As expected, Republicans did quite well in Tuesday’s primary election.
District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis won re-election despite facing her first major challenge, and a rocky Election Day and journey to it we summed up here. The U-T’s Logan Jenkins also has a good wrap on the last “skirmish” Dumanis faced in her re-election run.
San Diego City Councilwoman Lorie Zapf won her race in District 2 against her main rival, Sarah Boot. Now, November’s election will have just one major city of San Diego contest: Republican Chris Cate has advanced to the runoff with Democrat Carol Kim. It’s sure to be a blockbuster and here’s Liam Dillon’s preview.
County Supervisor Bill Horn faced an Election Night to remember. By the time we went to bed, Horn had opened a 1,205-vote lead against Oceanside Mayor Jim Wood after initially being down. Horn’s last race was close but this one could take days to resolve. Check all the latest tallies in San Diego here.
As expected, Carl DeMaio easily secured second place in the 52nd Congressional District. The runoff between him and Scott Peters may be one of the hardest-fought and most expensive House races in the country in November.
County Assessor Ernie Dronenburg, who turned the race for an obscure multi-titled county office into a hot ticket, won easily too.
The ballot measures that would have validated the city’s land-use plan for Barrio Logan both went down to defeat big-time. Victorious opponents of the community plan there promised a compromise effort but it’s not clear what might happen now.
The Chula Vista mayoral candidates will likely face off in a runoff as will the rivals in the highly contested City Council seat.
• Ron Roberts has been a player in local politics for decades, and yesterday he breezed to yet another term — his sixth and last one — on the county board of supervisors.
It helped that no one ran against him this time around.
We checked in with Roberts and report on what it’s like to be unchallenged (and a bit guilty about it) on Election Day: “instead of making calls and acting out a familiar script of handshakes and voter-booth photo ops on Tuesday, the 71-year-old Roberts and his staff dove into a pile of paperwork. Then he met two his two childhood best friends for lunch in Little Italy.”
He did drop by an election-night celebration where he declared “It’s been the most fun election I’ve ever had.”
Voters Ponder a Neighborhood’s Future
The Barrio Logan neighborhood has one polling place but plenty of viewpoints about its future, our reporters found when they talked to voters there yesterday.
“I’ll be honest, I don’t love the shipyards. And this might be selfish, but this is the community I want, with more commercial businesses and parks and homes here,” says one resident who voted yes on Props. B and C. But another resident voted against them, saying they were too broad, although he does acknowledge a big problem with pollution: “The freeway traffic with the bridge, the emissions there are incredible.”
Geeks Unite to Stop Harassment
The stereotype of the typical comics geek is a guy who couldn’t get a second glance from a woman if he was on fire. Sounds like it’s time for an update: San Diego Comic-Con attendees are pushing for a sexual harassment policy to pinpoint the boundaries at North America’s top celebration of pop culture.
“Female cosplayers are often harassed at these conventions. Anyone who has ever attempted to navigate that sweaty, smelly dweeb storm has seen it happen,” writes contributor Alez Zaragoza in the latest weekly VOSD Culture Report.
Also in the Culture Report: The Rwandan genocide through images, “jerk kids who liked drawing unibrows or missing teeth on people’s photos in magazines,” and “a straight-up pimp” who worked in San Diego in the 1940s managing two prostitutes. Who? Maya Angelou, who wrote of her experience: “In a successful attempt to thwart a seduction I had ended up with two whores and a whorehouse. And I was just eighteen.”
Ready for His Close-Up
Rich Toscano, who’s long written for VOSD about real-estate and the local economy while putting up with sly barbs in the Morning Report, is the subject of a big profile in the U-T. The story headline: “He called the housing crash. What’s next?”
I thought I told them not to encourage him!
Big Dreams in Chula Vista… Again
• We’ve been focusing a lot on Chula Vista lately, giving the city some badly needed attention. The second-largest city in the county long suffered neglect by the media, partly because it’s never had a local daily newspaper in the modern era to call its own like Oceanside, Escondido, El Cajon and even Vista have had in recent decades.
Then there was the business about the city being declared “boring” by a magazine. Now, a bayfront plan is in the works once again, this time envisioning a resort hotel and a convention center, NBC 7 reports. While a previous $1 billion plan fell through, the city thinks this one is a go and will begin construction by 2016.
Quick News Hits
• NPR looks at the controversial Common Core education system, which “means new learning benchmarks for the vast majority of the nation’s young students — millions of kids from kindergarten through high school. And, for many of them, the Core Standards will feel tougher than what they’re used to. Because they are tougher.”
• Muslim parents want San Diego schools to offer halal meals, KPBS reports. Halal foods cannot include pork products or meat that’s not slaughtered according to strict rules.
• We’ve been on a quest to understand the local drone industry, and the Morning Report — at your service! — is on the hunt to find unusual uses of the darn things.
First, drones may be used to drop cash around San Diego. We told you yesterday about someone who’s been leaving bundles of cash around town and leaving hints on Twitter. Now, the U-T reports, there’s a whole bunch of cash-giver, and one of them has hinted at making money drops via drone.
Wow. What else can drones do? Well, according to this video, a drone can walk your dog. Sort of. (“Clearly the dog is taking the drone for a walk,” snipes one commenter.)
Whatever. Call me when a drone can change the kitty litter.
Randy Dotinga is a freelance contributor to Voice of San Diego and president-elect of the American Society of Journalists & Authors. Please contact him directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.
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