The Morning Report
Get the news and information you need to take on the day.
The last piece to our series of comprehensive Reader’s Guides is in place: Everything you need to know about Bob Filner, a Democrat running for mayor.
We combed through all our previous campaign coverage to give you a revealing snapshot of the congressman: from his Freedom Rides days to his sometimes erratic behavior on the campaign trail to the changes he’d bring to the city if elected.
On Thursday, we gave Carl DeMaio the Reader’s Guide treatment.
Charting a New Course for Schools
Plenty has been said about Prop. Z, the big local school bond measure, but very little of it has focused on one of the most fascinating aspects of the bond: “The amount of money Prop. Z will set aside for charter schools is unlike anything [advocates have] seen, anywhere,” writes our Scott Lewis.
He also got Irwin Jacobs to shed some light on why he’s donating to a bond despite his distaste for San Diego Unified’s current governance.
• VOSD reader Aaryn Belfer took issue with the idea of propping up charters: “only 17 [percent] of charter schools nationwide are doing better than their public school counterparts; this isn’t a model that would be reciprocated in any business,” she writes. Check out our top comments of the week where other readers weighed in on campaign advertisements and a City Council vote to boost arts funding.
What We Learned This Week
Everything You Need to Know About the Mayor’s Race: It’s all here — we’ve broken down the race for San Diego’s mayorship into several easy-to-understand guides:
• There’s the candidates themselves: We’ve written comprehensive guides to Carl DeMaio and Bob Filner.
• If you prefer to weigh the race issue by issue, check out our mayoral scorecard of where DeMaio and Filner land on the subjects driving the race, and how their stances have changed.
• We’ve boiled down the crucial takeaways from close to 30 mayoral debates.
• We’ve teased out the most telling quotes from the campaign trail.
• And we’ve compiled our Fact Checks of many campaign claims, including the biggest whoppers, what the candidates have gotten right and the worst campaign hits.
… And Other Election Items: The mayor’s race isn’t the only thing on the ballot. We also broke down the three law-enforcement propositions being voted on statewide: One would end the death penalty; one would strengthen penalties for human trafficking; one would revise California’s Three Strikes law.
• Finally, Our Scott Lewis and NBC 7 San Diego’s Catherine Garcia explain the difference between Proposition 30 and Proposition 38, the two measures that say they’ll fund California schools, in the latest San Diego Explained.
The Anti-Poways
Local school districts are bending over backward to avoid using politically toxic capital appreciation bonds.
Five of the six districts in the county floating new bond measures have passed resolutions saying they won’t use capital appreciation bonds like Poway’s. But they’ve also given themselves some wiggle room, and the measures carry no legal weight.
Quick News Hits
• Irwin Jacobs sheds light on his decision to back Carl DeMaio in the mayor’s race. Filner’s dramatic presentation opposing Jacobs’ Balboa Park plan turned him off, he told the Associated Press.
“Bob went a little overboard,” Jacobs said in an interview. “It was a much more emotional presentation (than DeMaio’s). That kind of bothered me.”
• San Diego students will have the second-shortest school year in the state if Props. 30 and 38 fail, besting bottom-of-the-barrel Stockton by one day. (Ed Source)
• Mayor Jerry Sanders made a rare pair of school board endorsements, throwing his support behind Bill Ponder in Sub-District E and Mark Powell in Sub-District A. (U-T San Diego)
Speaking of endorsements, the U-T points out that one of the school board candidates endorsed by Filner, current Sweetwater Union High School District board member Pearl Quiñones, is facing charges she accepted bribes.
Quote of the Week
“If I was fired, why did I continue teaching? Why was I sent a paycheck every month?”
— School board candidate Mark Powell, on a campaign mailer that says he was fired for “ineffective campus leadership.”
Sara Libby is VOSD’s managing editor. She oversees VOSD’s newsroom and its content. You can reach her at sara.libby@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.325.0526.
Disclosure: Voice of San Diego members and supporters may be mentioned or have a stake in the stories we cover. For a complete list of our contributors, click here.
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