In Lieu of Flowers

From Today’s Hard Copy of City Beat

A Eulogy For Mike Aguirre

True to my prediction of four years ago, Mike Aguirre has become San Diego’s version of the mad Florentine monk Savaranola: having incited the locals to burn down the downtown power establishment he finds himself instead burned at the political stake.  His legion of detractors, however, from the editorial and blogger  pages of the UT to the front office of the Chargers to the halls of City Hall right to Jerry Sanders himself might well find they will  ultimately rue the day of Mad Mike’s fall.  For now whom will they blame their many failings on?

No longer having Aguirre to kick around, Gentlemen Jerry and the City Council may also find that the only thing that’s kept the political peace in San Diego for the last four years was their  shared fear and loathing of Mike.  Sanders first tried to triangulate with Aguirre against the council, then teamed up with the council against Aguirre. With Mike gone and all the financial problems hanging over the city, watch the mayor and council turn on each other like rabid and ravenous professional politicians.

Let us not underestimate or minimize the degree to which Mike mauled himself. By most accounts Mike’s management of City Attorney’s office was closer to Humprhey Bogart’s helmanship in the Caine Mutiny than E.G. Marshall’s stewardship in The Defenders His inability to focus on any one project long enough to see it to completion, whether it be run-of-the-mill civil litigation or major investigations left him long on rhetoric but short on accomplishment.

Meanwhile the promised centerpiece of his litigation empire—the lawsuit to roll back pension benefits– only served to alienate Aguirre from what could have been a political alliance with the municipal unions and gave the UT with millions of dollars in ‘wasted money” to shoot at him with.  That Jerry Sander’s said the lawsuits  needed to proceed and be resolved  before he could take any actions to solve the pension problem somehow has gotten deleted from the pension narrative.  With Jan  Goldsmith ready to drop the litigation, the UT’s question should be:  So what’s the new pension plan, your Mayorship? Instead, no doubt, the paper of record will congratulate Goldsmith for saving millions of dollars by dropping litigation aimed at saving hundreds of millions.   Se la vie.

And then there was Mike himself.  Or, specifically, Mike’s mouth.

Mike seemed to have reinterpreted Thumper’s Mother’s advice to be “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, go out of your way to kick them as many times as you can.” Mike was San Diego’s little boy who cried corruption so often that, even when corruption seemed to be evident (can you say Pensiongate?  Sunroadgate?) the press and much of the public rolled their collective eyes and said, “There he goes again.”   What Mike forgot was the Occam’s razor of municipal government: never claim corruption and conspiracy when simple incompetence will suffice.

Aguirre actually had a higher view of the city’s leaders than most common folk did.  Presented with the incredible screwups on every thing from sewer systems to development deals, most San Diegans simply threw up their hands and said, “What d’ya expect from those clowns.”  Aguirre was actually charitable enough to assume that city officials—both elected and appointed—where smart enough to know what they were doing and that screwups where actually intentional subversions of the public good.  His constant maligning of multiple malificient muncipal malefactors, however, eventually fell flat in the face of the depressingly low level of competence San Diegan’s have come to expect from their municipality.

Yet the real irony in the case of Mike Aguirre was that, no matter how flawed the messenger may have been, his fundamental message—that the city was heading towards, be it by incompetence, corruption or cowardice, a fiscal Armageddon and no one on the council (with the exception of Darling Donna Frye)  or the Mayor’s office was willing to even so much as admit how bad things were let alone take proactive steps to head off disaster–was  quite correct. Indeed, Mike is even more correct about the state of the city leaving office in defeat than when he entered it in victory.

Between 2000 and 2004 the city became the municipal version of the Titanic, slamming full speed into the pension fund debacle.  Over the last four years, under the stalwart stewardsip of two mayors, two acting mayor and scads of City Managers and CFOs,  the city backed up and then slammed full speed ahead into that iceberg again. And again. This time the ship might finally sink.

As Aguirre recently claimed (and Dan Bauder reiterated in last week’s Reader)  the pension fund deficit, around a billion  and a half dollars when Mad Mike came into office, is probably closer to THREE billion today.  Back in 2004 the City was in the middle of good times with the markets and tax revenues on the rise.  Today the City, like the rest of the country—and the world—is in a recession heading towards depression. Which means any hope of riding this out without making major—and painful—cuts are simply delusions or deceits.

