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tjwash Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-19-05 12:09 PM
Original message
San Diego DU'ers...
Does anyone have a list of Pros and Cons for the two mayoral candidates?

There has been a ton of republican money dumped in for Sanders here, to the point that I can't even listen to the radio right now. Everyone except for Air America has received their orders to pound on Frye as much as they can, and prop up Sanders.

I just want to compile a list and send a list of pros and cons to some friends of mine.

Thanks in advance.
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haele Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-19-05 09:17 PM
Response to Original message
1. Sanders is surrounded by the same people who hang around
the Charger's group and the former mayor Dick Murphy. He's trying to run as a "outsider" but most of his meet-ups are chock full of people who are pushing for a "more of the same" type of pro-development groups. He's a nice, even-handed guy, but his background has always been that of a second or a board member, not as an actual leader.
There's a big difference between someone who is good as a consigliari or as the organizational face to the public, and someone who is really a leader, who takes the risks and responsibilities for policies.
His stated policies to bring the city on track, especially with the pension fund issue, require no pain to any of the development people, but raises in fees, rates, and program cuts and firings in the worker and middle management levels. The current pension will remain in place, there is no plan to retrieve money that had been scammed from the city, and those involved with the negotiation that developed it would get, as far as I can tell, a slap on the wrist.
The usual "make the middle class and city workers pay". Meanwhile, the impact to the average San Diegan is that services will get worse without a long view of improvement, the streets still won't get fixed, infrastructure will still collapse - and developers will still make out.

Frye's backers tend to be small business and professional groups. Her stated policies will have minimum firing (500 employees across the board) and a few service cuts (mainly hours), some rate and fee increases, and re-negotiation of the illegal pension and the retrieval of illegal payouts so that the city can get back into a somewhat favorable rating. Her plans apparently implement some fees on massive developments to help defray infrastructure costs. The impact on the average San Diegan is things will get worse for a short term, and then will improve as the city gets back on it's financial feet.

The city union workers are understandably unhappy with the re-negotiation of the currently very favorable city pension (no one wants a pay or benefit cut), so they're jumping on Donna Frye as being anti-worker for even suggesting that the contract they signed seven years ago was illegal and could not be maintained.

The hardest thing she has to do is to prove that a little bit of pain now with a re-negotiated pension and a minor layoff at this point in time is much better than the collapse of the pension fund and a major cycle of layoffs affecting thousands of employees in the city two/three years down the road because of Saunder's trying to be amenable to all sides of the issue and not taking a hard stand.

The best thing to do is to check out their websites and evaluate what the differences are.

Just my two cents

Haele
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IndyJones Donating Member (583 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-19-05 10:05 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Neither impress me.
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Oerdin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-20-05 03:53 AM
Response to Reply #2
3. Agreed.
However Sanders is backed by Murphy and the owners of the Chargers so that is more then enough to get me to vote for Frye.
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tjwash Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-20-05 10:53 AM
Response to Reply #3
4. Yep.
I'm voting for Frye, even though she ceases to impress me, just because Spanos and company are backing Sanders. The Spanos clan, both Alex and Dean, are nothing more than modern day robber barons. He's already trying to get billions of dollars in land in Mission Valley given to him by the city.
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cascadiance Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-20-05 11:13 AM
Response to Reply #1
5. On your original question, here's a list to start with...
1) Donna Frye's activism and leadership with regard to keeping beaches cleaned up has helped make sure that the San Diego Beaches are amongst the cleanest in the country. I have an article link where statistics on numbers of environmental claims being down here are cited to back this claim up. Shows both her ability to get things done leadership-wise (the media keeps focusing on Sander's experience with rebuilding charities, and ignore her efforts here). Also shows that she does have strong values to protect our environment in pragmatic ways.
2) Donna Frye was the main backer of that one "open government" proposition that passed in last election, which speaks for her quest to open up to the public the messes that happened here because of the obfuscation of the pension board's business, etc. She has also even boycotted a number of meetings with Toni Atkins earlier to protest the earlier efforts to hide what was going on in meeting minutes, etc.
3) Donna Frye is looking to strike down the illegally negotiated pension benefits, per the recommendation of City Attorney Aguirre, whereas Sanders is "avoiding" talking about it other than trying to say that Frye can't do this without getting sued. Now unions might not like this, but this whole cycle of creating pension benefits that are not being funded properly has to stop. The city keeps trying to put off the inevitable legal questions here so that we can put this behind us. As long as they don't face this issue, San Diego will continue to have this affect their credit ratings and other bad images of our city. I believe ultimately that Donna will do more to protect city worker's jobs and their salaries as much as she is able to and is able to raise revenue to do so.
4) Donna Frye has pushed for more accessability of local government processes and participation in them to the public. She wants more public votes on key issues (kinda like Gavin Newsome did with San Francisco's pension fund), and is trying to have City Council meetings on weekends or in the evenings to allow more city residents to be able to attend them.
5) Donna Frye doesn't support usage of eminent domain to push out local businesses and industrial parkland unfairly. It is one thing to use eminent domain for something that's critical to all residents (like the airport perhaps in the future). It is another to reward developers land through eminent domain, or other big city contracts to build expensive housing as payback for their campaign donations. That's what has been happening in the past in this city with other corrupt politicians and looks to be repeating itself with Sanders, with him getting 2-3 times as much political contributions than Donna's been getting.
6) Foes will say she's "anti-chargers", but she met her present husband watching a Chargers game, and has never said she wants the Chargers to leave, which they would have you believe. She DOES want to drive a hard bargain with them and not "give away" city property or other benefits without getting something fair back in return. She also wants to plan for all alternatives to new stadium proposals and not just be talked to in private like other pols are doing around here to curry favors with them that aren't privy to public scrutiny.

In short, the big reason to vote for Donna is to break the pattern of voting for people that are heavily promoted by people that buy them off with campaign financing and other favors, and put in place someone that is more answerable to the people and is trying to represent what they want. Some try to make her out as being in the pocket of the unions or trying to just bring in her own "lib" values to government. She's taking on the unions with her pension benefit fixes (and I think in a way that it has to be done), and I believe she wants to be more answerable to what WE want to do, not what SHE wants to do. That is what this city needs now.

http://www.cafepress.com/reelectdonna
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