COVID-19 Emerges as Campaign Issue in San Diego Supes Contest
Also: Assm Gonzalez utters swear word, sets off national meltdown.
In sync with the far right’s national effort to defame science, deflect the statistics, and defer oversight relating to the COVID-19 epidemic, San Diego’s Republicans are hoping to rally their base for the upcoming general election.
This isn’t going to be an easy sell, but it’s probably all they’ve got right now. The campaign to recall Gov. Newsom flopped, nobody cares about the gas tax, and there are only so many wingnut votes to be courted.
County chair GOP Tony Krvaric brought his (mostly) unmasked friends out to street corners in Poway on Sunday to gin up support for the party’s “we are being oppressed” position.
Nationally, the COVID-19 death toll passed 80,000 this weekend, and is now projected to pass 137,000 by August. The United States is in the top spot worldwide in both number of cases and deaths and in the top ten of industrialized countries with deaths per million in population.
There’s “unease” (polite newspeak for panic) in the Oval Office, as four members of the Coronavirus Taskforce are in self-quarantine, ten Secret Service agents assigned to the White House, and assistants for both the President and Vice President have tested positive.
Trump’s twitter account fired up more than 100 times on Mothers Day, with attacks on all the usual suspects and self-praise for the administration.
https://twitter.com/sdut/status/1259631063279656960?s=20
That hasn’t stopped an all-out campaign from GOP activists around the state to “re-open” just about everything. To hear County Supervisor Jim Desmond and Kristin Gaspar talk, you’d think Republicans cared about poor people more than tax cuts and billionaires.
The Union-Tribune reports on the background of one of the primary organizers of the re-open protests; WeHaveRights.com founder Vivienne Nicole Reign. She’s gone by other names in the past, lives in a $3 million Newport Beach home, and has business interests overlapping with backers of California’s anti-vaxxer movement.
Summers, a 70-year-old resident of Ramona, has long been plugged in to conservative politics and activism in the San Diego region. He’s served on the Republican Party’s local central committee and currently heads up an umbrella group called The Circle, which coordinates efforts between prominent conservative and libertarian groups throughout the region.
So it didn’t surprise Summers when an organizer from We Have Rights contacted him out of the blue looking for his help, and his access to mailing lists of about 6,000 people across the region, to boost turnout at a rally that was planned for May 1 in downtown San Diego. The group was also organizing events for that day in Huntington Beach, Los Angeles and Sacramento.
“I got a phone call from the guy who organized these four rallies who wanted to know if I could help him in San Diego, and I said, ‘Yes, I can,’” Summers recently told the Union-Tribune.
The local contest most likely to be impacted by the GOP’s “nothing to see here, get back to work” campaign is the race for Supervisor District 3, pitting Democrat Terra Lawson-Remer and Republican Kristin Gaspar against each other. This was always going to be a high profile event, given that a victory by Dems could swing the majority on the County Board away from the GOP for the first time in decades.
Lawson’s campaign issued a statement over the weekend making it clear she’s ready to take on the GOP’s death wish crusade with facts and figures.
The pandemic that has disrupted all of our lives and threatens the health of billions globally was caused in the first instance by an animal virus that jumped to infect humans through no traceable fault of anyone in particular.
But the fact that our economy is now facing the worst downturn since the 1970's or perhaps even the 1930's...
the fact that thousands of small businesses in our community are struggling to survive,
the fact that hundreds of thousands of people in San Diego County and millions across the United States and around the world are out of work and unable to pay rent or mortgages or put food on the table...
the fact that we are all locked in our homes with many facing serious mental health crises...
the fact that getting sick from the virus carries an unnecessary exponential risk of death because our hospitals are understaffed and lack adequate ventilators and other equipment...
the fact that every one of us risks getting sick anytime we leave our homes and go about our normal daily activities or even so much as hug our sisters and cousins and grandparents who are sheltering separately...
the fact that essential workers who ensure we can all eat and get electricity and receive medical care and isolate in relative comfort face extraordinary risks going to work every day...
the fact that our jails and immigrant detention centers and homeless populations are now high-risk coronavirus hotbeds with guards and prisoners sitting ducks for a contagion that flourishes in confined spaces --
these are political failures, failures of leadership, abject failures to muster even a remotely adequate response to the existential crisis of our time
Gaspar’s partner in crime Supervisor Jim Desmond, meanwhile, issued this video (carefully editing out the guns carried by “freedom fighters” depicted in once scene):
https://twitter.com/jim_desmond/status/1259644893112213508?s=20
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Also in the news…
Elon Musk is a jerk.
Tesla’s Elon Musk, not known for being the most rational person in the billionaire universe, had a tizzy fit after being told by the Alameda County’s health department that his Fremont factory wasn’t ready to be reopened.
In case you don’t remember, Musk’s refusal to close his plant for two weeks after the stay at home order for the county was announced was a national scandal.
Drawing on the President’s most excellent performance of attacks by twitter, he went after the top official making the call.
This “ignorant” official in question is Dr. Erica Pan, a former UC San Francisco professor of infectious disease. She has a medical degree & a masters of public health from Tufts. UCSF is frequently ranked the #1 best med school in the county.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1259162367285317633?s=20
Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez jumped into the fray, repeating what millions of Californians were thinking:
https://twitter.com/LorenaSGonzalez/status/1259505015795793927?s=20
Well, that “word” set off a national furor in the right wing media, starting with our local GOP outlet, KUSI.
Well, all I can say is tsk, tsk. And good job, Assm Gonzalez. Any time they’re not spending repeating conspiracy theories is worthwhile as far as I’m concerned.
Between his "virus panic is dumb," "chloroquine cures COVID", and now suing local government to reopen his janky car business Elon Musk has revealed himself. He is ugly, un-civic and literally dangerous.
https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/1259247075197247488?s=20
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Lead image via Tony Krvaric's Twitter