The city council might want to hold off voting to ban plastic shopping bags. What will hundreds of city employees put the contents of their desks into when they are, let us say, sent on extended permanent furlough (what shall they call “firing you”? Let them count the ways…) once the full financial plight of the City is realized? Keep a few branch libraries from closing?  By this time next year the Council may be selling the library’s books on E-bay for spare cash and wondering how to keep at least a few police stations open. Citizen Aguirre thus leaves office as he came in,  with the name of his cherished boyhood sled “Bankruptcy” on his lips.

That Mike Aguirre leaves shallow footprints on city politics is in part due to his own personal failings but more because so many of the city’s movers and shakers worked so hard to brush him away.   His attempt to turn the City Attorney’s office into something of a Tribune of the People is now being rolled back, much to the relief of the city establishment. Safely ensconced at last in his new City Attorney digs, Landslide” Jan Goldsmith is ready, true to his word, to take the office back to the halcyon days of  Casey “Pension underfunding? Sure we can do pension underfunding”  Gwinn.

Just how will Ferret Man Jan deal with the next Sunroad? Or the next (as in current) pension under funding scheme?  Will Goldsmith continue any of Aguirre’s Quixotic adventures, like efforts to force Kinder Morgan, the corporation that owns the tank farms by the stadium, to finally make good on its legal responsibility to clean up the Mission Valley aquifer  contaminated in a fuel spill twenty years ago? Given that Goldsmith campaigned on the platform of turn the City Attorney’s office back into the legal mouthpiece of the mayor and council, one can only imagine the answer.

Meanwhile the changing of the guard at 202 C Street is now complete.  In addition to Aguirre’s agonosites,  the last four members of the City Council’s gang of seven (the gang that voted the city into its current fiscal failures starting in 2000) have been turned out as well, though, in these cases, by term limits and not voter vindictiveness.

And thus it’s a final irony that, with the exception of Dick Murphy (who cheated a public recall hanging by his own political suicide) Mike Aguirre is the only elected San Diego official since to pay any price for a lack of success in public office is recent memory. (And how many people DID get fired over that little Sunroad flap?  Ah ha.  Thought so.)  Scott Peters is off to his cozy sinecure on the Port Commission, a going away present from his former council buddies. The troika of Atkins,  Maienschein and Madaffer may be, as yet, unspecific about life post-council but we should all sleep well at night knowing that there’s probably a nice public sinecure or private partnership awaiting them somewhere.  Jerry Sanders,  meanwhile, having coasted to easy reelection can now hear, wafting whispers of his name on the lips of Republicans desperate to find some one to run for governor in 2010.

Only Mike Aguirre comes out of this miserably mauled.  But take heart Mikey. Your principal public antagonist, the UT, is on the sales block.  And your political antagonists like Peters and Sanders may well see their political shelf-lives shrink to that of overripe mangoes given the financial fury facing the city.  Indeed, it is unfortunately possible—and not for your lack of warnings–that your dourest predictions of municipal collapse might yet come true.  Like the mad monk Savaronola ranting against the corruption of the  De Medici’s, you may end up vindicated in the end.

And the citizen’s of San Diego may find themselves saying a few years—or months—if only we’d listened to that obnoxious Mike Aguirre.

On Golden Hall

Miscellaneous observations from my five action-filled hours at Golden Hall tonight.

Oh, and I noticed walking in and out  of the hall that the Civic Theater is going big time Andrew Llyod Weber this summer.  Phantom of the Opera as a metaphor for the fall campaign?  Cats as a metaphor for Democratic party infighting? Hope you enjoy musicals, San Diego.

So, what is it with Ron Paul supporter?   Are they:  a) really enthusiastic and committed; b) really have no lives;  c) are too poor to afford cable so they don’t know their candidate isn’t a candidate for anything anymore; d) are nuts; e) are really nuts; or f) all of the above?  Me, I think it is ditto the last two in spades.  There were probably as many signs being waved for the Man from Texas via Outer Space as for any of the other (real) candidates.

