Don’t Blame San Diego for the Newsom Recall
Today’s Profiles: John Drake, Kevin Faulconer
Part Four of an occasional series on who not to vote for. For those of you just joining in the fun, I’ll do a few candidates at a time , taking them in alphabetical order. Now that the paperwork has been finalized, candidates who I profiled prior to July 16 are crossed off.
Part One: If Republicans Know They Can’t Win, Why Have a Recall?
Part Two: A Not Too Serious Look at the Recall Candidates for California Governor
Part Three: Who Really Wants to Be Governor of California?
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Columnist Joe Mathews penned a widely distributed op ed last week, blaming San Diego for the recall election. I usually think his essays are thoughtful takes on issues of importance to Californians.
I didn’t realize until I read Why are you so desperate to seize the governorship, San Diego? that he’s one of those folks who think my hometown hasn’t changed since the sixties, when it really was a right wing cesspool littered with military bases and seething veterans.
Evidence of our collective insecurity and lust for power caused by living in the shadow of our “coastal big brothers. LA and the Bay Area,” according to Mathews, is that Darrell Issa initially funded the 2003 recall effort and two of the most polished turds running under the GOP banner this year hail from San Diego.
Nevermind that Kevin Faulconer (see below) has never moved up the political food chain without the low turnout of a special election, and nevermind that John Cox is a carpetbagger from Illinois with a history of getting whomped at the ballot box.
Here’s the money quote:
San Diegans often see the rest of California as flouting American traditions. So it’s not hard to see why the recall, a reactionary tool, might have special appeal there.
Huh? Did Joe Mathews get a bad lobster taco down here? While there’s no denying the military's large economic footprint in the region, the political power players these days are in tech, education, and healthcare. Take a drive around UCSD and the Sorrento Valley and get back to me on that.
And who needs the governorship when our electeds in Sacramento control the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee and the position of Senate President Pro Tem? Why does every Chamber of Commerce in the state freak out when Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez raises an eyebrow?
The last twenty years have seen a fundamental shift in the area’s political dynamics, perhaps best expressed in the shift by the makeup of the county board of supervisors.
Yes, there are pockets of reactionaries in San Diego, just like there are in other regions of the state. The idea that this city needs to prove anything to any other metropolis in California is just absurd.
I get it, though. There’s a long tradition in California of snobbery when it comes to how San Diego is viewed. So making us the straw man in Mathew’s commentary was an easy shot. Too easy, if you ask me.
UPDATE: All my research on recall candidates has been consolidated into one place:
https://wordsanddeedsblog.com/a-non-official-2021-recall-election-guide-on-who-not-to-vote-for/
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