Posted on 11/16/2004 9:26:35 AM PST by NormsRevenge
The ongoing pension crisis, afflicting California cities and counties that have granted excessively generous retirement benefits to public-employee union members, will no doubt shake up the political landscape at some point. An early sign comes from San Diego, where a liberal environmental activist may become the next mayor of the state's second largest city.
Absentee ballot counting is still going on, and Donna Frye, who ran as a write-in candidate, holds a slim lead over Mayor Dick Murphy. Opponents of Frye have filed two lawsuits trying to stop her from winning the race based on the contention that the city's charter does not allow a write-in candidacy. The municipal code does, however, allow write-ins.
It is an unusual situation, given that few candidates who start write-in campaigns, especially only a few weeks before the election, ever win races at any level. There's got to be a strong reason for voters anywhere to vote for write-ins in such large numbers, and in San Diego the reason is the city's fiscal mire, driven in large part by pension problems.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
Donna Frye is annoying and needs to go away. She looks like a leathery haggard J.K. Rowling, and her voice is completely indistinguishable from a man's when I hear it on the radio.
$100,000 from the public employees union as well as the teachers, door knob hangers everywhere the "Day" after she filed?????
Maybe she should, but the Republicans brought this upon themselves.
The leftys like Donna Frye come out when the Republicans shoot themselves in the foot. The incumbant (Republican) was asleep at the switch while the city dug itself a MASSIVE fiscal hole.
Let's see... Democrat Donna's on the City Council along with the Mayor, wiener Republican Murphy. They have roughly equal power (a vote on the city council) until the new "strong mayor" government goes into effect in coming years.
Supervisor Roberts, the legal challenger to the incumbent, who ran in the Primary and won his place in the General is a Republican.
Let's consider Judge Chuck Jones. He's a retired criminal jurist. He's active in Democrat politics in San Diego County. The classification of him being an Imperial County judge is just that: a fig leaf for the propoganda snorting transcription service loosely passing for a free press in San Diego. He lives in Alpine, San Diego County. He was picked from San Diego County by Gov Jerry Brown to serve in Imperial, the neighboring RED, historically Democrat county. He took no evidence. It appears he attempted to rule on the merits rather than the narrow issue before him: a TRO to haunt the vote counting. He accepted the whole cloth argument from the Frye forces, his fellow Democrats. He stated the City Charter is just a piece of paper and denigrated the idea it is the Constitution of the city despite the California State Supreme Court *literally* using that description as recently as 1999! Hear his decision here. (2.5mb mp3, "The Roger Hedgecockshow"
So we have an embattled incombent mayor who "didn't want to run" and suddenly did. We have an incombent Democrat City Councilwoman who publically considered and ultimately ruled out a run in the mayoral primary. She then gets the braindead City Clerk (hear him here, 1.6mb mp3, "The Roger Hedgecock Show") to allow her to run after ANOTHER Democrat, term limited out from the City Council who did run unsuccessfully in the mayor Primary, gets a judge to support the City Clerk deciding to let him run in the Special Election to replaced the suddenly deceased District 4 Councilman, one of three under indictment! The outgoing City Attorney (hear him here, 1.3mb mp3, "The Roger Hedgecock Show"), embattled by the scandals, investigations and indictments, says NOTHING, offers no legal opinion on Donna's candidacy. He's elected to have legal opinions and has chronically dodged the issue since Donna declared.
We still have a City Charter which specifically states there will be a primary, if there's no majority winner, there will be a runoff of the top two candidates and *only* those candidates. There was a change in municiple code to comply with a State Supreme Court decision saying a City Charter cannot eliminate write-ins in a general election. The State Supreme Court later REVERSED itself saying Charter cities *can* exclude write-in candidates. Our Charter does that in effect by demanding a primary *and* demanding a majority (not plurality) if not in specific letter.
Hear the viewpoint of highly regarded former City Attorney John Witt too: (Hear him here, 1.3mb mp3, "The Roger Hedgecock Show")
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