stage for Frye's supporters to organize a recall election. (See prior post here.)

Don't expect this issue to go away any time soon.

-tdr

Night of the Living Dims: The City Attorney Speaks (Update)

Although the city attorney's opinion got it right with respect to state law and the invalidity of the disputed write-in votes a portion of the city attorney's analysis seems suspect. According to the article, the city attorney suggests a judge could dismiss the Frye supporters' suits under the doctrine of laches. Laches is a doctrine that permits a judge to dismiss lawsuits because the parties sat on their rights and should have raised their claims earlier. The problem with the city attorney's suggestion that laches could operate here is that state law requires that an election contest lawsuit, like the suits in this case, be filed within 30 days after the election is certified. (Elections Code section 16401.) In other words, the lawsuits could not have been brought before the election and the Frye supporters filed their lawsuits within the statutory deadline. Laches could not be used to dismiss their suits.

-tdr