San Diego’s 2024 GOP Candidate Cruelty Crusade
Mayors Seeking Higher Office on the Backs of the Homeless
The Republican Mayors of two San Diego cities who are aiming for higher office apparently think they’ve found the perfect campaign strategy: getting rid of homeless humans.
While GOP officials in other states are banning books, torturing women over medical procedures, and ginning up fear over drag queens, none of those things would fly in California’s coastal political marketplace.
What potential voters do get agitated about is our exploding homeless population. The dark side of many supposedly enlightened souls involves believing the downtrodden are less-than-humans with moral or mental health failings who need to just.go.away.
This is a bipartisan phenomena and the too-little, too-late solutions proposed by Democratic elected officials are not producing the desired results, or potentially endangering perceptions of public safety in many quarters.
One need look no further than the pearl clutching over a proposal by Democratic politicians for an encampment on a little-used part of Balboa Park to recognize the universality of disgust over unhoused humans.
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El Cajon’s Bill Wells is exploiting a sex crime to ban the use of vouchers in his city’s motels. Coronado’s Richard Bailey is claiming –even though never had the authority– to have solved a problem that never existed in the first place.
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Wells, in case you haven't heard, is positioning himself for a run against first-term incumbent Congress member Sara Jacobs. Given her sunny persona and public support, bringing her down necessitated an ugly accusation to tar Jacobs for the crimes of appearing empathetic and being a Democrat.
With his initial announcement of candidacy, Wells told the media:
"I am running for Congress because I believe that our country needs bold, assertive leadership. Urgent action is needed to address the catastrophe of homelessness and the untreated mentally ill, the systematic degradation of the American dream, violence on our streets, and the suicidal border policies of the Biden administration."
The crime Wells is trying to capitalize on involves two men arrested and charged with having sex with a minor while staying in a Motel 6 paid for by vouchers. The vouchers in question came from a Los Angeles-based program called PATH, which seeks to provide assistance to people involved with the criminal justice system, including those getting out of prison.
Both individuals were registered sex offenders, not eligible for assistance under the more commonly utilized San Diego County-based Equus program. Still, Wells is leading an effort to prevent all vouchers in El Cajon motels.
The arrests were just the latest trigger for what has been an ongoing effort to eliminate the use of voucher-based motel rooms within the El Cajon city limits. An earlier effort at a flat out ban was derailed after the California Attorney General threatened to sue based on the discriminatory nature of the ordinance.
From CBS 8 News:
Wells and City Manager Graham Mitchell held a news conference in front of a motel in El Cajon to describe changes in local calls for public safety services. They said the increase in calls to police and Emergency Medical Services was how the city first learned of what they claimed was an increase in motel voucher program usage.
Then-chair of the County Board of Supervisors Nathan Fletcher hit back at the accusation.
"Mayor Bill Wells and the city of El Cajon want to push them back onto the streets. The public expects us to take action and El Cajon is playing a tired old blame game that does nothing to address the problem of homelessness in our region," Fletcher said
In 2018, El Cajon and Mayor Wells received international attention due to a ban on feeding homeless people in the city’s public parks. A county-wide health emergency to outbreaks of Hepatitis A was used to justify the ban.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Critics called El Cajon’s ban a punitive measure meant to dehumanize and criminalize the homeless and in protest staged several food-sharing events at one of the city’s most popular parks, Wells Park near downtown.
National and international media, including the BBC, picked up on the story after volunteers distributing food earlier this month in defiance of the ban were arrested. Much of the attention it brought to the East County city of nearly 100,000 was unflattering.
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Over in Coronado, Mayor Richard Bailey is cueing up for a run against incumbent County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer.
Lawson-Remer has run up an impressive list of accomplishments during her first term. She was largely responsible for shifting the majority on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors from Republican to Democrat for the first time in almost three decades.
Bailey’s take on the homeless, namely that he’d “solved” the problem landed him a slot on Fox News Tucker Carlson’s program.
Coronado journalist Brad Willis –whose investigative work has occasionally graced these pages– pointed out the fallacy of Bailey’s claims in a Union-Tribune op ed.
