Developers' Disagreement Doomed Prop. B

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Richard Chase, one of the developers behind Proposition B, the plan to build a deck atop the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal, said a "philosophical disagreement" with his business partner, Frank Gallagher, had led to the anemic campaign for the initiative.

The developers raised enough money to fund an effort to get enough signatures on a petition to put the initiative on the ballot. But then they didn't raise another cent. After July 1, they reported raising no cash for the campaign.

At the same time their campaign was lagging, opponents to the concept formed one of the most robust coalitions of any recent election -- Mayor Jerry Sanders and labor unions are not often teamed up together. Opponents raised more than $400,000 to fund a campaign that included television commercials.

Chase said he'd had a fundamental disagreement with Gallagher about how to introduce their initiative to the public and rally support. Chase said his hope was for "an inclusive project where all of the groups and companies and organization should have in the very early stages been brought in as part of the stakeholders. Obviously it was public land and it was worth a great deal more than the value it was producing. The real value should be divided among all of those stakeholders."

Gallagher didn't disagree with the principle, Chase said, but "was concerned about surfacing what we were doing too early in the process and generating competitors. That's the origins of it."

The result was a 70 percent to 30 percent loss Tuesday.

The East Coast financiers who put up the money to get the initiative on the ballot didn't follow up with cash for the campaign. Chase said that after opposition began mounting, the financiers "said they were happy to put up money for the campaign but they'd like to see some money from San Diego." The developers weren't able to find any.

Gallagher said investors were scared off by the failed litigation filed by the Unified Port of San Diego, which manages the 10th Avenue cargo terminal.

"We spent every dollar the best way we could, and a lot of it got consumed in litigation," Gallagher said. "Maybe we should've factored more money in for litigation in hindsight. That's probably what we could've done differently. If we had more money to get the truth out, I think it would’ve won."

He said that his group hadn't showed plans to groups when the effort was launched because they weren't complete. Gallagher said he didn't believe it was prudent to discuss a concept that might have had a fatal flaw discovered during a planning effort that cost in the "high six figures."

Both men agreed that they'd had at least one success: Sparking a conversation about the 10th Avenue terminal. And while neither ruled out bringing the idea back in the future, neither sounded enthusiastic about it, either. Both said they had no immediate plans to do so.

"Never say never," Chase said.

-- ROB DAVIS

Thursday, November 6 -- 8:20 pm

Goldsmith: My Prerogative

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Jan Goldsmith just told me that he decided to drop Mike Aguirre's foreclosure lawsuits without first consulting the City Council because, under state law, he has jurisdiction to either bring, or drop, such lawsuits without the blessing of city government.

In this post yesterday, I compared the decision to drop the foreclosure lawsuits to Goldsmith's stated position on Aguirre's pension litigation. I pointed out that Goldsmith has been careful to say that he would leave the decision whether or not to stick with that litigation up to the City Council.

But a city attorney has direct jurisdiction to file certain civil litigation under California state law, Goldsmith said. That's similar to a city attorney's right to file criminal lawsuits without first getting the blessing of the City Council.

"It's at my discretion, I have direct authority under state legislation for consumer remedy litigation," Goldsmith said.

-- WILL CARLESS

Thursday, November 6 -- 6:21 pm

Hold That Concession in D7!

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Late yesterday morning, April Boling sent out an e-mail congratulating Marti Emerald on her 702-vote victory in the District 7 San Diego City Council election. Republican pollster John Nienstedt and local GOP Chairman Tony Krvaric say she should have held off.

"Marti has not won and April has not lost, there are 15,000 votes still to be counted," Nienstedt said. "It's premature for April to capitulate."

And Krvaric, reached this afternoon in Seattle, said he has not given up hope on Boling. "This race is still real close," he said.

Nienstedt, who runs Competitive Edge Research & Communication, has this calculator that will track the tally of the outstanding votes as they come in.

-- DAVID WASHBURN

Thursday, November 6 -- 2:34 pm

Chula Vista Nail-Biter

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The Chula Vista City Council race between Democrat Pamela Bensoussan and Republican Russ Hall is going right down to the wire.

Bensoussan is trailing Hall by 119 votes, according to the official vote tally from the San Diego County Registrar of Voters, which includes 100 percent of votes cast on Tuesday.

But Bensoussan said that result doesn't include the possibly thousands of absentee and provisional ballots that were cast but haven't yet been counted. Those votes are just starting to be counted by the registrar, Bensoussan said.

"It's just a dead heat and we want those early votes to count," she said.