I enjoyed the Democratic moment when Mike Lumpkin supporters kept screaming “I Like Mike”  all night around Duncan Hunter the elder and Little Duncan D.  The father-son duo seemed to take it in good humor and stride.  Of course, tomorrow Duncan senior will have the Lumpkinites rounded up and sent to Gitmo.   My big question is, after this is all over and Mike Lumpkin is soundly thumped by Duncan the younger come fall (and who said America doesn’t like old world style dynasties…), will the Lumpkinites meet up with the Paulies and form their own desperate supporters support group?

(Note to San Diego Democrats:  might you get your act together and run the right candidate in the right District – like Mike “I Can Kill You With My Pinkie Because I Was A Seal, Buckoo” Lumpkin, who should have been run in the 50tht against Brian “Never Served But Sure Did Surf A lot, Dude”  Bilbray as opposed to Francine “Once A Schoolboard Candidate Always Campaign Like a Schoolboard Candidate” Busby?)

Meanwhile, the excitement level in the hall after nine reached the fevered pitch of an Hometown Buffet’s on senior all-you-can-eat fish night.  Oh what a fascination an election that generates a 40% turnout rate has on the voice box of vox populi.  Note to San Diego: if you really do want elections that generate a somewhat demographic representation of the city, how about scheduling municipal primaries the same day as the big Presidential primaries, whatever day that might be come spring 2012?

And what is it about Election central that brings out enough quirky characters to fill a half dozen David Mamet plays?  Like the 60 something rail-thin biker dude sporting the obligatory American flag bandana around his gray ponytailed head?  Or the legions of Libertarians consisting largely of twenty and thirty something white males who look like they just came from a Bund meeting?  Though you have to hand it to the Libertarians.  What other party would run a candidate for Congress  with the handle Dan “Frodo”  Litwin.  (Who got, as of this writing, 59 of the 25,000 votes cast in the 51st District—presumably from free market/small government hobbits).

Most unfortunate chant of the evening: Todd Gloria supporters chant/singing the golden oldie, “G-L-O-R-I-A GLORIA!” (I’m sure they paid the Warlocks-cum-Grateful Dead for the privilege…).  Runner up:  the Mike Lumpkin supporters chanting “We Like Mike” forgetting a) he wasn’t a general; and b) he isn’t Ike.  But, then, neither is Duncan D.

Most unfortunate statement of the evening:  Mike Aguirre mouthpiece Dan McGrath saying, when asked why Mike didn’t spend more money and campaign more for the primary, that Mike tends to fund his own campaigns and has to be careful with his money because he has to plan for his retirement.  Uh-huh. Like from being City Attorney which, given that challenger Jan Goldsmith is ahead of him in the returns and given that the other 40% of the vote that didn’t go to him or Judge Jan went to candidates united in only their mutual desire to see him bounced out of office, means that unless the erstwhile embattled CA actually does start to try and mount a modicum of real campaign come the fall is a likely outcome come December?

Uh-huh.

On to fall.  Only 154 days to go until the next election.

Shoulda Didda

Here, noble three readers, are my picks for who , come Wednesday, probably “didda” win after the chads clear—and who probably “shoulda “won:

MAYOR
Gentleman Jerry has had a good year: fires left him coated in good publicity Teflon, the return to the bonds markets (albeit limited in scope and at less than optimum rates) is a major step away from the municipal fiscal brink and no major oops have stuck to him, allegations of corruption by Mauling Mike Aguirre not withstanding. But Jerry’s scorecard of campaign promises met is even bleaker than the current Padre standings. And the return to the bonds markets is months later than he promised. Meanwhile City services continue to deteriorate and the mayor is on a collision course of epic NASCAR proportions with City employees over pensions.

Sander’s saving grace is that millions spent by supply-side businessman turned progressive civic savior St.eve Francis of the City’s hasn’t been the definitive tipping point one might have thought it to have been. Granted, given how the dollar has been doing in recent months, four mil just doesn’t buy what it used to. But Francis has not been able to translate his media onslaught into a coherent narrative of why Jerry, despite his shortcomings, should be dumped. Or, more importantly, why used-to-be-hard-right-now-coming-from-the-left Francis should do the dumping. Francis has positioned himself in the worst of both San Diego political worlds: progressives don’t trust him and conservatives resent him. He has not delivered a compelling narrative of just what drove his Paul on the road to Damascus moment of political conversion, leaving many to suspect cheap political opportunism as the motivation and not true social enlightenment.

