Mayor Gloria Tries to Save the Strong Mayor 

Twenty years ago, the city’s politics were in such chaos that by April 2005, the mayor at the time, Dick Murphy, announced he was going to quit.  

Murphy had successfully gotten city voters to approve the switch to the strong mayor form of government, but it would not come into place until 2006. At the start of that year, the mayor would no longer be just a presiding member of the City Council but the actual CEO of the city – the manager of most of the city’s employees.  

Jerry Sanders had a plan for this, and he campaigned on it: You wouldn’t have to trust him to run the operations of the city, he said. He was running as a ticket with his friend, Ronne Froman, whom he would make the city’s first chief operating officer. Froman, a former Navy admiral and the Navy “mayor” of San Diego was perfect for the job.  

That’s how a nearly two-decade long run of COOs began that San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria broke Tuesday when he eliminated the position of chief operating officer and dismissed its current occupant, Eric Dargan. The mayor will now meet with top city managers himself and direct their priorities.  

His staff insists he’s not just cutting out a middleman but his day-to-day job will radically change as he meets and communicates more directly with managers.  

“The actions I’m enacting today are not easy but I believe reflect government efficiencies that are necessary and a full implementation of the strong-mayor form of government voters approved in 2004,” he said.  

He knows people are murmuring that the strong-mayor form of government was a mistake. Gloria knows that’s happening while he is the supposed strong mayor.  

City voters had approved, in 2004, giving the mayor far more power than that position had had since the 1930s, but Sanders immediately delegated it. The city voters had said “yes, replace the city manager with the mayor” but the mayor had just decided to hire a city manager. It was a tacit admission to the critics of the strong mayor change (among them Sanders himself who had signed the ballot measure opposing it): Politicians would be no good at running the operations of the city,  

Mayors since then have stretched the power of the office. Former Mayor Bob Filner tested the limits of how much he could make staff do so much and so fast that it contributed to his downfall. After him, former Mayor Kevin Faulconer figured out just how much power the mayor has to set the city’s budget (almost unilateral) and then he stumbled into a historic real-estate boondoggle.  

But all of them left the nitty gritty of running a city up to their chief operating officers.  

Until now.  

It’s not clear what forced Gloria’s hand. The criticisms of Dargan were mounting. His aimlessness and lack of leadership as the city careened toward a historic deficit had finally led to open hostility at the City Council. Cutting his position was also not without its own benefits as Gloria looks for money to close the deficit.  

But it also seems clear Gloria sees his legacy slipping way. The city’s problems are bad and the quality of life, cost of living, infrastructure problems and homelessness crisis all seem worse than when he started.  

It’s not hard to imagine voters revolting and trying to get rid of the strong mayor form of government and leave him as the mayor that let it happen. Like 20 years ago, nothing good is in store for a mayor when his critics feel more and more emboldened to express not just negative observations but straight up contempt. 

He had no choice but to either let it bury him or do something to shake things up.  

He chose the latter and now all he has to do is run the city. Fortunately for him, that’s what voters elected him to do.