Hey, local politics geeks, to celebrate this New-Hampshire-primary Tuesday, let’s morph the candidates for mayor of San Diego with the candidates for president of the United States!
Candidate CarlPaul
Carl DeMaio seems akin to Ron Paul: a conservative outsider with a quirky personality who seems to enjoy rattling cages on both sides of the aisle.
As a candidate, CarlPaul would sport a perpetual disdain for the effectiveness of government, an admittedly eyebrow-raising characteristic for someone seeking more time as a government employee. Because government sometimes is ineffective, and sometimes worse, CarlPaul’s cranky message would carry more than a little truth and earn the support of a diverse range of disenfranchised folks with axes to grind, including many axes of the not-very-sharp variety.
Candidate DuTorum
When it comes to Bonnie Dumanis, the proper foil might be Rick Santorum. Both candidates are Republican lawyers who are long-shots to win their races. Both have gained political advantage by picking on disadvantaged groups, from medical marijuana patients to undocumented immigrants.
Both reportedly prefer the company of women, though Santorum believes only he does so with God’s permission. Candidate DuTorum, therefore, at first might seem conflicted. But you know what they say: politics makes strange bedfellows. And no matter who politicians are sleeping with, the rest of us are usually getting screwed.
The Gingrichs and Star Trike
Now, America’s number-one public servant, Newt Gingrich, may have a soul brother in perennial San Diego mayoral candidate and biker/magician Loch David Crane. Crane is often seen driving “Star Trike,” a sci-fi-themed, three-wheeled motorcycle, while Gingrich’s eye-catching accessory is his trophy wife, Calista, a fan of luxury products who apparently believes men can change.
Gingrich and Crane always seem to turn up around election time, even though you wouldn’t really want either to use your bathroom, let alone run your government. Together Newt and Loch would form LochNewt, a candidate that blends voting-booth irrelevance with wacky-old-man irreverence.
Candidate ObamRomFletch
Finishing up, Nathan Fletcher matches with both Obama and Romney: camera-friendly, establishment-endorsed, funded by the 1%. Morphing the three of them would produce ObamRomFletch, a smooth speaker who gives lip service to the importance of education and other public services — while pushing for more standardized testing and for a new taxpayer-funded stadium for the Spanos family.
In the San Diego mayoral race, voters have a true progressive candidate in Bob Filner. But no such candidate exists in the presidential race. This means the pool of “morphed” candidates would not include anyone with appeal to true progressives — forcing some to consider voting for CarlPaul, just because he calls out the obvious bullshit of all the rest.
Wouldn’t that suck?
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Ron Paul is, I’m told, a lot nicer human being than Carl DeMaio.
I should add that I’ve never met Loch David Crane but from what I know I like him — and this piece was meant to be fun, but I still feel kinda bad for associating him with Newt Gingrich, which virtually no one deserves.
Dixon, don’t feel badly. LDC has a very checkered “career” in San Diego politics. Hardly a progressive, LDC will dress up as uncle sam and then let fly a rant of racism.
Carl doesn’t have a perpetual disdain for the effectiveness of government. He has disdain for ineffective government. The city is broke. Don’t you get it? Carl is man enough to shed light on the problem and has great ideas on ways to fix it.
Thanks for your opinion. In my observation, politicians who favor handing over public property and services to private interests often say they want to do it for the good of the public, but are usually doing it for the good of the private interests. I’d like to think DeMaio is different, but I don’t see enough evidence of that.
A Carl fan – refreshing diversity for the rag. Good for Felipe. But – yes, there’s always a but. Carl presents himself as a budget expert. I am a budget professional (retired). Carl doesn’t get it – he’s fluff – skips details and has little idea of what it takes to actually manage a city. You may hate the word, but cities are by their very structure socialistic – cooperative enterprises – we share things – water, sewer, space. To shed light he needs to be enlightened. The city is broke – mismanaged – by the former chief of police. But ask yourself – to have a modern city what do we need? What is beautiful about San Diego people did nothing to create. What people create in SD works poorly and breaks quickly. Daily water main breaks, leaking sewers, broken roads and the most expensive yet unusable public transit system in the State if not the Country. Exactly how is Carl going to fix a single one? I know, a new concept – sell our neighborhood streets to the highest bidder and start paying tolls to drive home. For for thought Felipe – in 2009 Norway, yes quasi-socialistic Norway was declared the most business friendly country in the world – by a business group. Go figure.
Oil wealth from the North Sea (imagine if we tapped into our oil wealth, but I digress), high prices and a relatively high standard of living don’t mean Norway is free from a certain degree of public poverty. Debate continues over why such a wealthy country doesn’t have top-notch schools, better roads and a train system that works, or why patients often must face waiting lists for medical care.
getting a bit off-topic, but “a certain degree of public poverty” seems inevitable in any society, but the percentage of Americans living in poverty is way higher than the percentage of Norweigans living in poverty.
In fact, among developed nations, America has one of the highest poverty rates in the world. And the US is also more of an aristocracy than meritocracy (as this heartbreaker shows http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all ).
Bottom line, all else being equal, a baby born in Norway has much better odds of making good than a baby born in the United States.