By Paul Krueger and Frank Gormlie
On Thursday, September 26, the Rag received an email from the Larry Turner for Mayor campaign with a troubling announcement.
Turner’s campaign announced that he has been “blocked from participating in a Mayoral Forum at Politifest 2024.”
Politifest is an annual forum run and managed by the media outlet Voice of San Diego with reporter Scott Lewis as the editor.
The Turner campaign announcement went on:
Over three months ago, Larry Turner accepted an invitation to participate in a Mayoral Forum at this year’s Politifest hosted by Voice of San Diego (VOSD). Turner accepted the invite, but learned indirectly through an advertisement of the event that he was not on the schedule. When Turner’s campaign reached out to VOSD, the media outlet shared that Mayor Gloria refused to participate.
The Turner campaign also alleged that despite Turner being “blocked”, the Voice event was “allotting candidate Terra Lawson-Remer a focused Q&A session at Politifest even though her opponent declined to participate.” Lawson-Remer’s opponent, of course, is former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer.
The Rag reached out to Scott Lewis of the Voice – and I’ll describe what happened in a few paragraphs. In the meantime …
Turner released the following statement:
“Voice of San Diego invited two San Diego Mayoral Candidates to debate: the challenger accepted, the failed incumbent declined. If the purpose of Politifest is to bring San Diegans together to get to know candidates on a deeper level, why block a Mayoral Candidate from answering voter questions? The candidate who is willing to face the voters should lead San Diego. One can’t help but conclude establishment media is colluding and covering for failed Mayor Todd Gloria,” said Larry Turner.
Turner’s team also advised that Turner would still “be attending Politifest, and will be available for media, interview, and discussion.”
Politifest is happening this weekend, Saturday, September 28, 2024 from 10 AM to 6 PM at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice, located at 5998 Alcalá Park, University of San Diego, San Diego, California 92110.
And included on its schedule is a debate between the candidates running for San Diego City Attorney (Heather Ferbert vs. Brian Maienschein), the candidates running for San Diego City Council District 9 (Sean Elo-Rivera vs. Terry Hoskins), and San Diego Unified School Board candidates (Sabrina Bazzo vs. Crystal Trull), plus it promises a “Primer of State Ballot Measures” and panel discussions on various issues, such as “Can Government Fix the Tijuana River?”and on one of Turner’s issues, “Our Housing Emergency,” and interestingly enough, one on “The Rise of Incivility in Public.”
Reporter Paul Krueger spoke to Voice’s Scott Lewis by phone this morning and filed this report.
Lewis said he won’t be interviewing Turner at Politifest because he interviewed him at length for an August 14 Voice of San Diego podcast. (See this )
Lewis said he previously invited both Turner and the Mayor to appear at Politifest, but when the Mayor’s campaign staff declined, a Voice staffer informed the Turner campaign that the planned mayoral forum would be dropped from the Politifest schedule.
Lewis insisted that Turner’s team acknowledged that decision, and understood there would be no Turner-Gloria debate.
He said the Turner campaign is now trying to turn the tables by falsely claiming the Voice is “blocking” Turner from Politifest.
As for his decision to interview Terra Lawson-Remer at Politifest in the absence of her opponent Keven Faulconer, Lewis says that’s appropriate because this will be Lawson-Remer’s first in-depth interview with the Voice.
And Lewis has no problem with Turner’s plan for a lunch-hour news conference and protest outside the Politifest venue. “I’m glad to have him,” Lewis said. “This is what Politifest is all about, bringing people together.”
“I’ll give him a table and a mic, and tell the DJ to turn the music down.” [Editordude: an earlier version of this post stated “…turn the music on.”]
This breaking story is accompanied by a humorous photo of 2 of San Diego’s former mayoral candidates at Politifest 2012: candidates Bob Filner vs Carl DeMaio.
That last quote was vintage Lewis. The dude has a thin skin for someone in his line of work.
When Lewis says he’ll have amplified music turned on, does he mean he intends to drown Turner out? I hope I’m reading that wrong. Biased news coverage is bad enough. Spite and pettiness would be a whole other level of debasement for someone who purports to be a journalist.
A correction for my portion of this story. Scott Lewis actually told me tell the DJ to turn the music down, not “on.” Which of course makes sense. Nice gesture on Scott’s part, to quiet the music so Turner’s supporters and the media can hear him speak in protest outside the venue. Should be an interesting side note to Saturday’s agenda, and my apologies to Scott for the misquote.
Paul, thanks for clarifying. You’re right, it is a nice gesture. But it would be nicer if Lewis included Turner on the official program.
Wow, surprised that Scott Lewis equates an appearance at Politifest with a regular every day podcast but I’m sure the mayor is grateful.
I realize that it’s difficult to interpret an attitude when reading text. But in this case, it’s consistent enough to pick up a very dismissive and disrespectful tone from VOSD towards Larry Turner.
I don’t listen to podcasts; so, a Q&A with Larry Turner ON STAGE would be a good reason for me to attend Politifest.
In fact, even if I’d heard the podcast… San Diego has SO MANY disastrous topics to discuss …. C’MON! This man is running to be the next MAYOR of San Diego and is anxious to inform Voters about his ideas.
I personally have no interest in hearing Mayor Gloria speak. #1- in the 2020 race, he didn’t honor any of his campaign promises and even worse, his policies are the OPPOSITE of the platform he ran on. So, what’s the point?
#2- Mayor Gloria has no desire to speak to Voters. He thinks we’ll grill him about 101 ASH ST. Or his criminalization of homeless people. Or his desperate grab of Stormwater Drain funds to put towards ASH ST while underserved communities went underwater. And you know what? For once, he’s correct. We will.
If San Diegans truly want change, not just something to complain about, then vote for larryturnerformayor.com He’s made tough decisions, and shown his leadership skills for 23yr. and retired as a LT.COL. in the US Marine Corp, and is now a cop assigned to the downtown area, not afraid to co-mingle with the homeless and has a viable plan to get them off the streets, not afraid to make decisions AND is not beholden to either mainstream party, and certainly NOT to developers. He wants to bring DEM and REPUB’s working to gether to change the way of the failures for at least the last 4 yrs.
Larry Turner is backed by the far right Business Assoc which backs far right candidates up and down the ballot. I doubt they would back a true Independent. This can be found out by looking it up. Turner speaks of leaders on “both sides” who will work with him on his ideas. Who are they? I cannot find any indication of this. His work in the marines was in the Secret Service. Can we trust him?
Evie – here’s something that may blow your mind. The head of the Lincoln Club gave to Gloria — he and his spouse gave the max.
I’ve not been impressed with VOSD over the years. The Rag is vastly superior
For a non-profit news outfit claiming to represent all of San Diego they are woefully short of minority reporter representation. They have one Hispanic woman and one black woman. The rest of the crew is lily white. Hmmm.
I am impressed with Larry Turner. I heard him speak for the first time on a military podcast a few weeks ago. I think it would be worth your time to listen to it if you are on the fence as to the mayor’s race.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cleared-hot/id1247300054?i=1000668870696