Still, Francis has been able to do respectfully well against an incumbent supported by most of the City power establishment, from the GOP to the UT to the business community in general. He’s within five percent or so of Sanders in polls. And, while the other runner-ups are running far behind, the five to ten percent of the vote they might get tomorrow could possibly throw this race into a fall runoff. Which would give Stevo time to retool his message and reintroduce himself to the independents and crossover progressives he’d need to win in November.

Didda: Sanders wins a narrow victory tomorrow putting this to bed.
Shoulda: Voters burned by a succession of nice but nonperforming mayors should dump Jerry and take the chance on Francis, proven or not.

CITY ATTORNEY
I’ve laid out my pros for keeping Mike Aguirre, warts (…tantrums, media stunts, over-using of the “C” word, poor press conference fashion statements…) and all. Numerous times. His detractors have laid out their case to dump (or, preferably, immolate and scatter the ashes to the next Santa Ana winds) him as well. Mike Aguirre is the Hillary Clinton of San Diego politics: we all fully well know his negatives by now and fully well know what he stands for. The same cannot be said for his primary primary challenger, Judge Jan, whose campaign has been a statement in blandness. Meanwhile, of Aguirre’s two City Council opponents, Scott Peters is clearly the standout having demonstrated consistent—though often erroneous—leadership on the Council. But Peter’s opposition to continuing the investigation of Sunroad alone defines what he would be like as City Attorney—and, in my view, disqualifies him from consideration for the office. That’s without even considering the various pension-fiasco votes he cast. Ditto Brian Maienschein, except for the leadership thing, which he hasn’t really demonstrated. Think of him as Peter’s lite. That being said:

Didda: Aguirre gets his 30%+ and goes on to the fall runoff, probably against Goldsmith. What happens then is still, as the statisticians would say, a stochastic event.
Shoulda: Aguirre wins outright. San Diego, do you really want to go back to the Golden Gwynn days? And, his own warts and all, Peters would be a better choice than Judge Jan.

CITY COUNCIL DISTRICT ONE
Didda: Phil Thalheimer’s money beats Marshall Merrifield’s, buying him the right to stand against Sherri “The populist pauper” Lightner come fall.
Shoulda: Sherri wins outright as the vox populi speaks to say it’s tired of guys with tons of money trying to buy their way into office. Say what you will about the sordidness of soliciting campaign contributions. In the absence of public funding of campaigns, it is still better than just letting those with money already steamroller over those without.

COUNCIL DISTRICT THREE & FIVE
Given the matchups (or, in District Five, lack thereof) I can’t muster the emotional energy to pontificate on these two. Except, to point out, just how much I am really looking forward to four years of Carl Pod-boy DeMaio jovially joshing with Roger Hedgecock about outsourcing as many City Services as possible to for-profit private contractors who can then outsource them to a Chinese subcontractor using Pakistani labor imported through Saudi Arabia.

COUNCIL DISTRICT SEVEN
Didda: Marti Emerald beats April Boling by a reasonable spread.
Shoulda: Marti Emerald beats April Boling by a reasonable spread.

PROPA
Didda: Exempting fire and police personnel from privatization/outsourcing is a sure winner. After all, after supporting the troops, we love to support our cops and firemen (although not with competitive wages and benefit packages…). Prop A passes by a landslide.
Shoulda: Any social conservative government-is-bad-private-sector-is-heaven types who don’t vote no on Prop A should be forced to wear a scarlet “H” for sheer hypocrisy. The “managed competition” crowd will tell you that the private sector is always more competent and efficient than government. So why, then, should any of us entrust the most important function of government—keeping us all physically alive and safe—to such incompetent government? If trash collection and midlevel paper-shuffling can be done cheaper and better by the private sector, why not police and fire? After all, for most of human history these functions, when provided, were largely provided by private entities outside of government anyway. Or could it be, perchance, that there are some things that affect the common good that government can do better than the private sector? And if that includes cops, firemen and lifeguards(and, apparently, Marines, Blackwater notwithstanding) might it not include at least some of the other providers of government services conservatives would target for privatization? Perish the thought.

