San Diego: Donna Frye, Jerry Sanders Advance to run-off

[The Duke]

I am a resident of San Diego and Los Angeles counties, so this region is of particular importance to me.

Donna Frye is a disaster waiting to happen.  She has carefully crafted an image of the surfer grandma.  This is very appealing to San Diego voters.  Its a great sitcom character, I'm sure.  A bad Mayor, I'm also sure.

Jerry Sanders is not flashy, but competent and honest.

Steve Francis is worthless.  He's not even from San Diego.

Pat Shea should be Mayor, but never will be.  He doesn't have the cash to win, and had a poor showing because of it.

Donna Frye is almost sure to win.  The city government is tremendously corrupt, and this makes the city vulnerable to Donna Frye type candidates.  Half the city council is either going to jail or is under indictment for taking bribes, most of them were bribes from strip club owners (Where's BRTD?  He should come down here.) who want no touch rules removed and were willing to pay top dollar to get those rules removed.  Remember how Jimmy Carter got elected?  He was honest and that's what people wanted.  Didn't make him qualified, but it did make him appealing to voters.

Donna also had the last election stolen from her, and people feel very sorry for her, same reason that Rossi in Washington has a lot of sympathy from voters.

San Diego has two basic long term problems, only one of which has come up really in the campaign.

The one that has come up is that the city employee pension system is broken and needs either benefit cuts, increased employee cntributions, or taxpayer subsidies to keep going.  This is a preview of Social Security in case anyone wants to know what that will look like in 12 years.  Someone has to find a way to make a decision that will NOT be popular no matter what it is, and San Diego is going to have to find a way to stomach the person who makes that call.  Taxpayer subsidies are outrageous to me.  No taxpayer should have to fund a pension system that they don't recieve a dime from.  Either pension cuts or increased employee contribution are acceptable to me.

The second problm is that San Diego county has 2 million residents and acts like its a seaside village.  Its a metropolis that won't accept that its a metropolis, and until it does these kinds of disasters will continue.

Should be fun.  Not.

Antonio Villaraigosa and Donna Frye.  Only five years ago we had Richard Riordan and Susan Golding.  How the mighty have fallen.

[The Duke]

Susan Golding (1992-2000) was a liberal Republican.  Pro-choice, pro-gay marriage IIRC, and endorsed McCain in the 2000 primary.  She left office in disgrace but it wasn't really her fault.  She was exceedingly popular for a time, re-elected in 1996 with 84% of the vote.

In the Golding era Sa Diego tried to raise its profile by hosting major events.  They hosted '94 World Cup soccer games, the '95 America's Cup yacht race, and the 1996 GOP Convention.  Then in 1997 they hosted Super Bowl XXXII.  To win that Super Bowl bid they had to upgrade Jack Murphy Stadium (Now Quallcomm Stadium), including an expansion of seating capacity from 60,000 seats to 71,000 seats.  This expansion was completed in about 1996, a year or so before the game.

The NFL blackout rule comes into play now.  The rule says that any game that does not sell out cannot be shown in the city where the game is played.  This is to force people to attend the game instead of watching it on TV.  After they won the Super Bowl bid, San Diego had to sell an extra 11,000 tickets or all their homegames would be blacked out!  Fans were outraged and demanded that something be done (As long as they didn't have to buy tickets of course).  The Chargers threatened to leave town, because if their games could not be shown on TV they'd lose their fan base.

To fix this, Golding introduced the Charger Ticket Guarantee.  Any game that was not sold out, the city would buy the remaining tickets.  From 1998 onwards, this program kept the Chargers on the air in San Diego county.  And the tam was atrocious.  In 1994 they were in the Super Bowl, after the ticket guarantee, they stunk.  Peole thought the guarantee had ended any incentive for the Chargers to perform well, since their financial success was guaranteed by the city.  Goldng became very unpopular.

The truth is the team was bad because they made a very stupid trade to acquire quarterback Ryan Leaf in the 1998 draft, and gave away most of their draft picks for the next few years.  It was the Leaf trade that sank San Diego football, but Golding was an easier target (And people conventiently forgot that they were the original reason the ticket guarantee had been put in place).

So that's Susan Golding's story.

I do not share your faith in Mayor Antonio.  I don't think he's a pragmatic progressive, I think he's a radical.  He is associated with MecCha and the ACLU, not organizations I associate with moderates.  His platform was a series of giveaways to Democratic interest groups.  I work for the LA City Council right now in Tom LaBonge's office, Antonio is not going to stand up to the far left on the Council, he's spent his career leading the far left on the Council.

[The Duke]

Half the city council is either going to jail or is under indictment for taking bribes, most of them were bribes from strip club owners (Where's BRTD?  He should come down here.) who want no touch rules removed and were willing to pay top dollar to get those rules removed.

whoa, I definately support those council members and owners! Which candidate is more strip club friendly? That's who I'm rooting for.

Councilman Michael Zucchet (D), convicted on wire tapping and bribery, and Councilman Ralph Inzunza (D), convicted on 12 counts of criminal activity.  There may be others I don't remember.  Zucchet was the Acting Mayor until he was indicted.