Education of the Modern Doctor: Marcus Welby vs. House 
Eric Bidwell
- Photo by John R. Lamb
“Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.”
The signature cigar-thick dreadlocks now flow a good two feet longer, down past the knees. The T-shirt that declares San Diego “the finest city money can buy” appears a bit more faded and worn.
But the fire still burns in the belly of Eric Bidwell, who took the 2008 mayoral election by storm and embarrassed the heck out of the campaign team that hoisted Jerry Sanders into the city’s top political hot seat.
When Spin Cycle heard that Bidwell intended to run for mayor again in 2012, the ears perked up and a smile appeared. Weird, you might think, considering that the self-labeled Revolutionary Mayor drew a smidge less than 4 percent of the total vote four years ago.
Back then, Spin wished hard that Bidwell would finish third in the five-man race just because the electorate owed it to him for the role he played as the bullshit-o-meter that kept the top candidates, Sanders and self-funded Plasticine rent-a-nurse bazillionaire Steve Francis, on their tippy toes during the 2008 mayor’s race.
That effort, if you recall, led to the resignation of Sanders' campaign manager Mike McSweeney just two months into the job for urging Bidwell to read a prepared statement knocking Francis as a “hypocrite.”
McSweeney, writing to Bidwell over several weeks in an effort to befriend him, suggested that Bidwell could unmask Francis as “the full of shit rich boy that he is.” Instead, Bidwell called McSweeney out, and McSweeney faded into political oblivion.
Bidwell finished fourth that year with 8,368 votes, roughly 5,000 behind Democrat Floyd Morrow, who finished some 100,000 votes short of Sanders.
On Sunday, Spin Cycle caught up with Bidwell outside the City Hall breezeway as trolleys and people whizzed by. He leaned relaxed against a concrete planter box with a clipboard and a clear, slotted, plastic box beside him. A handwritten note above the box read, “Spare change to run for mayor.”
“I have a little bit of name recognition,” he explained. “People might want to give me money.” He takes some inspiration from Carl DeMaio, who has dropped considerable personal money into his own mayoral campaign. “Me being limited by $500 is just fundamentally not fair because I just happen to be poor and I can’t fund myself.”
So, he figures that if people would make a “personal” not political contribution, “as long as I do my income-tax stuff properly, there should be nothing wrong with me funding my own campaign in a similar fashion.”
As we chatted, one man from New Mexico visiting San Diego to avoid the cold weather dropped several pennies into the box that held a dollar bill and a few other coins and wished Bidwell the best. Several others stopped by to sign his nominating petition, on which he’ll need 200 signatures—and $500—to qualify for the June ballot.
“I’m hoping to collect 2,200 signatures because then I’ll get my $500 back,” he noted.
It might surprise some that Bidwell has decided to run this year, seeing that a liberal like Bob Filner is in the race. “I’ve been catching that from anybody who would be so left you call them progressive, not Democrat,” he said. “But I’m not a friggin’ progressive. I’m not comfortable with that far-lefty thing. I don’t think it’s diplomatic enough. I don’t think they give enough to the other side, whether it’s just verbal wordplay or real compromise.”
Capable of surprising observations, Bidwell considers Filner “too left” for San Diego’s political tastes. He considers Nathan Fletcher “too young” for local Republicans to trust. An avid marijuana advocate, Bidwell deplores Bonnie Dumanis for “waging war against medical marijuana.” DeMaio he considers “creepy. He’s like Steve Francis reincarnated as a slightly more palatable version.”
“What an awkward choice between Dumanis and DeMaio for Republicans,” he lamented. “The gay, anti-marijuana, anti-poor-people choices. It’s just the most mind-bending epitome of evil. Poor Republicans—‘Hey, they look and talk like us, except that thing that is against our morality.’ It’s just got to be weird for Republicans.”
But don’t snicker too much, dear Democrats, because Bidwell’s just as disappointed with unions, which he thinks have hijacked the conversation about San Diego’s future for way too long. “I’m just as skeptical of the powers-that-be union money as the powers-that-be developer money. Unions versus developers. It’s a false dichotomy, but it’s the war that’s being waged.
“I’m a little uncomfortable with unions in the modern era. You’ve got people in unions getting pensions that are way more than people earn who really need unions. I mean, once you’re a union of middle-class people, it’s not the same to me. The big gripe about Filner by people on the right is that he’s in the pocket of the unions. I think it’s a valid concern.”
Bidwell, who recently moved out of his beat-up, street-parked RV into a home in Encanto with his girlfriend and her 6-year-old son, talks passionately about the plight of the poor, working and otherwise.
Poor himself—he does “craigslist-y things” to help pay the bills—Bidwell scoffed at the political arguments du jour, like should we expand the Convention Center or do the Chargers warrant a new glitzy playground Downtown.
“It’s just bullshit,” he argued. “We can’t afford it. Shut the fuck up. We don’t need it. Let’s carry on.”
He says more pressing matters include clean water (he opposes adding fluoride to the water supply because it’s “unnecessary” and winds up in the food chain and environment), local food production (he raises chickens at home) and public transportation (free!)—anything that would be more relevant to a greater swath of San Diegans.
Disappointed in the Occupy San Diego movement’s slide toward cop hostility—“It’s over,” he declared—Bidwell, now 29, said he gained new respect for some police officers who “put their jobs on the line to let us break the law.” That sentiment, he said, earned him the label of “snitch” by some Occupiers. Predictable he is not.
“People do tend to underestimate him based on his looks,” said political consultant Chris Crotty, who’s not involved in the mayor’s race. But do that at your own peril, he added. “He’s definitely not an intellectual lightweight.”
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