California Recall Campaign: A Desperate Attempt to Win Something, Anything
The weekend brought better weather to the California coast, and with the balmy winds came an influx of cuckoo birds all aflutter over the possibility of recalling Governor Gavin Newsom.
Small rallies around the state featured a motley collection of fringe group speakers. Crowds were told not to wear masks, don’t get vaccinated, and to pray that Sleepy Joe Biden doesn’t bring socialism and communism down on the US of A.
Big GQP money is now flowing into the effort. Republican fundraiser Anne Dunsmore, who is the campaign manager of Rescue California, told Politico that the two groups seeking to unseat Newsom have raised $3.5 million.
The effort says they’ve collected 1.75 million of the 2 million signatures observers believe they’ll need to call an election. There are now paid signature gatherers on the street, getting $3.70 per autograph. Due to the complexity of gathering signatures safely during the pandemic a federal judge granted the group an additional 120 days to collect names.
I think they’ll make it.
We’ll have a recall election because Republicans don’t think they can win any other way. It’s a bit more subtle than making people jump through hoops to vote or gerrymandering.
A recall election includes a chance to vote for the replacement official. The GQP is hoping for a miracle, and they'll need it to keep Newsom from winning again.
Republicans are serious about blowing a ton of cash to grab some headlines that don’t include the word Trump. Along the way, they’re hoping to pour enough whine into the political discourse to convince a few voters that they’d be a better choice to run the state.
There is just one teeny little problem; the GQP doesn’t have a candidate with a convincing track record. Typically, the party tries to get around this problem by making noises about running a government like a business.
In practice, that approach hasn’t worked out too well. See: Texas, Winter of 2021. Or the Great Kansas Tax Cut failure.
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The great white hope for Republicans is supposed to be former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer. He’s a congenial, platitude spouting guy who’s avoided scandals of the usual sort.
Unfortunately, as Democratic strategists already know, he can’t manage his way out of a wet paper bag.
This weekend’s Union-Tribune brought yet another example of Faulconer's failures when it comes to real estate:
The city of San Diego appears to have paid above-market rates for the two Residence Inn hotels it purchased late last year for just over $106 million, properties that city officials are relying on to help reduce the homeless population across the community.
According to an analysis of sales data obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune, the Residence Inn Mission Valley cost taxpayers $67 million — not including a $502,000 broker’s fee paid by the buyer — or just under $349,000 for each of 192 rooms.
That was the highest per-room cost for any hotel sold in San Diego County last year — and it was based on a valuation that was set weeks before the global coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the hospitality industry.
San Diego overpaid by 30 to 40%, based on evaluations done before the pandemic devastated the local tourism economy.
The purchases also will eat into the city’s annual tax revenue as officials confront a $240 million budget deficit.
In addition to the loss of property taxes generated by the two Residence Inns when they were privately held, the city will no longer collect the transient occupancy tax assessed on every room rented.
Based on capitalization rates reflected in the CBRE appraisals — the measure of annual returns on investment — the city will lose about $866,000 a year in hotel taxes, plus $100,000 or more in annual income for the tourism marketing district.
But, hey, Kevin Faulconer’s gonna be bragging about what a great job he did with the homeless in San Diego. (Except that he didn’t)
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The “we hate the government” crowd has made one of San Diego’s government management problems --the lack of office space for staff-- into a non-starter.
The obvious solution, a new city hall to replace the sorry excuse for a building at 202 C Street can never, ever happen. Because that would be gubmit bureaucrats wasting tax dollars.
So Mayor Faulconer thought he’d found a workaround, namely a lease-to-own deal for the office tower at 101 Ash Street. At least the city could consolidate some of the many scattered offices under one roof, so the thinking went.
The deal was tricky, made even more so by having the property sold to a third party to avoid the appearance of a payoff to real estate baron (And Faulconer financier) Doug Manchester.
The city has now abandoned the property --the employees that were moved in were moved out and we taxpayers are no longer making payments-- due the presence of asbestos throughout the building, a problem identified in 2014 in sworn testimony before the California Public Utilities Commission.
Everybody is suing everybody and this will take years to play out. The pandemic’s impact of the city budget means throwing more money at this white elephant isn’t going to happen.
Burn, baby, burn...
As if the asbestos story wasn’t bad enough, it turns out the building was a fire trap.