PROP B
Didda: Ditto Prop A, this passes by a comfortable margin.
Shoulda: Prop B should have expanded the Council by at least three seats to provide better, focused attention by representatives to the people they purport to represent.

PROP C
Didda & Shoulda: Donna Frye is wrong about Prop C. She says allowing the Mayor to have so much influence over who will audit the City books is like allowing the fox into the hen house. Actually, it’s more like moving the whole hen house into the fox’s den. Prop C should—and probably will—fail. I mean, how many times will you expect to see Carl DeMaio and Donna Frye agreeing on anything?

OK. Now go vote.

An Odd Year

Elections in odd-numbered council districts and an odd trio challenging an odd city attorney make for odd times Read the rest in CityBeat Online HERE.

Excerpt:

Am I the only one mildly creeped out by Carl DeMaio? He shows up on the local political scene six years ago, fully formed but without any real history behind him, like he had just emerged from a pod cultivated at the Reagan Ranch and dispatched to infect San Diego with his conservative mantra: Government is bad, taxes are too high, downsize this, outsource that, reform government by taking it back to 19th-century laissez faire, etc. Every time I hear or see him, I wonder if little Carl DeMaio doppelgangers in smooth suits are peddling the same neo-con gospel in city councils and boards of supervisors from Klamath Falls, Ore., to Beaufort, S.C. Then I snap out of it and realize: Of course they are.

Poll Dance

The KGTV/Survey USA poll released yesterday adds a few glimpses of San Diego’s  politically undiscovered country.  According to the poll,  Gentleman Jerry “Jeez, could we have gotten back into the bonds market any closer to the election than this? And Stevo—another G+1/T-1 to you!” Sanders leads  St. Francis of the City by a five point margin.  Good news for Sanders who has barely rippled the media waters with campaign ads even as Francis has used his millions of media dollars to generate what has turned into a tempest in a San Diego teapot.  Bad news for Jerry: 43% of respondents said they were voting for one of the other candidates and seventeen percent are outright undecided.  That means Sanders hopes of knocking out Francis in the primary without need for a runoff may be a tad dimmed.  But Sanders is still the odds on favorite to put this to bed on the third.

In the City Attorney brawl, Maligned Mauling Mike Aguirre continues to sail on under his lucky star.  While Judge Jan, supported by the  local GOP, the “Damn the turpitude, full speed ahead” downtown business crew and their spokesrag in chief, the UT,  was supposed to wallop Mike in June and end his reign of misery.  But the unexpectedly crowded field of Mikey-replacement wannabes has drowned that dream.

The KGTV/Survey USA poll shows Aguirre cruising (for a bruising?) with 29% of the vote.  Councilmen Scott Peters (17%) and Brian Maienschein “Steamroller (15%),  meanwhile,  drown out Jan Goldsmith (15%).   If this trend holds, Aguirre goes on to the runoff against his City Council President and arch-nemesis Peters—two democrats fighting it out.  While I think Peters is probably the  best qualified  (Wizard of Oz Witch size warts and all) out of the pack of Aguirre opponents to take on the job of City Attorney , he would probably be a weaker opponent than Goldsmith, with his GOP base to float on, might be.

And the Beat Goes On

Sorry I’ve been off line for a bit, my frequent reader. I’ve been battling migraines which leaves precious little time except to get my day job (which often extends into nights and weekends) done. I’ll try and post a few before the all important, probably won’t change much June Primary.

Change much like City Hall’s reaction to the latest shoe/minor atomic bombshell whichno-one seemed to notice dropped last month by the SEC. A month ago the SEC charged five former San Diego officials, including “Former-by-virtue-of-having-been-defenestrated-by-then-mayor-Dick-the-Murph-Murphy” Michael Uberuaga, for fraud in misleading Wall Street investors over the City’s finances while raising a quarter billion in bonds. Gee, isn’t that what Mike Aguirre’s been saying since the beginning of time: That a City the size of San Diego doesn’t go down the financial tubes merely due to incompetence, good intentions gone awry or lousy breaks? That it takes the determined, deliberate effort of a large number of people more willing to break laws and violate ethics than risk their jobs and careers by telling people the truth about how badly they’d screwed things up? Aguirre has been saying there is a culture of such corruption at the top reaches of San Diego government for years. And been pilloried for it. Usually by those in the top reaches of San Diego government—and those who benefit from them being there.

