San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
Todd Gloria doesn’t want to leave District 3.
- Photo by David Rolland
“I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.”
—Ashleigh Brilliant
Spin Cycle loves a good tale, but—wow!—getting into this whole redrawing of San Diego City Council district boundaries while simultaneously chiseling out a brand-new ninth seat requires a pretty strong constitution for the weird.
Even the late pop icon Michael Jackson once reportedly referred to redistricting as “indeed a pretty ugly power play.” So, if he thought something strange, well—.
During the past week, Spin Cycle sat through three hearings held by the San Diego Redistricting Commission—in Tierrasanta, Balboa Park and City Heights—where the public was invited to weigh in on a process the likes of which this city hasn’t seen since 1965, when the number of council seats last expanded.
Attendance at all three hearings was fairly impressive, particularly Monday evening, when more than 100 residents packed the cavernous Regional Transportation Center on El Cajon Boulevard just east of Interstate 15.
For all the crap being strewn in the direction of the seven-member citizens commission—more on that later—these volunteers are putting in the hours. As commission chief of staff Midori Wong likes to tell audiences, the city charter requires only seven public hearings; this commission will hold at least 20.
But that hasn’t stopped some of our more right-leaning friends in the local Republican Party and their compatriots in the media from framing this group as somehow working wickedly in the shadows. (For the record, Spin saw nary a camera crew at any of the three public hearings this past week.)
Recently, KUSI—known for its rather conservative take on the world—ran a sketchy guilt-by-association piece that alleged liberal bias among two commissioners and Wong for past associations with progressive organizations.
The lead-in to the story set the tone for the innuendo-laden reportage: “Seven largely unknown San Diegans have been quietly remapping the political landscape of the city.” Quietly? Really?
The segment included a brief interview with political consultant John Dadian, who gave legitimacy to KUSI’s premise.
“Clearly,” Dadian said, “some of the commissioners, if you look at their backgrounds, they do have a very biased background, and it does look like it is slanted towards the left side, towards labor’s side. And that is certainly a legitimate concern, I believe.”
Contacted this week, Dadian stood by the story but said KUSI did leave an important caveat on the editing-room floor. “I told KUSI that I didn’t have any problem with the sitting commissioners or their backgrounds,” Dadian explained. “My criticism is of the skewed system used by the city. At the state level, party affiliation is taken into account. But the city doesn’t.”
Dadian added that he doesn’t adhere to the slant taken by local GOP boss Tony Krvaric, who has led an unrelenting attack on the commission as an inherently left-leaning political machine (“union front group” are his words) that will end up anointing Democrats and their labor comrades into a permanent majority ruling uber-class that will drive San Diego into fiscal hell.
Krvaric has aimed much of his venom at Wong and Commissioners Theresa Quiroz and Carlos Marquez—he’s even in recent weeks changed his Twitter avatar to a photo of Wong and Marquez together. (Frankly, Spin feels like pulling out the old picture of Krvaric posing with a porn star from his hacker days, but that’d be tacky.)
But his arguments have been like a bad game of darts—all over the place. At the Tierrasanta hearing last week, Krvaric conspiracy theorists pounced on the commission. Among them was an elderly retired attorney who implored commissioners to answer one “simple” question that conjured up grainy, black-and-white images of the McCarthy Era.
“Were you or are you now an activist for a union or political organization? A simple yes or no,” he said.
Wong, a former regional planner for SANDAG who at 24 has had her age and experience questioned by the Krvaric crowd for such an important task, stood her ground and defended the commissioners.
“Sir, I believe that everyone in this group here tonight is here because they believe in a fair and impartial process that’s run by citizens,” she said firmly. “I’m not going to ask the commission to respond to that question, but we appreciate your input.”
At the Balboa Park hearing days later, the innuendo was limited to a single speaker who questioned the integrity of “the whole commission” and suggested that they all resign and the city “start from scratch again.”
By Monday in City Heights, the furor was relegated to Barrett Tetlow, executive director of the local Republican Party, who took a different tack. He warned commissioners that proponents of certain redistricting maps that various groups have begun to present in the “pre-mapping” phase (commissioners have yet to put pen to map) are simply self-interested future council candidates themselves.
Tetlow specifically called out former school-board member Mitz Lee (involved in drafting a proposed District 9 that would empower the city’s under-represented Asian-Pacific Islander population), Brian “Barry” Pollard (who in 2010 ran unsuccessfully against Tony Young in District 4 and is allied with Latino and LGBT groups in pushing for greater representation of blacks and a second Latino council district) and Andy Berg, a community activist in Rancho Penasquitos and manager of the local National Electrical Contractors Association chapter.
Lee, who attended the meeting, shook her head and smiled when Spin looked her way. Contacted later, Berg told Spin Cycle, “I have no interest or intention of running for City Council. If I did, as a registered Democrat, I doubt I would be lobbying for lines to be drawn that would put my house in a predominantly Republican district.”
Pollard? Spin couldn’t catch up with him to ask. But the point is, there’s nothing wrong with coming to one of these bountiful hearings and speaking out for your community and how it should be represented for the next decade.
Heck, Councilmember Todd Gloria got up Monday and, while hesitating to express his personal views during opening remarks, pretty much begged the commissioners to keep District 3 largely intact. He then sat through a sizable contingent from the LGBT community who asked that City Heights, where Gloria lives, be removed from the district and the boundaries be moved west to include the more gay-marriage-friendly communities of Mission Hills, Bankers Hill, Middletown, Little Italy and a portion of Downtown.
But, hey, this is politics. And if, as some observers suggest, local GOP leaders who got in the game late are angling to challenge whatever lines the commission ultimately decides upon by September through a referendum on the June 2012 ballot, that’s their right, as well.
But as Berg pointed out, “The entire world doesn’t revolve around donkeys and elephants.”
Got a tip? Send it to johnl@sdcitybeat.com.