Via La Prensa:
Although a downtown high-rise building purchased by the City in 2016 as a new space for over 1,000 staffers was closed down last year over asbestos exposure, a greater threat to people in the building could have been uncontrollable fires.
A lawsuit filed this week by a senior City staff engineer claims he warned his superiors about non-functioning heating, air conditioning, and fire systems in the 101 Ash Street building beginning in late 2018, more than a year before the City began moving up to 1,100 staffers into the building in January 2020, but his warnings and those of several outside vendors were ignored by City departments, putting staff and the public at risk.
Marlon Perez was an engineer on the 101 Ash Street project soon after the City entered into a 20-year lease-to-own deal in January 2017. The following year, Perez, who holds a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering from San Diego State University, was promoted to Project Manager overseeing the building improvements being made before staff could move in, but he was removed in late 2019 after repeatedly clashing with his superiors who ignored warnings about the condition of the building.
I could go on about the deals Kevin Faulconer failed to bring to fruition, like the football stadium, the skydiving building, and a convention center expansion, but I hope you get the point.
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Any Republican who runs in California has to --at best-- not alienate the right wing of the party. Carl DeMaio’s Reform California is making sure Faulconer gets stuck with the “he’s another Mitt Romney” tag. The right wing radio host is hoping for an opportunity to play kingmaker... or spoiler.
On the Democratic Party side of this, expect unity as long as things get better with the coronavirus situation. They'll have to spend money on voter turnout because special elections tend to draw elderly and more conservative voters.
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Republican John Cox, who picked up a whopping 38% of the vote in his race against Gavin Newson for Governor in 2018, has decided to invest $2 million of his money in another campaign for the job.
Cox is using the “I’m a businessman” routine in his run for governor, and opened up his campaign with an ad attacking Kevin Faulconer.
From KCRA:
The ad pairs a description of San Diego's soured real estate deal with a reference to Newsom's decision during the coronavirus pandemic to dine out with friends and lobbyists at an opulent Napa Valley restaurant, after telling residents to stay home and avoid social gatherings.
"Had enough of this?" Cox asks, suggesting his two competitors share a common bond in bad judgment and incompetence.
Cox has never won an electoral office, having run for various posts in Illinois and California. He won’t win this time, and will likely peel a few voters away from Faulconer.
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Trumpanista Richard Grenell, former ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence in the Trump administration, is reportedly exploring the possibility of running for Governor if the recall movement succeeds. (He’s being coy about it)
From Politico:
Grenell’s bona fides with the GOP base may exceed those of Cox. Former San Diego Councilman Carl DeMaio, who speaks with Grenell periodically and hosts a radio show with a substantial conservative audience, said “the lines light up” when Grenell is involved. DeMaio, a critic of former GOP San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer — who has already announced his candidacy — said Grenell would “get the base to show up” in California and argued Grenell’s bluntness could appeal to some independents. And beyond spurring turnout, DeMaio said, Grenell could command a larger fundraising network.
“You have a potential candidate here who, if he ran, would have more name ID than the other names being considered,” DeMaio said, predicting Grenell could quickly raise substantial sums by tapping into Trump’s donor list. “He would actually be able to compete with the Democrat money machine in California.”
Grenell’s experience includes alienating the government of Germany to the point where only far right politicians would interact with him and being named as the least qualified individual ever to lead an intelligence agency.
On the other hand, his business experience includes work on behalf of a variety of nations openly hostile to the notion of democracy, including Hungary, Iran, China, and Kazakhstan.
Should he decide to enter the gubernatorial contest, Grenell can be expected to make lots of Trump-style noise to keep the Dear Leader cult engaged.
From the New York Times:
Mr. Grenell honed his combative style when he worked as a spokesman at the United Nations for the former ambassador John R. Bolton. Often to the surprise — and sometimes the horror — of the State Department’s more staid communications officials who worked for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Grenell would take on reporters and argue long into the night about stories appearing in major newspapers and on television
So there you have it. Republicans can and will play upon perceived or real or ginned up grievances. And there are certainly aspects of Gov. Newsom’s administration that have struck me as less than wonderful. But this particular ploy --the recall-- will be a waste of time and money unless a political miracle occurs.
The real winners in this circus will be the political consultants draining money into their coffers.
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