I’ve waited for the last month to see City leaders—on the Council, in the Mayor’s office—express the sort of outrage they should over these SEC charges. What the SEC is telling San Diego is that its body Bureaucracy and Politics is infected, diseased, corrupt. And the City has, in the last month, done nothing to bleed any of these noxious humours from its municipal blood, or even acknowledged just how damning the SEC action is.

Of course, this is the same City that has seen three councilmembers indicted for corruption, two convicted, and a Mayor resigning in failure and responded with a “business as usual,” put a nice, former cop in the figurehead position and life goes on.

Is it any wonder the City is still out of the bonds markets, months after Jerry Sanders announced he saw the light at the end of the bondless tunnel?

Lucky Star

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Mike Aguirre must have been born under a lucky star. Which will serve him well through June though it might go into eclipse by November.

The City Council doesn’t like him, the entrenched city bureaucrats don’t like him, the city labor unions don’t like him, the cops don’t like him, the Chargers want him to fall in the bay (right in front of where they’d like that new, downtown stadium, if possible, the Union Trib loathes him, the Mayor is sticking pins into his little Mikey voodoo doll and the public has become progressively less enamored with him. (Rumors that his dog has declared “undecided” in a recent poll appear unfounded—I don’t think he has a dog. I do hear that his fish is looking at him with suspicion, however….)

And a recent Competitive Edge poll (the local gold standard on the public pulse) shows Mike Agonistes losing to all three of his major competitors: Judge Jan, President Peters and, well, Brian Maienschein—a guy so blandly nice that its hard to even come up with a handle for him. (Note to self: Call W on this one. He’s always got a good nickname or two…) Goldsmith beats him by 23 points, the other two by less than half that.

Conventional wisdom has Agonizing Mike surviving the June primary with maybe 25% of the vote, enough to win in a field divided between Aguirre and everybody running as “Not Aguirre.” But then he goes bye-bye come the November big show.

Not so fast. The assumption here is that those who will vote for different candidates to replace Aguirre June will rally around the second place winner in the fall—which, according to the CE poll, seems to be how likely voters are currently thinking.

But likely voters are still seeing June as a race between Aguirre and his competitors. It’s not. The race is now between Goldsmith, Peters and Maienschein. And, according to the CE poll, Goldsmith is in the lead in the race for second—but not so far out in front (17.6% to Peters 14.2% to Maienschein’s 9.5%) that he’s a juggernaut. With attorney Dan Coffey dropping out of the race and endorsing Peters, if his 2.1% of supporters throw in with Prez Peters he and Goldsmith are almost tied.

Had Jan Goldsmith been allowed to challenge Mike Aguirre Mano-a-Mano without the other wanna-be Mike whackers piling on Aguirre’s plight would have been dire indeed. Given the abysmally low voter-turnout likely in June—consequence of the early March Prez Primary—which would favor a more conservative candidate like Goldsmith, Aguirre might have been turned into a lame duck before the June Gloom had cleared.

But it’s not. Peters and Maienschein, both realizing their paycheck ends this year, decided a) they didn’t like Aguirre enough to run; and b) they might be able to beat him. (And, if either was the only candidate against Aguirre in June, they might have—though Peters was and is clearly the more logical City Council candidate to take vengeance on Menacing Mikey.)

So now if either hopes to advance to the title bout in November they have one job: convince the anti-Aguirre voters that “Mr. Ferret” (as a Republican assemblyman Goldsmith’s major accomplishment was to unsuccessfully push a bill to legalize the private ownership of the furry little rodents) is not the guy to take on Mauling Mike. That means they have to aim their energies at making Goldsmith look bad.

