Barbara Bry’s win in District 1 on Tuesday night was one of the biggest shockers of the local primary. There’s still a chance that the remaining provisional ballots could tip her over the 50 percent threshold, giving her an outright win, otherwise she’ll be a big favorite to win again in November.
Andrew Keatts analyzes what Bry’s success means for the bigger picture. For one, a win for Bry would mean Democrats likely retain control of the Council. And that would mean a new Council president, in which case Councilman David Alvarez and Councilwoman Myrtle Cole would be the most likely to contend for the spot.
Does Bry’s win also mean that the conventional wisdom about Democrats only being able to win in San Diego in November is dead? Not quite, Keatts found.
The executive director of the Lincoln Club “cited Faulconer’s big win, the re-elections of Councilmen Mark Kersey and Scott Sherman, and the victory of Proposition H as evidence the electorate did not favor Democrats,” Keatts writes.
Election Roundup: All the Rest
• While it took them a while to gear up, a local Latino bar association is hitting back at Donald Trump over his now-notorious comments about one of its members, Judge Gonzalo Curiel: Trump shows “an utter lack of understanding for the role we play as attorneys and judges sworn to follow the law and uphold the Constitution.”
Meanwhile, lawyers tell the L.A. Times that the judge has actually given Trump a fair treatment.
• Former Councilman Carl DeMaio wrote an interesting analysis of Tuesday’s election results that’s getting praise from an unexpected corner.
• U-T? Thanks to an editorial cartoon, it’s more like Ewww-T.
North County Report: Building by Ballot
VOSD’s weekly North County Report has updates on the big race for county supervisor (one mayor’s in the run-off and one isn’t) and Rep. Darrell Issa’s surprisingly close race (he’ll face a run-off too, a race that may get an unexpected amount of attention).
Plus: The New York Times drops by Carlsbad for a look at how developers try to bypass pesky environmental laws by going directly to voters. Speaking of building via ballot box, county voters may get to decide this fall whether to allow the controversial (and massive) Lilac Hills master-planned community up in Valley Center. We’ve been reporting on how the builders behind that project haven’t taken no for an answer.
Why Library’s Shakespeare Exhibit Matters
One of Shakespeare’s famous First Folios is in town, making a visit to San Diego Central Library downtown. “Naturally, the book is opened to Hamlet’s ‘To Be or Not to Be’ speech,” the L.A. Times reports, and the Old Globe Theatre has contributed plenty of its own artifacts to the exhibit from its long history of performing Shakespeare.
Why should we care about a First Folio, especially when there are lots of them? Consider this: If this version of Shakespeare’s work hadn’t been produced early on, that Hamlet speech would read like this: “To be, or not to be, Ay, there’s the point … “To Die, to sleep, is that all? Ay, all:/ O, to sleep to dream, I mary there it goes.” Catchy!
And “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I” would have been “what a dunghill idiot slave am I?” Talk about a dunghill.
You can learn more in my recent Christian Science Monitor interview with Andrea Mays, author of “The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger’s Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare’s First Folio.”
Quick News Hits: Rocking Some Trump Face
• “I could feel the warm, gushing blood,” says the victim of a shark attack in Orange County. (L.A. Times)
• Comic-Con is working with the San Diego Hall of Champions to open a museum in Balboa Park, but details at this point are sketchy. (NBC 7)
• While it took a few days for the news to come out, “millions of dollars in marijuana was found hidden amid lead oxide in a tanker truck at the U.S.-Mexico border” last week, NBC 7 reports.
What’s lead oxide? It’s “used in the manufacture of batteries, anti-rust paint and some optical glass.” What’s optical glass? OK, you’re on your own to go to Wikipedia now.
• Carlsbad is finally getting body cameras for its cops. (City News Service)
• The Reader has lost its damn mind.
• A CityBeat columnist goes to gong immersion yoga and lives to tell the vibration-inducing tale. Sadly, no sign of Chuck Barris. (Note: You must be over 45 to get that joke.)
• Donald Trump’s visage is everywhere, even in a rock formation spotted on the beach in La Jolla. Click here to see it in all its windswept-haired glory.
Lemme try. Ooo, I think I see Hillary Clinton in a pile of seaweed. And hey, is that Kevin Faulconer’s face in a palm tree?
Oh wait. That is Kevin Faulconer. Never mind. Didn’t know he was so tall.
Randy Dotinga is a freelance contributor to Voice of San Diego and national president of the 1,200-member American Society of Journalists and Authors (asja.org). Please contact him directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.