Gloria Loyalists Attack Editordude, the Rag and Ocean Beach in Red-Baiting Rant Filled with Half-Truths and Hypocrises

A small group of Mayor Gloria loyalists have attacked Frank Gormlie –“Editordude” at the OB Rag, the Rag itself and Ocean Beach in a recently published book — as well as in online interviews.

Authors Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew grouped a series of interviews of local San Diegans into a book published in 2025, which included interviews with three individuals who all disparaged the Rag and Gormlie. They include Doug Porter who Gormlie lifted from obscurity after a 30-year hiatus from San Diego into becoming an early writer for the online Rag, and Ricardo Ochoa, a local attorney whom Gormlie has never met and vice versa.

This clique of Gloriaistas has supported and endorsed the mayor over these last six or more years, despite any evidence that he has been worthy of their support, and have opposed those who are critical of the mayor — like Gormlie and the Rag. While the Rag supported Gloria’s opponents, like Democrat Barbara Bry and Geneviéve Jones-Wright (probably the most left-wing mayoral candidate in San Diego’s history), Miller and others dumped on those with the Rag.

The most inflammatory interview by Miller and Mayhew was with Gregg Robinson, a retired college professor, who went on a rant which attacked Gormlie and the Rag in a red-baiting, terrorist- baiting, defamatory screed, filled with lies, half-truths and hypocrisies. (In a 9-page rant, nearly a third was used to attack Gormlie and the Rag.)

For one example where Robinson personally attacked Gormlie, in the interview published online, Robinson without any proof accuses Gormlie of selling drugs at West Point — which Gormlie attended for a couple of years. This was a gross lie, which could be potentially actionable as defamation.

The charges of of red-baiting and worse stem from a series of accusations against Gormlie’s early history as a community organizer in Ocean Beach. Robinson accuses Editordude of being Weather Underground, a militant anti-war group that evolved out of the movements in the sixties and early seventies. Robinson uses the group’s name three times in an obvious attempt at smearing Gormlie. Many in those former movements understand what the group was, but Robinson plays on people’s fears and trepidation with hopes that people will equate the group as a domestic terrorist organization and then, nullify the community work Gormlie did, including launching the original OB Rag newspaper in 1971. This, then, is clearly red-baiting and an example of terrorist-baiting.

The disparagement of Gormlie and the Rag comes at a dangerous time in modern American history, as the Trump administration is going after journalists, progressive media, and attacking progressive groups like the ACLU, Southern Poverty Legal Center and the National Lawyers Guild. Not only that, but centrists Democrats are currently red-baiting Democratic Socialists who have been winning primary elections.

What’s going on here?

So, why would this small group of apparently out-of-touch people go after Gormlie and the Rag? For an example of how out of touch Robinson is, he claims Ocean Beach is not what it used to be (what or who is?) “…that community now is no longer a bunch of hippies and leftists. It’s largely a bunch of privileged white middle-class homeowners.”

OB was never just “hippies and leftists” but it certainly is not today what Robinson charges. In fact, 70% to 80% of Ocean Beach residents are renters.

“To go after me and the Rag right now — what with Trump is doing — is totally outrageous and despicable. No true progressive or leftist would do such a thing, to jump on the Trump bandwagon like this at a time like this,” Gormlie said. “I’m sure the right-wing in San Diego is rejoicing.”

Gormlie continued: “Over the last few years, the Rag has established itself as a pole of intellectual and political thought outside the mainstream Democratic Party establishment, as an alternative to Gloria’s absolute lock on local Dems. Robinson, Miller et all really resent that we’ve done this.”

One local activist comforted Gormlie by telling him that he should really see this attack as “a compliment,” that it’s a testament to how effective the Rag has become, how it has gotten under the skin of the San Diego establishment. “If the Rag wasn’t effective,” the activist said, “they would ignore you.”

Gormlie mused, “It’s almost like someone on high has told Miller and Robinson to go after the Rag.” In fact, a couple of years ago, Doug Porter told the Rag that “someone was out to get the Rag.”

In truth, the Rag has not played along with the party line. The Rag supported the recall of councilmember Jen Campbell, a Gloria ally, for her efforts to circumvent real limits to short-term vacation rentals. The Rag has continued to criticize Campbell for her attempts to destroy the 30-foot height limit in the Midway District and other sections of the coast. Plus the Rag has been critical of other Democrats on the city council — and Gloria, of course. (Remember Ash Street?)

There’s more to the story, which will be covered below.

