I don’t think I would have predicted that Rep. Scott Peters would be the first high-profile San Diego Democrat to suggest that President Joe Biden may need to end his re-election campaign. But here we are.
This may not be a San Diego story specifically, but San Diego will send dozens of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August. And if, somehow, all this buzz about how Biden should give way to a new contender, those delegates will suddenly have a historic job.
One of them told us he remains all in for Biden. Regardless, if Biden’s biggest fans and the media many of them follow have openly expressed how unfit he is to run a decent campaign for re-election, that’s not going to help his re-election.
That’s all I have on that but I find it fascinating.
Mailbag
So, last week, I asked you to send in any questions you have or anything you simply wanted me to react to. You sent in a ton of things, thank you. Some of them are going to take more time to answer. Here are some easier ones.
Where’s Lopez?
— J.S.
I got a bunch of these. My colleague, friend and Voice’s managing editor Andrea Lopez-Villafaña has been out for a few weeks on leave. Rest assured she is healthy and remains in good standing with Voice. I still talk to her almost every day. When she returns to work, I’m certain she will have a lot to say about what she’s had to deal with but you’ll have to wait a bit.
I was taken and still think about the story you told us a while back regarding your daughter and you returning from a Padre game. Does she still feel the same? Has anything in her life in the last year changed this rather dismal (at least in my mind) analysis of her views on life in a metropolitan area?
— G.S.
Last year, my daughter and I went to a Padres game. She wears a Luis Campusano jersey (she’s a catcher) and knows as much as any 11-year-old around. It was a great night.
As we left the game, she said something I have spoken about in all kinds of events and podcasts (though I’m not sure I ever wrote about it?).
Her take on cities: We always talk about how we share a lot of similarities but she said that she thinks I am more of a “beach and city guy” and she’s much more of a “mountains and country girl.”
When I asked why, she said cities are so dirty and there are so many suffering people.
She is right, in that I love cities. My mother took me to San Francisco when I was an eight. When we stepped out of the BART Station downtown, I looked up I was hooked for life. Trips to New York and later Madrid, Barcelona and Hamburg made me a city guy, for sure. I find them exhilarating and the energy of people doing things and going places to make me feel competitive and intrigued.
I remember the first time I went to New York City as an adult with an actual list of professional tasks for the day — riding the subway with purpose, sneaking in a lunch, finishing my meetings and strolling through Central Park. To me, to be in New York with a purpose, to walk around acting like I was meant to be there, was a dream come true.
So it hurt deeply that I had a kid who I had let think of cities like this — limited to the saddest parts of what we deal with here.
So what’s the update? She’s now way more into surfing and she did the San Diego Junior Lifeguards program this summer so she’s been at the beach a lot and it’s fair to say she’s way more of a beach girl than she was before.
As for cities? “I still think downtown is gross.” In a way, I don’t think she sees Petco Park, the Waterfront Park and other cultural and architectural attractions downtown as “downtown.” But I still have a lot of work to do to rehab the “city” brand.
Should the city of San Diego bring back the city manager model…?
–R.S.
Strong Mayor replaced the City Manager system in San Diego. Does anybody really believe the Strong Mayor system has been an improvement?
–S.H.
This year marks 20 years since voters in the city of San Diego approved the transformation of city government from a city manager form to a “strong mayor.” Voters approved it and then two years later, the city followed through and made the mayor the city’s chief executive in charge of most of its employees.
The mayor in city manager forms of government is merely a presiding, at-large member of the City Council. The mayor and council get to vote on who is city manager and then act as trustees. They cast crucial votes and provide official input on direction and priorities for the cities.
The new approach was supposed to make the city government more responsive to the public and the effort to achieve great things. The mayor could more directly respond to concern about how the city was operating rather than having a manager and other trustees in between.
The City Council was supposed to be “strong” as well. It would get a new Council president and the independent budget analyst. The Council president would have similar power to the mayor’s before it. The Council was supposed to be more free to create legislative solutions to the city’s problems.
Oddly, while the reformers removed the mayor from the role of presiding over City Council meetings, they wanted the mayor to still preside over one type of meeting: closed sessions. I still wish I knew exactly how those conversations went that someone insisted the mayor get to conduct the Council’s business on its most sensitive responsibilities.
So, was it good to change it? I get this question once every quarter or so at an event. Former supporters of the plan to change the form of government are some of the first to say they were wrong and it has not improved the city’s functioning. With the 20th anniversary of the vote, maybe it would be good to get them all on the record.
I will say I love the independent budget analyst. It’s nice to have a well-resourced almost journalistic entity to explain and examine staff plans and proposals with detail and feel no other allegiance but to the Council as a whole and the public.
But the city does not appear to me to be more impressive and high-functioning than it was in 2004. It doesn’t seem much more capable of getting great things done and delivering excellent service than it was.
I don’t however, see any chance of changing it. The energy and resources it would take to start a Charter Reform Committee or initiative is daunting and I don’t sense the grassroots will to summon them. And I think that while there may be some advantages to switching back, it will always be about the people in these roles.
Any good leader can climb and then make an impact from whatever power-sharing system exists. Nathan Fletcher would have probably been the same leader as a “strong mayor” as he was as the chair of the county Board of Supervisors. If Kevin Faulconer became a supervisor and eventually the chair, he’d probably run things very similar to how he oversaw his thousands of city employees as a mayor.
Dealmaker’s Latest Deal
Civic volunteer and dealmaker Steve Cushman, who has advised many San Diego mayors over the years, has a new assignment this summer: chief negotiator of the proposed mega shelter lease.
After backlash over the city’s initial lease deal, Mayor Todd Gloria’s office last month finalized a contract with the seasoned commercial real estate dealmaker and owner – who does not have a broker’s license – to provide “consultant services related to general real estate matters.”
The contract calls for Cushman to provide services “not to exceed $24,999 over the potential full five-year term of the agreement” to help the city “secur(e) and negotiat(e) a lease for a property to be used for homeless services to house up to 1,000 individuals.”
Gloria spokesperson Rachel Laing said Cushman will receive $1 a year with the city covering the cost of insurance it mandates for consultants. That’ll total $7,000 this year.
In recent weeks, Cushman has regularly negotiated with the owner of the large Middletown warehouse Gloria wants to make a large shelter.
“The mayor’s direction from day one has been not only to me, but to the entire city staff, that it’s got to make sense as a real estate deal,” Cushman said.
Why Cushman? “We enlisted Cushman’s assistance because his lifetime of real estate experience is an asset for the city,” Laing wrote in a text message. “He also brings credibility and the trust of civic leaders as someone who has dedicated his time and efforts to help prevent and address homelessness – from his role as chair of the (Downtown San Diego Partnership) Committee on Downtown Homelessness to serving as (a former) president of the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank.”
The city lacks contracted outside real estate brokers. Since revelations tied to the city’s past nightmare scenario dealings with real estate brokers and their initially unpublicized payouts, the city hasn’t dealt with outside brokers. Laing argued Cushman’s long history of dedicating time, money and effort to the homelessness cause make him “the opposite of the ‘volunteers’ or consultants whose role with the city resulted in personal financial benefit.”
If you have any ideas or feedback for the Politics Report, send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org.