All The King’s Men in San Diego

Screen capture from Gloria’s video.

By Mat Wahlstrom

By now most of you know about “the video”(If you don’t, see the link to a capture of it that includes the subtitles so you can watch it without sound. Trust me, you’ll want to hit mute.)

Created for the amusement of those attending the $445-a-head “ToddTalk” fundraiser for the Downtown Partnership on September 22 but only made public by accident last week, it is a perfect distillation of the collegial corruption and smug entitlement exercised by the Establishment.

Which is why those who aren’t members of the Establishment were never intended to be allowed to see it in the first place and why the original was quickly removed — and won’t be restored. And it’s why one can see those already connected or wanting to be connected to power falling over themselves to dismiss its importance by either not commenting or calling it simply ‘having fun.’

Because whether one pronounces it harmless or nauseating is to identify one’s allegiance to The Way Things Work in San Diego.

That this video was made with elected city officials who used public resources (such as the mayor’s office and city council chambers) in a possible violation of state law to solicit “behested payments” from those doing business with the city on behalf of a city agency that administers the city’s wealthiest assessment district and which spent over $120,000 last year on PACs to elect these same officials — should be a big deal.

And that’s even before considering that the video itself begs off accountability for governance failures by these same current city officials and repeats the same allegations made by parties of interest in current city lawsuits.

And if that’s not enough, it was a tour de force in cluelessness, cultural appropriation, and cruel metaphors (‘cleaning up’ choreography with brooms while police conduct homeless ‘sweeps’ before public events by the video participants) — proof positive that “San Diego is California’s second largest city, but doesn’t act like it.”

But like a Russian nesting doll, this video contains even more layers of meaning.

There is simply no way that Kevin Faulconer, the Establishment’s heretofore golden boy, could ever have been singled out for this absolute trashing unless it had been approved at the highest level.

Sure, he’d been a terrible mayor for the people; but he always stumped for the developer and other donor class interests on everything that mattered to them. The scandals revealed under his watch were entirely in keeping with business as usual.

Yet his recent performance in the gubernatorial recall election proved he had no chance of ever expanding their influence beyond San Diego, and he was sloppy in covering up his dirty work, so it was necessary to signal to the audience that the Establishment will not tolerate failure.

It was a message from the de facto mayor of San Diego delivered by ventriloquism.

For those of you who don’t know: “Gerald Robert ‘Jerry’ Sanders is a former American politician and law enforcement officer from San Diego, California. He is the former [Republican] Mayor of San Diego and former Chief of Police. As of December 2012, he [became] the president and CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce” — the very next day after leaving office due to term limits and where he is still today.

‘Former’ is doing a lot of work there. Originally elected as mayor in 2005 in the runoff after Dick Murphy’s resignation in a heartbreaking win over progressive Donna Frye, Jerry Sanders was the first to serve under — and learn the ins and outs of — our current ‘strong mayor system’ of city government.

While in office, he torpedoed fellow elected then-City Attorney Mike Aguirre for the latter’s reformist activism (and role in exposing Sander’s Sunroad fiasco with the FAA), and worked to replace him in 2008 with Jan Goldsmith, who toed his line until terming out in 2016.

But it was before and after the mayoral election in 2012 that Sanders revealed his role as kingmaker.

The two lead Republican candidates were Carl DeMaio and Kevin Faulconer. One can find numerous news articles about it, but what is clear is that Sanders blackballed DeMaio and DeMaio refused to accept it. The fact that DeMaio had enough personal wealth to not be beholden to Sanders or others in the Establishment was likely the deciding factor for both of them.

[Note: I have no connection with or interest in either Faulconer or DeMaio beyond these facts. As far as I’m concerned they’re both pond scum.]

And as we know, this split the registered Republican voter majority at that time to elect as mayor the Democratic candidate, Bob Filner, who explicitly ran as a challenger to the Establishment.

[Note: I have no connection with or interest in Filner beyond these facts. As far as I’m concerned he’s pond scum.]

Although deeply compromised, Filner quickly set about making changes that threatened the Establishment. From fast-tracking voter-approved cannabis legalization measures to cutting off the hotelier cabal’s Tourism Marketing District slush fund, he made enemies without making friends. So when he was forced to resign in disgrace nine months later, it was at the hands of a Sanders-brokered agreement between City Attorney Goldsmith, Councilmember Faulconer, and Council President Todd Gloria.

Hey, there’s even a video about that!

And what did we get for it? The spectacular failure of our Panama-California Exposition centennial in 2015, the Plaza de Panama debacle, and Civic San Diego — all crony insider enrichment schemes. In other words, business as usual.

Immediately after the election last November, Voice of San Diego wrote soothingly of Gloria’s hiring a Sander’s VP at the Chamber of Commerce as his chief of staff and Sander’s former chief financial officer while mayor as his chief operating officer.

(Needless to say, Faulconer also had a former Chamber of Commerce VP as his chief of staff and a former chair of the Downtown Partnership as his chief operating officer.)

For all the protestations, lip-synced and otherwise, by Gloria that Faulconer was a liar who left him a mess to clean up, it’s striking the number of his senior staffers and department heads that were kept on from his administration — and more would still be there, if it weren’t for the 101 Ash Street scandal.

And can anyone name a single Republican Faulconer policy that Democrat Gloria has reversed?

The consequences are not trivial. Most significant is the continued tenure of Faulconer appointee Chief Nisleit as head of the San Diego Police Department, despite all the abuses documented during #BlackLivesMatter protests, including plain-clothed officers abducting people off the street, to SDPD’s continued blocking reforms passed by voters and of course homeless sweeps. (Not a coincidence that Sanders got his start at SDPD in 1973 and was chief from 1993 to 1999.)

So, back to the video. This weekend, Voice of San Diego was once again on hand to soothe those behind their paywall wanting to know the official Establishment response, and they did not disappoint: “The bipartisan participation also drove home a kind of shared sense of who was in charge, a club where, despite differences, they could all laugh.”

The king is dead, long live the king.