-- WILL CARLESS

Thursday, November 6 -- 12:46 pm

One Reason Prop. B Died

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Opponents of the developers' failed plan to build a 40-foot-tall deck atop the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal had feared one thing: That the developers would drop a ton of money into the campaign at the last moment and buy a bunch of TV time or other advertising.

Didn't happen.

After the developers -- Richard Chase, Nancy Chase and Frank Gallagher -- raised enough money to get the initiative on the ballot, they didn't raise another cent. From July 1 to Election Day, they received $0.00 in cash donations.

They got $15,000 in in-kind contributions from the Broadcast Companies of the Americas, which hosted a three-hour-long debate about the initiative. But no cash.

The East Coast financiers who'd dropped $110,000 to fund the effort to get the requisite signatures needed for the initiative to go on the ballot didn't follow up with money to fund a campaign.

The measure was defeated 70 percent to 29 percent.

-- ROB DAVIS

Thursday, November 6 -- 12:42 pm

Lee Sees Future as Community Advocate

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Even though the first batch of voting results showed Mitz Lee with a slim lead for her San Diego Unified school board seat, Lee knew she had lost. She turned off the television and went to bed early Tuesday night, long before the final result showed that challenger John Lee Evans had unseated her, and began to plan her next steps.

In an interview this morning, Lee reiterated the points in her written statement on the defeat: That heavy spending by the teachers union and an outpouring of Democratic voters benefited Evans, who ran a partisan campaign and got the backing of the teachers union. She expressed concern that the school board majority is now union-backed as the district heads into another budget crisis.

But she believes there is still a place for her in San Diego Unified, the same place that she held before being elected to the board: An advocate for parents and community members. Lee once led a group called the Alliance for Quality Education that pushed for changes in curriculum, such as reinstituting phonics in elementary schools, and said she would like to revive something similar, possibly extending its efforts not only to San Diego Unified but statewide.

"Sitting on the board for four years, I know that was a missing element. Information is being muddled by who is pushing information," Lee said. "Our taxpayers and community members need to know what is true and how they can help. Sometimes teachers do not get the big picture of what is happening in their leadership."

"But in the meantime, it does not happen tomorrow!" Lee added. She plans a December vacation to decompress after the campaign.

Lee supporters such as Cynthia Conger, a real estate broker, were worried by her loss and angry that ads by the teachers union, which used selected figures from the school district budget, had hurt her at the ballot box. The ads blamed Lee for the loss of teacher jobs, and Evans stated that Lee fired 900 teachers.

Lee voted to notify more than 900 teachers of potential layoffs, which were reduced after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger revised his cuts to schools, and roughly 200 probationary teachers were ultimately laid off, some of whom were later rehired.

"Everything that John Evans said was a lie," Conger said. "She did not cut out 900 teachers. ... They lied to suit their own self-serving agenda."

-- EMILY ALPERT

Thursday, November 6 -- 10:48 am

Who Says San Diegans Don't Like Taxes?

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We're told repeatedly in San Diego by politicians and their advisors how much San Diegans hate taxes and how difficult it is to get an increase past voters.

Let's study Proposition A to see how that holds up. The proposition, which would've levied a $52-a-year parcel tax for firefighting, grabbed 63.2 percent of the vote, falling just short of the two-thirds threshold needed to pass.

So it failed. But consider this: There was barely a campaign put out by supporters of the proposition, principally Supervisor Ron Roberts and Mayor Jerry Sanders. They hardly raised any money and barely did any campaigning, as my colleague Will Carless deftly pointed out in this story. Sanders mentioned his support for the proposition at the tail end of his typically luncheon routine; local firefighter unions didn't even get behind it.

That led to the suspicion that the politicians were just putting it on the ballot so they could say they actually tried to get a firefighting tax passed, without actually having to have tax increase on their records.

It was probably the most inconspicuous measure on the ballot, considering its potential impacts and high-profile fathers.

And despite all of that, the tax increase actually came pretty close to passing the two-thirds threshold.

Carless compared the lackluster campaign to that of TransNet, a 2004 tax increase that went to transportation needs:

TransNet was supported enthusiastically by politicians around the county, who used their influence to promote the proposition in public and at press conferences. The campaign distributed mailers, held public events and hired a cadre of political consultants and public relations experts to sell the measure to the public. In the end, despite the impressive campaign, that measure squeaked through with 67 percent of the vote.

It's likely that the amount of support Prop. A garnered was rooted in the fresh memory of last year's wildfires, but imagine if Prop. A's authors actually put a campaign behind it.

