Congressman Bob Filner has been in Washington too long, and it’s impacting his ability to wage a serious campaign for San Diego mayor.
Facing the serious threat of losing his House seat in another challenge from State Senator Juan Vargas (D), Filner created his own political retirement plan in the form of a race for San Diego Mayor. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time: the City of San Diego has 76,000+ more Democrats than Republicans, and he would probably be the only Democrat in the race. Piece of cake, right?
It turns out that running for mayor is different than running for re-election in your bulletproof-Democrat House district. First there’s the more competitive nature of the race itself. Additionally, running for an executive office is different than running to be a legislator: voters expect from would-be executives a vision and plans, not just statements of how one would vote on certain issues, with some ideological red meat thrown in the mix.
Filner talks a good game – he’s well practiced in all of the typical left-wing talking points on a whole host of issues. That’s par for the course for someone who’s been a relatively obscure lawmaker for twenty years: talk about issues, cast votes. Yet when it comes to plans, and now even facts, Filner has proven to be remarkably weak.
On the city’s pension problems, including its $2 billion unfunded liability, Filner has for the last 10 months promised that his “plan” would be coming “soon.” In fact, I was present watching Filner file his papers to run for Mayor in June of last year when he was confronted by a reporter about when he would present his plans for fixing the pension system. We’re still waiting.
Filner has been similarly lacking in any plan for the deeply troubled San Diego Unified School District, which is teetering on the edge of the financial abyss and a state takeover. The district is a creation of the San Diego City Charter, at least one of its board members has recently advocated a new parcel tax that would squarely hit city residents, and a state takeover would hit the city’s economy hard as it would make it nearly impossible to lure new businesses (and their employees) to the city. Yet, in a recent mayoral debate focused exclusively on education, Filner brushed off any suggestion he should have a plan for the schools by saying he’s “not going to tell the school board what to do.” So, no education plan coming any time soon either.
The most remarkable example of Filner’s, let’s call it “casual” approach to the mayor’s race, is how lacking and misinformed he has been on his signature economic issue of the Port. Like someone suddenly awakened from a long slumber then peppered with questions, Filner’s recent claims about the Port of San Diego have been wrong, exaggerated, or lifted from some distant past.
The news outlet “Investigative Newsource” called Filner to task for some of his claims. The Voice of San Diego drew additional attention to Filner’s lack of even a basic understanding of the Port, including:
- Filner claimed that “until a few years ago, we’ve had zero commerce. Zero. That is, there’s no loading and unloading of vessels.” In fact, each year since 2003 over $4 billion in imports alone have come through the port. Granted, in Washington DC $4 billion may be a rounding error, but in San Diego that’s real money. Filner didn’t merely get the number wrong – he claimed there were *no* goods transiting through the Port “until recently.” Flat wrong.
- Concerning the number of workers at the Port, Filner claimed there were just “a dozen.” There are actually 132. Again, in Washington being off by a factor of ten may not be a big deal, but here in San Diego we think being off by 1,000% is outside the margin of error, even for a politician. In explaining the error, Rip Van Filner claimed “Someone told me [those numbers] about ten years ago.” Well there you have it, Bob Filner’s research for his chief economic plan, the port, consists of remembering something someone told him ten years ago. By the way, it’s still wrong. Ten years ago the Port had 73 longshoremen.
- Filner also got caught advocating for using the port as a “niche market” for commodities (it already is), and suggested expanding Port facilities for a “floating port” (highly unfeasible).
As a member of the campaign team for one of Filner’s rivals, and as a longtime active Republican, I’m not naturally predisposed toward Bob Filner in any event. However, his lack of plans for tackling the largest of city issues (pension, schools), combined with his remarkable lack of any understanding or even interest in his central economic issue of the port, raises the question of whether running for mayor is anything more than just another political exercise for him.