First, there was Evan McLaughlin, the Voice reporter named as one of San Diego’s most eligible bachelors.
Then, there was Will Carless, the (former) Voice reporter The New York Times dubbed San Diego’s go-to journalist on real estate.
Now, there is Scott Lewis, the Voice co-executive editor that San Diego CityBeat says is “becoming one of the most important opinion leaders in San Diego.”
CityBeat Editor David Rolland writes:
At 19, Scott Lewis thought the path to the future was though the Navy. His dad, an insurance man, had been a sailor; in fact, his father’s side of the family had been populated with sailors. But it was his father who begged him not to join. “You don’t want to be an enlisted man,” his dad told him.
Young Lewis wanted to learn a foreign language in the worst way, and the Navy was promising to send him somewhere to do it. His dad intervened and offered to send him abroad if he’d forget about all that Navy nonsense. He agreed, enrolled at the University of Utah – Lewis was born in Greeley, Colo., and the family moved to Salt Lake City when he was 12 – and headed off to Spain to learn Spanish. He spent a semester in Madrid and “came back an anarchist,” Lewis said.
Madrid’s highly charged political atmosphere left a mark on the Utah boy’s impressionable mind. He was immediately taken with how engaged the youth were there. One story he recalls has him fleeing the police amid a protest over the government’s raid of an illegal, makeshift community center for immigrants in an abandoned building, and eventually showing off police-inflicted wounds during an interview on Spanish TV.
The story is a comprehensive and insightful look at the man we call Scotty Lew (and, as the story points out, a “coastal Republican”). Check it out here.