-- ANDREW DONOHUE

Wednesday, November 5 -- 8:20 pm

Goldsmith Will Drop Foreclosure Suits

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City Attorney-elect Jan Goldsmith today said that he plans to drop the foreclosure-related lawsuits that City Attorney Mike Aguirre brought earlier this year.

Goldsmith, a day after trouncing Aguirre at the polls, said the lawsuit brought against Countrywide Financial Corp. was rendered moot by a settlement reached between Bank of America, which recently acquired Countrywide, and California Attorney General Jerry Brown.

Other lawsuits Aguirre has filed against Washington Mutual and Wachovia Corp. fall outside of the scope of the City Attorney's Office, Goldsmith said.

"That is a broader responsibility than the focus of this office," he said. "Those cases will be gone."

On Aguirre's other flagship litigation, the pension lawsuit, Goldsmith has been careful to say that the correct way to proceed with the case is to provide the City Council and mayor with a cost-benefit analysis of the issue and to allow the city's elected officials to decide whether to pursue it or not. He has said it's not his job, as the city's lawyer, to decide which lawsuits to pursue, only to advise the executive branch of the city.

But at today's press conference, Goldsmith indicated that he has already made a decision on the lawsuits. Earlier this year, the City Council refused to endorse Aguirre's foreclosure lawsuits, but he proceeded with the cases anyway.

Goldsmith said that, in addition to being outside the scope of the office, Aguirre's Countrywide lawsuit, in which the city attorney claims that Countrywide used predatory lending practices, merely duplicates lawsuits already under way by the state attorney general and others.

"We will provide whatever information we have to the Attorney General's Office and they will take whatever steps are necessary," Goldsmith said. "San Diego taxpayers cannot and should not take on that burden."

Last month the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred the remaining lawsuits against Countrywide to San Diego, something Aguirre considered quite a coup at the time. He said the decision moved the "center of gravity" for the litigation to San Diego.

With Aguirre's lawsuits now about to be dropped, it will be interesting to see if the other lawsuits still end up being heard here.

According to the transfer document filed by the judicial panel, San Diego was chosen for three reasons: Two of the cases in the docket were filed in the Southern California district, Countrywide's home base is in Southern California and the courts here have "the capacity to handle this litigation."

One of those three reasons will be weakened as soon as Goldsmith takes office.

At the same press conference, Goldsmith said he has begun interviewing lawyers to serve as senior partners in the "municipal law firm" he is building. He said he has also sent memos to all staffers at the office asking each employee to describe the sort of work they have been doing and the work they would like to be doing.

And Goldsmith used the occasion to announce that he has named Andrew Jones head of the civil litigation department of the City Attorney's Office. Jones, who has worked at the City Attorney's office for more than 11 years, endorsed Goldmsith against his boss, Aguirre.

-- WILL CARLESS

Wednesday, November 5 -- 6:44 pm

Lee on Losing the School Board Race

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A reader forwarded me this statement from Mitz Lee, who issued the letter to her supporters about her defeat in the San Diego Unified school board race. She attributed her loss to the negative ads aired by the teachers union:

Running against a torrent of negative campaign commercials in the campaigns final days made it all but impossible for Lee to win reelection to the position she has held for the last four years. Special interests groups that opposed her in 2004 again targeted her for defeat.

 

"I accept the will of the voters and want them to know that I will continue to look for ways to serve and to move the district forward; to ensure every school is a good school because every child counts," said Lee. "We had many successes along the way and I am proud of the work I was able to do on behalf of the parents and children of our City."

 

She cites as her accomplishments reducing class sizes in kindergarten through 3rd grade and 9th grade English class while more than 200 positions were cut from the central office, increasing teacher salaries without reducing health benefits, and protecting permanent teachers from layoffs. Lee originally voted to notify more than 900 teachers of potential layoffs, which were scaled back as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger restored funding to California schools. Roughly 200 probationary teachers were ultimately laid off, many of whom were later rehired.

 

"Educating our young people is an extremely important function and one that I have dedicated much of my professional career to, I pledge to the teachers and parents and children of San Diego that I will continue my efforts to make education the priority it must always be," Lee concluded.  "For me the campaign is over but the priority of educating our children continues."

Lee was absent from Election Central on Tuesday night and was not happy when I woke her up with a late night phone call to talk about election returns. (Mea culpa. I would not have been happy about it either.) I'm trying to reach her to ask about her plans after the election and her future role in San Diego Unified.

-- EMILY ALPERT

Wednesday, November 5 -- 6:12 pm

City Attorney Election Tidbits

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During the course of the evening yesterday, I had several interesting conversations with city and county bigwigs about the political tenure of City Attorney Mike Aguirre.

