SUNDAY SAN DIEGO
A couple of weeks ago, the SD Reader’s cover story by Matt Potter, entitled "San Diego’s Bad Behavior in the Spotlight," was an insightful piece about some of the best political catfights and other donnybrooks in the area during 2006.
Most interesting was that significant portions of the article focused on how blogging impacted the political landscape throughout the year. First, a section on former Orange County Register editorial writer Chris Reed’s hiring by the San Diego Union-Tribune to pen America’s Finest Blog. Reed’s penchant to go after SD City Attorney Mike Aguirre resulted in Big Mike deciding he needed to blog back, and thus started The Aguirre Report.
Life has not been the same since.
Some excerpts from the "Mike vs. Chris," portion of Potter’s Reader story, in which a blogger actually gets equal billing with the colorful San Diego City Attorney:
On March 22, Reed proclaimed that there was a "noble" Aguirre, crusading against the city’s corrupt power structure, and an "opportunistic" Aguirre, hungry for the spotlight. "From here on out, every time Aguirre appears in the U-T headlines, I’m going to offer my snap take on which Aguirre seems in charge of his tongue this time around."
As it turned out, Reed saw only the bad side of the city attorney, calling him everything from "unethical" to a "city saboteur" and a "lunatic." In an August post, he concluded, "Mike Aguirre is one of the worst public servants imaginable. He is incompetent. He spreads himself too thin. He says one thing one day, another thing another day. He will grandstand on any issue. He uses taxpayer resources on quixotic and pointless crusades."
Aguirre was so piqued he started his own blog, called "The Aguirre Report," and began firing back, accusing the U-T of mounting "a vindictive campaign to discredit my efforts."
In a November entry, he wrote: "The politicians at the Union-Tribune (U-T) are at it again. Sunday’s (November 5) newspaper published a news story on the City’s ongoing pension trial that seeks to convince a court that unfunded pension benefits granted in 1996 and 2002 by the City Council to City employees was a corrupt deal that should be rescinded."
Aguirre’s responses delighted Reed, who threw back at him quotes from a series of exposés the U-T had commissioned from its reporters to portray alleged management turmoil under Aguirre’s reign and his "rotten track record in pension-related cases" that "cost the city at least $2 million."
The article goes on to mention Reed’s focus on the disagreements between Aguirre and the San Diego Chargers, ending with:
In his blog entry, Reed insisted that he was generally unsympathetic to public funding of football stadiums, then added, "But imagine if you, your family, your company — whatever sympathetic unit you wish to employ in this thought example — were attempting to close a complicated deal. The entity you were negotiating with had in its employ a high-ranking official who at any time believed he had the authority to single-handedly sue to block the deal, whatever the wishes of the great majority of other high-ranking officials.
"This is not an entity you would want to bargain with, because you couldn’t trust it to ever keep its end of the bargain. There was always the chance the rogue employee — who has repeatedly said he doesn’t like you — might sue you. This is what the Chargers are up against with Aguirre."
The Reader piece continues with "Political Secrets," about the now-defunct (but still up with the old content), anonymous San Diego Politics Blog, which I posted on enough last year to have jokes poked at me about whether I was getting paid for each mention. Since SDPolitics was short-lived, ending about the time of the Brian Bilbray-won special election, some have questioned whether it was set-up specifically by an "interested party" in the congressional race. Potter writes:
One of the most effective local campaign blogs of the year was also the most mysterious. Titled by its anonymous author "San Diego Politics Blog," it first posted February 21 with an entry about the movie Why We Fight, a liberal documentary critical of the war in Iraq, playing at the Ken theater.
The faceless blogger labored through the April 11 special election in which Busby was opposed by a pack of 17 other candidates. Some observers said they could detect a tilt favoring Busby; others surmised the blog was a well-camouflaged effort by the campaign of ex-GOP congressman Brian Bilbray to discredit Roach. Nobody claimed credit.
Then, with days to go before that election, in front of a largely Latino crowd, Busby uttered her now-famous remark, "You don’t need papers for voting," seized upon by Republicans as encouragement by her of voting by illegal immigrants.
"Francine Busby appears to have managed to save defeat from the jaws of victory," reported San Diego Politics on June 5, the day before the election, which Bilbray won. "Busby and Bilbray had up until this point been pretty close in the polls. But this should tip the balance to Bilbray, who has run on the issue of ‘stopping illegal immigration’ since Day 1." Though the political season was only half over, it was the unnamed blogger’s last entry.
Although I shared emails back and forth with the unknown person throughout this time, I didn’t press him/her on identity, respecting the chosen cloak, and to this day I don’t know. The names that were bandied about by "in-the-knows" as "usual suspects" were wrong, however. Far from a conspiracy, I would surmise that the short-life of the blog and its unannounced ending was the result of nothing more than burn-out or someone getting a real job. It takes a special person to continue day-in-and-day-out with a blog site, while also figuring out a way to surround themselves with the people resources to keep it going while taking some needed vacation. Read: Jon Fleischman.
At any rate, since I digress, the Reader does continue with some other 2006 tidbits of interest, including more on Aguirre, the election fight at the San Diego Unified School District and more, including a listing of folks of interest that passed away during the year. Matt Potter, an outstanding writer and muckraker, is always worth the read…find the entire piece here.
Have a great week. And, GO CHARGERS!