Category: Election

Faulconer and Fletcher Both No-Shows at Mayoral Debate

In front of a full audience, the Ocean Beach Town Council held their mayoral election forum last night, Oct. 23rd, at the Masonic Center. Newly-elected president Gretchen Newsom led her first public council meeting and welcomed candidates David Alvarez and Mike Aguirre. Nathan Fletcher sent a representative – whereas no one from Faulconer’s campaign showed.

Sixty people filled up the meeting room on the bottom floor of the two-story building on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard – some had come to hear a presentation on San Diego banning plastic bags.

Newsom cleaned the agenda and got to the forum part of the night, using her favorite expression, “without further a due”.

David Alvarez – a native San Diegan and current City Councilmember – took the floor and explained his modest beginnings. He got into politics as a community activist for his neighborhood and, stressing that his campaign and office would focus on the neighborhoods of the city, Alvarez said,”San Diego is a neighborhood city.”

Editor: The following is the first part in a series being published by our online media partner, San Diego Free Press, as a ‘virtual mayoral forum’.

One of the best ways for voters to learn about candidates is via debates.

Debates, however, have real limitations. The positive aspect of actually being able to see a candidate as a person can be countered by constraints of time and space. Sometimes its hard to follow what’s being said, especially if things get heated and candidates start talking across each other.

So we came up with the concept of presenting a virtual debate; an event where the only opinions will be the ones proffered by the candidates. And we tried to come up with questions that were not trite or unnecessarily open ended. (If you’re looking questions about the Chargers, go to any one of the other debates.)

The OB Town Council is holding a San Diego mayoral candidate forum tonight at it’s monthly meeting, October 23rd.

The meeting begins at 7pm and is held at the Masonic Center. The center is located at 1711 Sunset Cliffs Blvd. in OB, 92107.

We have heard from the Council’s new prez, Gretchen Newsom, that of the major candidates, David Alvarez and Mike Aguirre are confirmed to be attending.

See inside for details and format, plus the rest of the agenda ….

by Frank Gormlie

It’s very clear – Kevin Faulconer really doesn’t want you – the liberal voter at the beach – to vote for Nathan Fletcher. Faulconer, of course, is OB’s current City Councilperson and sole Republican candidate for mayor of all San Diego. And of course, Nathan Fletcher is one of his Democratic opponents.

Two recent, slick campaign fliers have recently hit the beach area and tell the story.

One of them shouts out that “Nathan Fletcher is a trusted conservative.” as a quote from liberal nemesis, Karl Rove. Natch, there’s also a nice color photo next to the quote showing Fletcher and Rove standing together – and Karl has a huge smile.

So, get the picture so far? Up at the return address, you see “Paid for by The Lincoln Club of San Diego County”, and think, okay, the Lincoln Club is generally a pro-business GOP group and they just want you to know that Fletcher is indeed “a trusted conservative.”

You turn over the glossy flier and see this: the back end of a big, ol’ truck with half dozen right-wing bumper stickers plastered all over it.

By David Helvarg / Blue Notes

Work on ocean and coastal protection, management, law enforcement, federal science and safety ground to a near halt with the government shutdown when the Republican House majority refused to pass the nation’s budget because Obamacare became law.

This disaster comes on top of the ongoing budget “sequester” that randomly slashes funding for federal agencies dealing with our public seas including EPA, NOAA and the U.S. Coast Guard which has reduced its offshore patrolling roughly 15 percent and, with the shutdown, effectively ended fishing enforcement and marine mammal law enforcement.

Despite our Healthy Ocean Hill Day in May that saw seaweed activists lobbying Congress on behalf of an Anti-Pirate Fishing bill, right now is a good time to be a pirate. With over 90 percent of EPA shut down it’s an even better time to be a polluter dumping poison into our seas.

“Meet and Greet” Is Covered by Famous OB Rag Columnist

A “meet and greet” was held on Sunday, Oct. 13th, in Ocean Beach to introduce us to David Alvarez, a candidate running for the position of Mayor of San Diego.

It was the first time that many of the attendees had ever met Mr. Alvarez, and there was great interest from the over 50 people in attendance in what he had to say, how he said it, and what he sees for the future of San Diego. He gave willingly of his time, and spent almost three hours answering every question asked. It is interesting to note that at no time did he evade the questions, and from this observation was honest and sincere in what he said.

By Jim Miller

After my last column on the perils of Carl Luna’s characterization of progressives supporting Democratic mayoral candidate David Alvarez as the “Tea Party of the Left” I got a response from Luna.

In his comment to my article posted at the OB Rag, he stood by his analogy “that those in the Democratic camp who hold that there are ‘true’ progressives (aka those they agree with) and DINOS are in danger of going down the Tea Party rabbit hole—like the Occupy Wall Street people run wild. (Except that Tea Party has 90 seats in Congress—OWS zero).”

This was prefaced by a reminder that, “the point of elections is to win.”

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Did you ever suspect you were being taken for a ride but decide to go along with it anyway? Did you ever ignore that little voice inside your head warning you to watch out! because the guy conning you was so smooth, so really cute, how could you say no?

You’ve just been introduced to Nathan Fletcher in his rematch race for mayor of San Diego.

Nathan Fletcher is funny, engaging, self-deprecating, and a topnotch storyteller.

By Jim Miller

To the surprise of many over the last couple of weeks, San Diego’s Labor Council, the San Diego Democratic Party, San Diego Democrats for Equality, Progressive San Diego, the Environmental Health and Justice Campaign, and a host of other local progressives have all lined up to endorse David Alvarez for Mayor.

by Jim Miller

This last week marked the two-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, a political happening that finally put the issue of economic inequality in the spotlight and started a national discussion about money, class, and political corruption. That movement was largely brought to us by young people, Millennials mostly, whose view of mainstream politics is justifiably jaded.

As Peter Beinart recently pointed out, “Compared to their Reagan-Clinton generation elders, Millennials are entering adulthood in an America where government provides much less economic security. And their economic experience in this newly deregulated America has been horrendous.”

And this experience has been made worse by bankrupt politics that pits what Beinart rightly characterizes as “a procapitalist, anti-bureaucratic Reaganized liberalism” that is “inclined toward market solutions” to everything against a radicalized “right wing populism”:

OB Rag Mid-September Readers Poll on San Diego Mayoral Candidates

The results are in for our latest readers’ poll on the candidates for San Diego’s next mayor. With Lori Saldana on top with a third of the votes, Democrats did indeed sweep the field – not a surprise due to our generally liberal and independent readers.

Bruce Coons came in with a quarter of those responding (24%), and Mike Aguirre (14%) and David Alvarez (13%) fighting for third place.

The lone Republican in the race, Kevin Falconer, placed fifth along with Democrat Nathan Fletcher, both with 7%. Marti Emerald brought up the pack with 3%, “minor candidate” choice received 1%, and the last option, “cannot or will not vote” also got 1% of those polled.

The poll was up for about a week, and exactly 200 readers voted during that time.