So, who is Gregg Robinson? In the very second sentence of his interview, he works to establish himself as a working-class hero. He went on to college at UCSD, where Gormlie knew him.

Gormlie recounted:

Yes, we attended the same classes of Herbert Marcuse and mingled with activists like Angela Davis. But Gregg was no anti-war leader at UCSD as he suggests, but was a member of a group called the Socialist Workers Party and their student group, Student Mobilization Committee — which many at the time, called a “Trotskyist” group, in the lexicon of the Sixties. The SMC actually worked to downplay the work of other anti-Vietnam war activists on campus by pretending they were the only “true” anti-war group.

Gregg needs to go back and re-read some of Marcuse.

Robinson clearly disparaged Gormlie’s work in OB, but he never admitted he used to write a column in the Eighties for Gormlie’s publication called “The Whole Damn Pie Shop,” which was a left-wing alternative to the San Diego Reader at the time. Gregg does admit he worked with Gormlie in an Ocean Beach group called the OB Grassroots Organization a quarter of a century ago, which Gormlie was instrumental in starting. We must suppose then that Gormlie’s politics weren’t that extreme if Robinson worked with him through the 1980s and the early years of this century.

Gregg ended up with a PhD in Sociology and became a college professor for many years, and in the last few years was elected to the County Board of Education. Today — and for the last quarter of this century — Gregg has lived in a huge, three-story house, seven blocks from the beach with a nice view of the Pacific Ocean. One of his housemates actually writes a monthly column for the Rag.

As Gormlie often reiterates, “I love being lectured to by a white, male college professor who lives in a large coastal house. White, male college professors are one of the most privileged sectors in American society.”

In his interview with Miller, Robinson as mentioned, used a third of it to go after Gormlie and the Rag. Yet, not once, did Robinson criticize Gloria or his policies. Plus, there’s not one mention of “developers” in the interview, even though they’re responsible for San Diego’s lack of affordable housing and have actually ruled the city for a century or more. There’s not one mention of Gloria’s open corruption — the most blatant example being the guy who got the contract to build Midway Rising was Gloria’s top campaign contributor (Brad Termini and his spouse). We must assume that this is okay with Robinson, Miller et al. There is no criticism from Robinson on the other members of the current city council or of the state legislature either.

There’s a lot left out in Robinson’s interview. He mentions Trump once; nothing about the Iran war or Trump’s plans to rig the mid-terms (in truth, the interview in the book was published in 2025 — before the war and fears of the mid-terms). Still, to downplay the threats from Trump’s fascist designs even last year is difficult to understand.

The core complaint of Robinson is that the Rag has become “reactionary” and is the voice of NIMBYism. More on that in a minute.

What’s telling in Robinson (and Miller’s) viewpoint is what is left out of the critique of the Rag. There’s no mention that the Rag works to be a bastion of anti-Trumpism in San Diego, that the Rag provided by far the best, most complete coverage of the “No Kings Day” protests throughout the county. No mention either of the Rag’s support for the Black Lives Matter events locally and nationally a few years ago. No mention of the support the Rag has given to labor, feminist and environmental causes; no mention of support for locally-elected Community Planning Groups (in fact Robinson takes a swipe against CPGs); no mention that the Rag made the issue of homelessness a civil rights issue a few years ago and urged the boycott of a local OB store that sold stickers that disparaged and made fun of homeless people, that the Rag has covered this countless times.

In fact, in his self-adsorbed narrative, Robinson calls Gormlie and the Rag “an apologist for NIMBYs and their hatred of homeless centers and the building of housing in their communities.” This statement is so wrong, that it’s difficult to respond to. What the Rag has done over the last 19 years as an online newspaper refutes all of this.

What Robinson also overlooks is the Rag’s role over the last three years in becoming a voice for those neighborhoods across the city that have stood up to the housing policies of the current establishment. And there’s a lot of unrest and unhappiness out there. From Encanto, Golden Hill, North Park, Linda Vista, Clairemont and other communities, there’s been a revolt against City Hall which the Rag has noted.

Why is there such unrest?

Paul Krueger is a civic activist, a long-time observer of City Hall, and occasional writer for the Rag. When notified of the Robinson accusations, here’s what he had to say:

It’s beyond me how anyone who identifies as a political “progressive” can endorse Todd Gloria, who, in his current iteration unequivocally endorses land development policies that champion cold-hearted corporate landlords and free-market investors on the hunt for double-digit returns on their blood-money investments.

