We’ve put together a last-minute guide to the election, full of links to coverage from our site and elsewhere. You can read up on the mayor’s race and the hot races for Congress, state Senate, county supervisor and San Diego school board. Plus: details about all the state propositions.
Want more guidance? Here are a few resources:
• The U-T offers a long list of conservative endorsements, which is especially handy for those who agree with the U-T or think it’s wrong on everything.
• Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton, a longtime veteran of covering state politics, offers his suggestions here.
• A local progressive who goes by lemonverbena_ on Twitter posts his list of recommendations, including a suggestion to reject the two top presidential hopefuls. He also has sharp words for the San Diego mayoral rivals: “What most everyone agrees on is that both candidates are kind of terrible.”
Election Roundup
• We’ve put together a guide to how we’ll cover the election and where we’ll be.
• The Daily Transcript has a good story about the get-out-the-vote efforts going on and how both sides in the mayor’s race think theirs is the better operation. Also in the Transcript: There’s been a flurry of last-minute campaigning. A new poll has the race close.
• Fact Check TV examines a claim that City Councilwoman Sherri Lightner, who’s running for reelection, gave millions to unions.
• T. Boone Pickens, the oil tycoon, gave $2,500 to Rep. Brian Bilbray, who’s in a tight race to stay in Congress.
• Ten stories about the election fill up our list of the 10 most popular stories of the past week.
• VOSD Radio previewed the election.
City Ignores Promise on Oversight
The city hasn’t followed up on promises to be open about city contracts and costs, reports Investigative Newsource: “That hasn’t happened, and city officials can’t say when it will.”
Medical Marijuana’s Unexpected Supporters
Jim Holman, the owner and publisher of the Reader, is best known as an advocate for Catholic causes and a major funder of several unsuccessful efforts to push California anti-abortion ballot measures.
Now, the Reader reports, he’s found a new cause: medical marijuana. He contributed $2,831 worth of advertising to support medi-pot ballot measures in Lemon Grove, Solana Beach, Del Mar and Imperial Beach.
The IB measure, by the way, has the support of a councilman named Brian Pat Bilbray, Patch.com reports.
Bilbray, the young son of Rep. Bilbray (a Republican and former mayor of IB), says he was convinced to support the measure by the experiences of his sister Briana, who has skin cancer, and a late friend who had trouble finding medical marijuana while suffering from prostate cancer.
For more about the scientific basis for the use of medical marijuana, check our Q&A interview with a UCSD professor who’s been a leading force in marijuana research.
Correcting the Morning Report.
Yesterday’s Morning Report incorrectly described a letter from Jennifer Temple as bemoaning the possible purchase of the LA Times by the U-T publisher. While she mentions him, the letter refers to her concern about a purchase by media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
A Quick History of Mormons in San Diego
If Mitt Romney wins today, we’ll have a local — he owns a home in La Jolla — in the White House. However, he isn’t the first Mormon with San Diego connections to make the news.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long had a significant presence in the West, as this map shows, and in San Diego County in particular. (A bit less than 2 percent of us are Mormon, according to 2000 figures.)
For background on the early days of Mormons here, check out stories about the 19th-century Mormon Battalion from the Journal of San Diego History and the U-T. And read my history flashback about the time that the Mormon church claimed San Diego as its own and planned to make us the port for a Western empire.
For a more modern take, check a cheeky column by the U-T’s Logan Jenkins, who once wrote that in North County “Mormons arguably are more mainstream — and a helluva lot more politically active — than Presbyterians.”
And in 2011, I profiled a local author and professor who has made waves nationally by being anything but your typical Mormon.
Finally, a Reader cover story last month examined Romney, Mormons and their intersections in San Diego.
Columnist Reconsiders Paid Parking at Balboa Park
The U-T’s Matthew Hall is having a rethink.
Turns out he doesn’t like the idea of paid parking at the city’s crown jewel after all: “Your responses — eloquent and otherwise — have made me reconsider. I now believe that paying to park at Balboa Park is a bad idea for several reasons, including that it might even be illegal.”
If we’re lucky, that’ll be the final flip-flop you’ll hear about this campaign season. But there’s still a few hours left!
Please contact Randy Dotinga directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.