For both Peters and Maienschein this means showing San Diego voters that Goldsmith is a) an outsider originally from Poway (where he was Mayor) and who had to move his residency from Coronado to Little Italy so as not to appear the carpet-bagger he is); b) that Goldsmith is an outsider from Poway (where he was Mayor) and who had to move his residency from Coronado to Little Italy so as not to appear the carpet-bagger he is) who has had almost no experience in local San Diego City politics; and c) that Goldsmith is an outsider from Poway (where he was Mayor) and who had to move his residency from Coronado to Little Italy so as not to appear the carpet-bagger he is) has the worst hair in San Diego politics. Peters can also throw in that, being a Democrat, he is the safe Democratic alternative to Aguirre compared to the other two Republicans.

Goldsmith, meanwhile, is taking the high road of running against Aguirre as the generic establishment candidate. But if he doesn’t pay attention he could well be pulled down by the hounds of ambition nipping at his heels. Which could yield the unusual result of having two Democrats running in a City-wide general election for a higher office—Peters and Aguirre. Which, also, could also be the best chance for anti-Aguirreistas to remove him from office.

Come fall the political landscape changes dramatically. Especially if Barrack Obama is the candidate. Come November the combination of an energized Democratic base (and the city is now majority Democratic in registration) and depressed Republicans base (at least conservatives, of which San Diego has more than its share) uninspired by their party nominee could translate into a surge of voters more inclined to go Mikey should he be running against establishment Republican Goldsmith. If Peters is the opponent it becomes much murkier.

And, probably, nastier, as all the city’s dirty political laundry gets recycled yet again.

My money (all $7.39—don’t let my kids know or they’ll raid Dad’s wallet…) is that Aguirre survives into a second term by another narrow margin.

Word Games

What do you get when you combine the millionaire Republicanism of Mitt Romney and the hot-tempered progressive populism of Mike Aguirre? That would be local self-made millionaire running his own multi-million dollar “I’m already a millionaire and now want to be a mayor, too” Steve Francis.

Francis has hit the media board running with an unprecedentedly early and expensive mayoral primary media blitz. His platform is to the social progressive left of Sanders and the fiscal conservative right – no mean feat. But if Dick Nixon and Pete Wilson could do it in the 1970s, maybe Francis has a shot at it in 2008.

Francis makes great political hay out of the fact that he’s self-funding his own campaign. There’s a political equivalent to the old saying that “a lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client.” It’s “a man who finances his own campaign has proven he has only one supporter – himself. At least, that is the conventional wisdom on such matters. Self-funded candidates have, on the whole, done worse in elections than those who do the dirty work of digging in the muck for political moola.

And Francis’ claim that self-funding his campaign will keep him independent of influence from all those nefarious special interests out there. Should he be elected he’ll owe something to the groups that banded together to vote in into office—at least if he wants to be reelected down the pike. Of course Francis also says he doesn’t care if he wins reelection—and that may be true.

Four years in the morass of city government may be enough for anyone. Francis could have the advantage of a one-term shaker-and-a-changer. But, then again, becoming a self-admitted lame-duck from the moment he is sworn in can work against him. Long-term municipal interests (the kind who plan to be around more than four years—or four decades) will figure they can just hunker down and wait Chango Stevo out.

But even then Francis will have to deal with those downtown interests—municipal employees, cops and firefighters, developers and financiers and the rest of the cast of characters who have been a part of city politics for decades. And he will have to do favors here, end up with IOUs there, if he is going to get his agenda for streamlining and making transparent city government.

In short, if Francis is going to win the election and, more importantly, successfully deliver on his campaign promises, he’s going to have to become something of the very specious he deigns himself above: a politician.

But Francis’ rebranding of himself from the arch-conservative choice in 2005 to the people’s rational choice in 2008 makes sense. The Democrats still have yet to pony up a candidate to challenge Gentleman Jerry from the social progressive left, leaving Francis free to adopt rhetoric more usually the turf of Mike Aguirres and Donna Fryes. And Francis’ self-funding may matter less in San Diego, where contributions to mayoral races still tend to come from a few thousand people—usually members of organized interests—and not from grass-roots Barack Obama/Ron Paul/Dennis Kucinich style e-campaigns. So the amount of money Jerry raises for June will be less representative of deep popular support.

And, as Francis keeps hammering on the simple and true message that Sanders has delivered on almost none of his significant campaign promises from 2005 against a backdrop of what promises to be a grisly budget season with tough cuts called for, Sanders veneer of Teflon may well start to wear thin.