The Mayor’s “Complete Communities” and “Bonus ADU Program” ignore the righteous concerns of working class residents and specifically communities of color. Those programs incentivize predatory developers, who build high-density, market-rate housing in communities that lack the infrastructure (some of these neighborhoods don’t even have sidewalks!) to absorb this density.

Why has Krueger — and the Rag and Gormlie — been so opposed to Gloria’s policies? It’s because of what those policies have done. Paul explains:

The multi-unit, poorly-designed cracker boxes have no off-street parking, which forces working and immigrant families to search for parking blocks from where they live, exposing them to nighttime dangers and a much greater risk of auto theft and vandalism.

Gloria designed, promoted, and defends these and other retrograde land development programs that silence community concerns by “fast-tracking” high-density, multi-story rental complexes. The “ministerial” approval process denies residents in Encanto, Emerald Hills, Mt. Hope, Linda Vista and south Clairemont the ability to review these projects and have any input on the significant negative impacts these projects have.

Of equal concern is the fact that this new construction yields an inordinate number of small studio and one-bedroom apartments, which rent for $2,700 a month (or more), with a tiny smattering of so-called “affordable” housing, which, at $2,200/month, is clearly “unaffordable,” by any metric.

By attacking Gormlie and Rag under an undefined label such as “NIMBYism” is such an unprincipled tactic that it raises questions of why respond at all. They label him and the Rag and then don’t have to honestly and accurately describe what they are. It’s a debate tactic; label your opponent with an emotionally-charged term and that’s all you have to do; you don’t have to actually take on the differences or policy nuances.

Because the word for the attack comes from on-high. Someone apparently got to Miller a year ago, and he collaborated with others to go after the Rag. So, while Editordude was  recuperating from open-heart surgery, this clique got together and decided that they would take on the dirty work. Robinson’s interview; Doug Porter’s interview (not as disparaging as Robinson’s, but still insulting and ahistorical); and Ochoa who claimed the “OB Rag … was the bastion of the weird left in San Diego, [and] has just become so reactionary. It’s also been troubling to see segments of what I would still define as the left echo those thoughts and pretend there really isn’t a housing crisis and that there is no need to do more building.”

Of course, this is not the Rag’s position — and it never has been.

Gormlie: “We continue to advocate for more affordable housing, and remind everyone that there is not a housing crisis, but an affordable housing crisis. There’s plenty of market rate housing out there, just it’s not affordable.”

“In fact, no one outside the Rag has been such an advocate for affordable housing in the redevelopments coming down the pike, like Midway Rising and NAVWAR, like we have.”

Without admitting it, Robinson and Miller have become the voice of YIMBYism. YIMBYism is a bankrupt policy that does nothing to alleviate the housing crisis. Their position is just to build, baby, build, and this will “trickle down” to those on the lower economic rungs. It doesn’t work that way. YIMBYism and its cohorts, like Circulate San Diego, have become shrills for the developer class — whose profit-making is supreme. As mentioned earlier, this is all ignored by Gormlie’s accusers.

Paul Krueger has something to say about this.

These predatory developers and their quick-buck investors also destroy existing entry-level for-sale housing when they scrape existing single-family lots to make room for rental housing. This process reduces our city’s inventory of entry-level, for-sale housing, inflates home prices, and deprives working class families of the ability to purchase a home.

The mayor’s policies relegate thousands of young San Diegans to a life in a 417-square- foot apartment with no parking, no yard for their children and pets, and a future burdened with maximum yearly rent increases, with no prospect of the stability and generational wealth building that home ownership offers.

In the end, these attacks against Gormlie and the Rag prove one thing: Robinson and Miller have become voices for the establishment Democratic Party. They toe the party line so much — a party line dripping with scandal and open corruption, developer abuse, that they have been admitted to the Gloria bubble. ‘Nothing to see here.’

It’s a bubble that refuses to see the disdain for City Hall that is currently raging across the city. Robinson’s answer is that ‘these are all white, middle-class property-owners who should be ignored.’ He has become as blind and out-of-touch as Gloria and cannot fathom that there are Democrats who don’t like what’s going on, that anyone who is attempting to craft an intellectual and political hub outside the establishment deserves to be attacked.

Miller and Mayhew — and Porter — are enabling that blindness. While their book claims “solidarity”, this attack mired in red-baiting, terrorist-baiting, innuendo, half-truths and hypocrisy, is anything but. At the very least, they need to drop the “progressive” moniker. They have become part of the establishment.