Yesterday’s San Diego Union Tribune’s article “Labor Unions and Republicans Square Off” and today’s “Republican Donations Pour in for Two Camps” basically re-enforced what co-bloggers Probolsky, Mitzelfelt, and today Jantz have been writing about – the rise of Republican local county organizations. In years past, the article would have been framed with some segment of the business community or the Chamber vs. the labor unions. But in recent years its been clear that the GOP has become the central organizing body of the center-right’s coalition to take back City Hall from labor union bosses. To wit, the San Diego GOP, with help from local business owners, has raised close to a million dollars in the last month and has engaged in the Mayoral and Council races with hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In the final days of the campaign for San Diego City Mayor big labor has gone on the offensive. They are running a tv ad that morphs Republican candidate Sander’s face into that of former Mayor Dick Murphy, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, President George Bush, and former President George Bush. This may be over the top against Sanders. Polling demonstrates Sanders is thought of in a fairly positive light by all but the most radical liberal voters. The ad basically accuses Sanders of being the insider candidate who will raise taxes after the election anyway.
Sander’s response to the ad was pointed: “That is a complete misrepresentation. I’m not part of old San Diego. Old San Diego is labor unions, the ones who are running the city into the ground.” That, and his tv and mail barrage continues unabated. Still, Donna Frye wins this week’s best quote, though with “Anybody that has ever done battle with me… knows that in the end I will ultimately prevail.” Next week she is going to take her shoe off and bang on the table while threatening to bury us.
Even though the citizens of the City of San Diego have voted ourselves a strong Mayor system as of the New Year, having a council the Mayor can work with (ie one that is not directly controlled by big labor) will be necessary for reform. Currently the makeup of the council is, by the seat number: (Seat 1) a swing Democrat who represents a GOP heavy district (Seat 2) Open and hotly contested swing seat (Seat 3) a union friendly Democrat who represents the city’s most liberal district (Seat 4) a union friendly African-American Democrat who represents a heavily African-American district (Seat 5) a Republican who represents the most conservative district in the city (Seat 6) Democrat/Populist Donna Frye who is usually a no vote on anything so I’ll count her as a swing (Seat 7) a Republican who represents a center-right seat (Seat 8) a heavily Latino Democrat seat that has been controlled for years by a political machine that may be on the ropes because of the conviction of “the boss”. So I count 2 firm labor votes, 2 reform votes, 2 open votes, and 2 swing votes.
There are some who would argue that the Republican council members have thus far been short on commitment to reform – but I would argue that if the reform movement can win at least 1 seat of the 2 open seats (making the line-up 3 labor, 3 reform, 2 swing), and we elect the GOPs Sanders Mayor, the momentum will be on the side of reform and one of the swings – the Democrat who represents a very Republican district – will tend to fall in with the reformers on much of the reform agenda. This should encourage the Republicans on the council to get more aggresive. They’ve also seen first hand the impact of Frye and Aguirre (see Jantz’s comments below) reformist rhetoric and actions, and may finally be getting the idea that sometimes it’s better to be one of the indians than one of the settlers circling the wagons. This is one of those time periods when there just aren’t going to be many scalps left among the establishment. Grab a horse and a tomahawk, braves!
The real wild card, as always, is Donna Frye. Presuming Sanders wins Tuesday Councilwoman Frye, post election, could go one of two directions: she could continue her populist course and vote for portions of the reform, and probably have some significant influence on their content OR she could play the spoilsport against Sanders over the next few years and strengthen her alliance with the labor votes to try to block reform.