After all, what do you get when you mix the jovial ineptness of Jerry Ford with the ineffective administration of Jimmy Carter?

That would, of course, be Jerry Sanders.

And so far Steve Francis is the only—and, therefore, best—alternative to four more years of the same: the City treading water as it slowly drifts towards fiscal shoals again.

Go for it, Stevo. Show ‘em the money.

Fire Flap

Okay, so Sanders and Aguirre disagree on what to do with state and city recommendations on creating stricter building code standards for homes in San Diego’s now well-proven fire-prone areas. Aguirre thinks such standards should be applied to all residences, those currently existing and those which are still but a twinkle in a developer’s eye. Sanders has balked, opposing retroactively applying such regulations to existing home owners. And legal experts say Aguirre may be off base in proposing to do so. Trying to enforce new fire codes on existing homes is a likely first-class ticket to the courts.

There goes that whacky old Mike again, making policy recommendations he isn’t charged to do that are legally dubious at best, politically disastrous at worst. And, once again, Aguirre is also right in what he’s advocating, even as the slings and arrows of the Mayor rain down upon him.

He may not be politically right, calling on home owners who have a good chance of being burned out in what, given global warming, will probably become even more frequent wildfires gone wild to take proactive steps now to prevent catastrophic loss later. It’s the classic short-term thinking free rider program. What homeowner wants to willingly shell out money now for a fire that may or may not (read “Will”) come later? Especially if the government can be relied on to rush in and spend whatever it takes to protect whoever needs protecting despite how little they’ve done to protect themselves?

This is America, dammit, where people are free to make any dumbass decision they want and expect everyone else, through the instrument of the state, to shoulder the cost. And Sanders, facing an unexpectedly contested reelection campaign, isn’t about to put the slightest pressure on a volatile electorate, public safety and common sense be damned. Interesting that, also facing a significant electoral challenge, Aguirre doesn’t flinch from pursuing what he thinks is good policy and plain common sense.

You see fire is a funny thing – it don’t give a wit if the house it’s chewing on is new construction or old, Your house gets in the way of it—be it a home in a brand new development or an old, established community, the fire dragon will eat it up and spit out the ash. What about the last two great fires don’t people get? So exempting any home in a fire-prone zone from upgrading to higher safety standards is going to result, when the next big one comes, in either more houses burning than should have or a bigger cost to our firefighting budgets—and potential lives of firemen—than should be, or both. My bet is on the later.

It seems likely the legal experts are right — attempting to do what Aguirre calls for and retrofit all homes for fire safety may be illegal under current law and will certainly draw legal challenges. So how about our local state legislators get off the stick and change said laws, indemnifying the City from challenges and damages in enforcing the sorts of fire codes we should have adopted decades ago in the first place? Then the messy business of making people do what is good for themselves and not push the cost of their inaction off onto everyone else can be addressed.

And if the Mayor and City Council don’t like the City Attorney crossing lines and usurping their legislative prerogative, then how about they get of the stick, too, and take real steps—potentially politically painful ones—to protect the people of San Diego from the inevitable next inferno.

But that Aguirre, man. Wanting to guarantee every home is adequately prepared to deal with the next fire. What a nutjob.

Maienschein Steamroller

Maienschein? Councilman Maienschein? The kind of competent but blends into the City Council crowd Maienschein? That’s the one who’s now joined the dogpile on Mike Aguirre?

OK. Wonders never cease.

Now, if you’d said Peters, that would be a different story. While I’ve disagreed with Councilman P repeatedly over the years he a) has the gravitast; and b) has the high profile to run against Aguirre — something many have thought and continue to think he should do. Peters is probably the only municipal figure of note that could give Aguirre the Avenger a run for his political money.

But Maienschein? Nice enough guy, but here’s what his candidacy will do: he’ll split the anti-Aguirre vote with Judge Jan, Disgruntled Dan and whomever else hops on the pile. If Alan B. decides to sit this one out, Maienschein, with his built in voter constituency, is best positioned to come in second to Aguirre in the June primary. And Mike mauls him come November for being a member of the very City Council that got San Diego into the mess Mike’s been railing against for the last four year.

Jeez, Aguirre. How lucky can you get?