I was collecting fodder for Aguirre's political obituary, which I outlined in this story, but along the way I also picked up some interesting quotes from local power brokers about the maverick city attorney and what his ouster means for the city and county. Many of those people became Aguirre enemies during his four years in office:

Here's a selection of quotes and points from those conversations:

Sheriff Bill Kolender, looking as dapper as always and brandishing a huge glass of red wine, put his arm round me in a fatherly way early last night and outlined why he's glad that Aguirre was in the process of being ousted by the voters.

"You have to care, and take your job seriously, but not yourself," Kolender said. "I think the guy's got real problems, he gets mad, he can't control himself, and every decision he makes is for himself. He's not the attorney for the people in the sense that he talks about, he's the attorney for the government, who work for the people."

(Kolender endorse Goldsmith and is an ally of two of Aguirre's nemeses, Mayor Jerry Sanders and District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis.)

Mark Sullivan, one of the directors of the Police Officers' Association, had some sharp words for Aguirre, whom the police union endorsed in 2004.

"He came in with a lot of promises, we endorsed him, and now we feel vindicated to have a person of Jan's stature as the new city attorney," Sullivan said.

I asked Sullivan what he thought of Aguirre's claim that Goldsmith has sold out to the city's public safety unions by taking their endorsements in return for promising to drop Aguirre's pension litigation.

"I can't talk about the secret deals," Sullivan said laughing. "That's ridiculous. Why would a person of Jan's caliber impugn his reputation over something like that? That's just ridiculous."

I spoke a couple of times with Chris Crotty, who helped Aguirre's campaign out as the election came to a close. Crotty had a few words to say about Aguirre's style and San Diego's reaction to it.

"Mike came across as a little too harsh and too aggressive," Crotty said. "He's got a great personality for New York or Chicago or maybe Boston, but it doesn't play well in San Diego."

I spotted Dumanis walking across the civic concourse with an entourage of bodyguards, minders and friends. Back at the start of the campaign, Dumanis held a press conference announcing Goldsmith's run for city attorney and I asked her whether she had ever supported Aguirre and when she decided he wasn't right for San Diego.

"Everybody had great hopes for the city attorney, but he didn't accomplish anything." Dumanis said. "(When Aguirre was elected) I definitely was trying to work with the city attorney. Our offices work very closely together, so it's important that we get along, but it broke down."

Dumanis said she has high hopes for Goldsmith.

"I believe we'll have a good working relationship with the City Attorney's Office that will affect cost savings and efficiency," she said. "We'll have somebody leading the office in the misdemeanor area that will join law enforcement to better protect the public."

And I had a quick chat with City Councilman Scott Peters, who has long been a vocal critic of Aguirre. The councilman had some sympathetic words for the city attorney, whom he ran against in the primary election.

"One thing I'll say about Mike is I never thought he was insincere about anything he was trying to do, I just thought he was wrong," Peters said.

-- WILL CARLESS

Wednesday, November 5 -- 4:52 pm

Goldsmith: Get Tough on SEDC

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Minutes after he declared victory in last nights election for city attorney, Jan Goldsmith mused on the last few months of the election campaign and on Aguirre's tenure as city attorney. Most of all, Goldsmith said, over the last four years, Aguirre has lacked judgment when it came to deciding when to push and when to hold back in taking on legal fights.

He cited as an example Aguirre's handling of the bonus scandal at the Southeastern Economic Development Corp.

After it was revealed that the president of SEDC had been paying herself and her staff hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses that had not been approved by the City Council or the agency's board of directors, Aguirre remained uncharacteristically reserved, Goldsmith said.

"SEDC was a good example. I think he was too timid, which was so out of character. I would have appointed a financial receiver a long time ago. It was our money that was in the hands of a group that was doing things that were appropriate. I would have been more aggressive than him," Goldsmith said.

Aguirre filed a civil lawsuit against SEDC's president, Carolyn Y. Smith, seeking to recoup some $250,000 she had approved in bonuses for herself, but he later dropped that lawsuit after Mayor Jerry Sanders asked District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis to investigate the agency.

When he dropped the lawsuit against Smith, Aguirre promised that he would revive it if and when Dumanis failed to take action against the SEDC president. So far, there's been no action from Dumanis and none from Aguirre either.

Goldsmith didn't want to elaborate on his plans for SEDC, saying only that he will take a close look at the issue. The city attorney-elect has said several times that he will not be announcing investigations before they are conducted, and will only go public with the findings of such investigations once they are complete.

-- WILL CARLESS

Wednesday, November 5 -- 2:15 pm

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Evans Clinches a School Board Seat

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John Lee Evans has done the improbable.

