Ballots counted on Thursday pushed Rep. Scott Peters ahead in the 52nd District election count for the first time since Tuesday’s Election. Carl DeMaio’s initial 2000-vote lead has slowly been whittled away by voters who cast their ballots late on Election Day, Liam Dillon reports. “New numbers released Thursday represented mail ballots returned at drop-off sites and others turned in on or around Election Day,” Dillon wrote. “They favored Peters decisively, by 56 percent.” That put Peters up by 861 votes, with thousands more ballots still to be counted.
DeMaio tweeted he remains hopeful that the 28,000 uncounted ballots could still break his way. But some savvy election-watchers were already declaring the whole thing over and Peters the winner, based on the new numbers and how the remaining ballots are likely to split.
• Scott Lewis joined NBC 7’s Catherine Garcia to go over what the process of counting all these ballots looks like and how the experts are able to predict which candidate might benefit from those ballots, in our most recent San Diego Explained.
• Voters in Imperial Beach are witnessing their own nail-biter as only 33 votes separate the two candidates for mayor, 10 News reports.
Big Federal Dollars Flow Here
Not so long ago, San Diego was host to many thousands more military jobs than it has these days. Those jobs may have moved away and the economic footprint of the military may have shrank, but Lisa Halverstadt notes, San Diego seems to have only swapped one government entity’s money for several others’. “Data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis shows the number of military workers in San Diego has dropped by nearly 68,000 since 1969,” Halverstadt writes.
But money flowing to San Diego businesses from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense total in the billions. Keep up with our quest on San Diego’s business climate here.
SDPD Pay Doesn’t Measure Up
A long-awaited report on how San Diego police officers’ salaries compare withother officers around California was finally released Thursday. The report compares salaries, benefits and overtime pay for police in San Diego with as many as 18 other police agencies around the state.
“The report found San Diego officers’ pay ranks near or at the bottom among 18 other departments in California,” reports KPBS. The report verifies what many have suspected for some time.
News Nibbles
• Longtime reporter and broadcaster Larry Himmel died Wednesday from his fight with cancer. CBS8 has a memorial online for Himmel where visitors are sharing memories. U-T San Diego remembered several incredible moments from Himmel’s career, including the time he reported live from the scene of his own house burning down.
• In a wide-ranging profile of one former college student’s experience of being sexually assaulted, KPBS looks into the complex systems of justice victims must navigate in order to seek accountability for their attackers.
• California Assembly Democrats voted to keep San Diego Assemblywoman Toni Atkins as their leader.
• New campaign finance disclosures show the recent effort to stop the minimum wage increase was funded by large organizations based out of Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. (San Diego Reader)
• During his short tenure as mayor, Bob Filner was accused of demanding an assistant city attorney go to the back of a room during a contentious closed-session meeting. The incident was used to demonstrate what some people called a “mean streak” in Filner. But the San Diego Reader pulled the transcript of the meeting and found no trace of Filner having ever made such a demand.
• Police body cameras are coming to Chula Vista. (NBC 7)
• The San Diego Workforce Partnership issued a report this week attempting to quantify the value of Comic-Con to the San Diego economy, estimating total impact to be $178 million. That’s the same number Convention Center officials have come up with, and we found some big problems with it.
Car Enthusiasts With Free Time
Does your old clunker need a tune-up, a major service or even an engine-swap? No problem, just bring your car to Oceanside and … do all the work yourself!
That’s the idea Joel Muñoz had when he licensed an idea for a self-service car maintenance business and opened up U Fix-it Automotive, a self-service repair shop where you can rent space equipped with all the fancy tools your auto mechanic has. “Rates start at $15 per hour, or $100 for the day, to use one of eight lifts in their service bays,” the Reader reports. But don’t worry, if you’re in the midst of replacing your A/C evaporator or rear shackle bracket and decide you’re in over your head, U Fix-it will have technicians-for-hire ready to step in at a discount. They also have big screen TVs, although it’s unclear to many how those relate to car repair.
Seth Hall is a local writer and technologist. He doesn’t even know what a shackle bracket is. You can email him at voice@s3th.com or follow him on Twitter: @loteck.