I don’t think anyone expected Rep. Scott Peters to be the first prominent San Diego Democrat to suggest that President Joe Biden might need to end his reelection campaign, but here we are.
This may not be unique to San Diego, but the city will send dozens of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August, and if word gets out that Biden should give way to a new candidate, those delegates would suddenly have a historic assignment.
One of them said he continues to fully support Biden. In any case, it won’t help his reelection bid if Biden’s most ardent supporters and the media outlets that many of them follow are openly declaring him unfit to run a proper reelection campaign.
That’s all I know, but it’s very interesting.
Mail bag
So last week I asked you all to send in any questions you had or anything you wanted me to respond to. Thank you so much for all the questions you sent in. Some of them will take me a while to answer. Here are some of the quicker ones:
Where is Lopez?
— JS
A lot has been said. My colleague and friend, Andrea Lopez-Villafaña, Editor-in-Chief of the Voice, is on leave for a few weeks. Rest assured, she is healthy and in good standing with the Voice. I still communicate with her on an almost daily basis. I’m sure she’ll have a lot to tell you about what she’s had to deal with once she returns to work, but please be patient.
You spoke earlier about you and your daughter coming home from a Padre game, and that story fascinated me and I still think about it. Does your daughter still feel the same way? Has anything in the past year of her life changed this rather bleak analysis (at least it seems to me) of her perspective on life in a metropolitan area?
— GS
Last year my daughter and I went to a Padres game. She was wearing a Luis Campasano jersey (she’s a catcher) and knows as much baseball as any 11 year old out there. It was a great night.
As we finished the game and were leaving, she said something that I’ve talked about at various events and on my podcast (but I’m not sure if I’ve ever written about it).
Her take on the city: We always talk about how we have a lot in common, but she says I’m a “beach and city guy” and she’s a “mountain and country guy.”
When I asked her why, she said it was because the city was very dirty and there were many people suffering.
She’s right: I love cities. My mom took me to San Francisco when I was eight years old. I got off the BART station downtown, looked up, and I was hooked. Travels to New York, then Madrid, Barcelona, and Hamburg definitely made me a city person. Cities are exhilarating, and the energy of people doing things and going places makes me competitive and curious.
I remember the first time I went to New York as an adult, I had a specific list of tasks for the day: ride the subway with purpose, sneak lunch, finish a meeting and take a walk in Central Park. For me, it was a dream come true to go to New York with purpose and act like I was there.
So it hurt me deeply that I was making my child think about a city like this, confining it to the saddest parts of what we face here.
So what’s the update? She’s really into surfing now and joined the Junior Lifeguard program in San Diego this summer, so she’s been hitting the beach a lot and it’s fair to say she’s become much more of a beach girl than she was before.
What about the city? “I still think downtown is filthy.” In some ways, she doesn’t see Petco Park, Waterfront Park, and other downtown cultural and architectural attractions as “downtown.” But there’s still a lot of work to be done to reinvigorate the “city” brand.
Should San Diego bring back the City Manager model…?
–RS
In San Diego, a strong-mayor system has replaced the mayor system, and does anyone believe that a strong-mayor system is really an improvement?
–SH
This year marks 20 years since San Diego voters approved a transition from a city manager system to a “strong mayor” system of government. Voters approved the move, and two years later the city implemented it, making the mayor the chief executive officer with control over most of the city’s employees.
The Mayor in a mayor-style government is simply the Speaker of the City Council and at-large members of the City Council. The Mayor and City Council vote on who will be the Mayor and then act as council members. They cast important votes and provide official input on the direction and priorities of the city.
This new approach was supposed to make the city government more responsive to citizens’ voices and efforts to achieve great things. The mayor could respond more directly to concerns about how the city was being run, rather than having to go through the administrator or other board members.
The City Council would also be “stronger.” The City Council would have a new speaker and an independent budget analyst. The speaker would have the same powers as the previous mayor. The City Council would have more freedom to craft legislative solutions to the city’s problems.
Oddly, while reformers removed the mayor from his role as council president, they wanted him to continue to preside over a type of meeting called closed session. I still want to know exactly what those discussions were about, with some arguing that the mayor should handle the council’s most sensitive responsibilities.
So, are you glad you made the change? I get asked this question about once a quarter at events. Former supporters of the Reform of Government Plan are the first to say they were wrong, that the plan doesn’t make the city work better. Now that it’s been 20 years since the vote, it might be a good idea to put all of them on record.
I love an independent budget analyst. It’s nice to have a well-resourced, almost journalistic body that details and reviews staff plans and proposals and has no loyalty to anyone other than the entire council and the public.
But the city doesn’t seem to me any more impressive or functional than it was in 2004. It doesn’t seem any more capable of doing great things and providing great service than it was before.
But I don’t see any prospect of changing that. It would take a lot of energy and resources to set up a charter reform committee or initiative, and I’m not convinced there’s a will to do it at the grassroots level. And while there may be benefits to rolling it back, I think it’s always going to be a question of who fills these roles.
Good leaders can rise and exert influence no matter what power-sharing system you have. Nathan Fletcher would have been the same leader as chairman of the County Board of Supervisors and perhaps as a “strong mayor.” Had Kevin Faulconer become chairman of the Board of Supervisors and ultimately become chairman, he would have run things in a very similar way that he oversaw thousands of city employees as mayor.
Dealmaker’s Latest Deals
Steve Cushman, a civic volunteer and negotiator who has advised many San Diego mayors over the years, took on a new role this summer: lead negotiator on the lease for the proposed mega-shelter.
Following backlash over the city’s initial lease, Mayor Todd Gloria’s office signed a contract last month with an experienced commercial real estate transaction and owner, who does not have a broker’s license, to provide “consultancy services on general real estate issues.”
The contract calls for Cushman to provide services “not to exceed $24,999 over the full five-year period of the agreement” and assist the city in “securing and negotiating a lease for property for homeless outreach services to house up to 1,000 individuals.”
Gloria spokeswoman Rachel Lane said Cushman will receive $1 a year and the city will cover the insurance fees required for consultants, totaling $7,000 this year.
In recent weeks, Cushman has been in regular negotiations with the owner of a large warehouse in Middletown where Gloria wants to build a large shelter.
“From day one, the mayor has instructed not just me but all of our city staff to make sure this makes sense as a real estate transaction,” Cushman said.
Why Cushman? “We sought Cushman’s help because his years of experience in real estate are an asset to the city,” Lane said in a text message. “He also has the trust and credibility of city leaders who have dedicated their time and energy to preventing and resolving homelessness, from his role as chair of the Downtown San Diego Partnership’s Downtown Homelessness Committee to his role as (former) president of the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank.”
The city does not have an outside real estate broker under contract. Since revelations about past nightmarish dealings with real estate brokers and payments that were not initially made public, the city has not done business with an outside broker. Lane argued that Cushman’s long history of dedicating time, money and effort to homelessness “is the opposite of a ‘volunteer’ or consultant whose role with the city has resulted in personal financial gain.”
If you have ideas or feedback about our political reporting, please send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org.