The slim lead that Evans held over incumbent San Diego Unified school board member Mitz Lee in the wee hours Wednesday morning had widened by daybreak when all precincts were counted, with 54.35 percent of voters choosing Evans and 45.65 percent choosing Lee.

The race came down to fewer than 22,000 votes, with Evans garnering 136,121 votes and Lee winning 114,334 votes.

Evans' victory marks a rare occasion: the unseating of an incumbent school board member -- a feat Evans said has not been accomplished since 1979. (I did a quick review of online records from the county registrar that suggests that it has certainly not happened in the past 16 years.) It also marks a power shift on the San Diego Unified board that was deeply desired and lobbied for by the teachers union.

Evans joins incumbent Shelia Jackson, who trounced computer teacher Xeng Yang in her re-election bid, winning 61.74 percent of the vote to Yang's 38.26 percent. She got 152,051 votes and Yang got 94,227. Another newcomer, Richard Barrera, ran unopposed and got 215,175 votes -- and unsurprisingly that added up to 100 percent.

-- EMILY ALPERT

Wednesday, November 5 -- 2:12 pm

In Major Shift, SD Goes for Obama

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A quick look at how San Diego County residents voted for president reveals a startling shift:

2008
Obama/Biden: 522,136 votes (53.83 percent)
McCain/Palin: 431,772 votes (44.51 percent)

(There are still about 220,000 absentee and provisional ballots left to be counted.)

2004
Bush/Cheney: 596,033 votes (52.34 percent)
Kerry/Edwards: 526,437 votes (46.23 percent)

2000
Bush/Cheney: 475,736 votes (49.63 percent)
Gore/Lieberman: 437,666 votes (45.66 percent)

The vote shift coincides with the registration edge that Democrats won countywide just days before the election.

-- ANDREW DONOHUE

Wednesday, November 5 -- 2:15 pm

Aguirre Bows Out

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Looking tired and disappointed, City Attorney Mike Aguirre held what could have been his last press conference as city attorney this afternoon to welcome Jan Goldsmith to the City Attorney's Office and to dissect his crushing loss in last night's election.

With 100 percent of the votes counted, Aguirre had 40.5 percent of the vote and Goldsmith had 59.5 percent.

In a short speech, Aguirre thanked his supporters and said Goldsmith should be given a chance as the city's next attorney. As he has for the last four years, however, Aguirre spent much of his press conference blaming the city's special interests, The San Diego Union-Tribune and business leaders for his loss.

Calling San Diego "government by organized money," Aguirre said his detractors have consistently attacked him not for his style, but for his substance -- that is to say for the things he's trying to accomplish, not how he's gone about doing them. His tenure as city attorney was eroded from the start by "a constant drumbeat of criticism" from the local newspaper, the Chargers football team and the Chamber of Commerce, among others, Aguirre said.

"At some point, I'm really hoping that the good people of San Diego begin to understand how entrenched this problem is and that we need to uproot it," Aguirre said.

Aguirre also said he's not going to be running for office again anytime soon. He said he wants to spend some time with his fiancée Anna, who helped him with his reelection campaign and, he said, has been put under pressure from the constant demands of the City Attorney's Office.

Aguirre mused on what he said was a marked contrast between the election results on a local level and the national race. Four years ago, he said, San Diego elected a progressive while the country stuck with President George W. Bush. Last night, he said, while the country voted for a progressive, San Diego decided to return the City Attorney's Office to its pre-Aguirre ways.

"San Diego's going in the opposite direction as the rest of the country," he said.

However, Democrats fared well in the City Council races and President-elect Barack Obama had an especially strong showing in San Diego County.

While we don't yet have specific results from the city of San Diego for the presidential race, Obama won San Diego County easily with 53.83 percent. The city typically votes more Democratic than the county as a whole.

The city of San Diego elected Democrats in all three City Council races.

The city attorney reserved a wry smile for his answer to the question of whether he'll be approaching Goldsmith with any advice as the city attorney-elect takes office.

"I don't think the incoming city attorney wants any advice from the outgoing one," he said.

-- WILL CARLESS

Wednesday, November 5 -- 1:32 pm

Thalheimer and Boling Concede

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Republicans Phil Thalheimer and April Boling this morning conceded the San Diego City Council races in Districts 1 and 7 to their respective opponents, Sherri Lightner and Marti Emerald.

"I would like to offer my congratulations to Marti Emerald on her election to City Council," said Boling in a statement.

Thalheimer conceded earlier this morning, saying "I wish Sherri well."

-- DAVID WASHBURN

Wednesday, November 5 -- 1:15 pm