In bold banners across the lower screen during the interview, Fox News touted the mayor’s “zero tolerance policy” on homeless encampments as playing a major role in completely eliminating the problem in Coronado — an amazing and unique accomplishment in a state with a serious homeless crisis.
But here’s the rub: Coronado has never had a significant homeless issue or any “zero tolerance policy” in place. As mayor, Bailey cannot have his own policy because he does not run the city. Our city manager, Tina Friend, is the administrative head of the municipal government and manages the day-to-day operations of the city while implementing the policies of the City Council based on majority council votes.
After speaking with several past city managers and council members, it seems Coronado has never had any “zero tolerance policy” concerning the homeless, because — they unanimously agree — it has never needed one. It’s just simple geography and logistics. With the Coronado Bridge connecting us to San Diego, and Silver Strand Boulevard running over eight miles down to Imperial Beach, it’s a pretty challenging trip for those without adequate transportation. Also, unlike urban areas such as San Diego, there are no services for unhoused people in our community.
Willis included Mayor Bailey in earlier investigative reports on the cultish Awaken Church.
Despite his steadfast refusals to talk about it, Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey’s relationship with the zealous Awaken Church of San Diego and its political ministry, RMNNT: Warriors for Liberty, dates back at least two years when they endorsed him during his 2020 reelection bid for Coronado Mayor. They subsequently praised Bailey for not enforcing mask mandates during the pandemic, and also hosted him as a speaker during his short-lived campaign for Congress (the mayor dropped out of the race shortly after announcing his candidacy)...
…A core belief of Awaken/RMNNT is that, despite being in the minority, they have the right to impose their will upon the majority because, they claim, God is on their side. This means democracy should take a back seat to their fundamentalist theocratic politics… even if it requires taking up arms.
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“Solving” the homeless problem involves systemic changes in society and the economy.
Getting “rid” of the homeless is an expression of resentment and disgust fostered by individuals who lack empathy and refuse to see the forest for the trees.
I have warned readers before and will now repeat a prediction that these emotions will be cultivated by bad people to enable the mass incarceration and even the mass “elimination” of homeless humans.
Think of it. Criminalizing the condition of being destitute –which is already underway in smaller ways– isn’t something people in a democracy should want.
People are on the streets because they don’t have access to the resources to find housing, because employers expect the public to pay for the social costs of their workers, and because health care is not treated as a human right in this country.
The bottom line here is that political attitudes about homelessness and poverty are reflective of a larger worldwide struggle between good and evil… between democracy and authoritarianism.. between economic freedom and monopolistic power.
Characters like Wells and Bailey may seem insignificant in that they’re both electoral longshots, but the platforming of their repugnant policies based on fallacious assumptions still represents a danger to society. Resounding defeats are one way toward discrediting their approaches.
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San Diego’s 2024 GOP Candidate Cruelty Crusade
I strongly object to referring to people as "the homeless." That is as dehumanizing as it is to refer to undocumented people as "illegals." As long as we continue to use dehumnizing language to describe people in need, then the longer "many supposedly enlightened souls involves believing the downtrodden are less-than-humans with moral or mental health failings who need to just.go.away.
These are human beings. They have the exact same needs every human being has. Unfortunately due to whatever circumstances, they find themselves in desperate need.
The first step to resolving their desperate need to develop compassion, recognize our common humanity. We need to stop building luxury apartment buildings and build apartments for those without homes. We need to provide medical care, oh, you know as well as I what is needed.
Doug, I have to take issue with your comment "One need look no further than the pearl clutching over a proposal by Democratic politicians for an encampment on a little-used part of Balboa Park to recognize the universality of disgust over unhoused humans.".
The pushback against this has little or nothing to do with this specific proposal, it has to do with legal uses of dedicated park land as laid out in Section 55 of the San Diego City Charter. Housing the unhoused, or building a police headquarters, or a new library, or a private nonprofit charter school on dedicated park land, as have been proposed in the past, would be violations of the City Charter. All require a 2/3 vote of approval by the City's voters. Even the SD High School issue (30 acres of dedicated park land) had to go to the voters. At what point does the rest of the camel follow its nose into the tent?