San Diego's one-party blue politics turns into a Mexican telenovela

What happens when you live in a one-party blue city in a large urban area?

With no political competition and no battles of ideas, just rule by rigging, it doesn't take long before the left starts to eat its own.

Which is what we see in San Diego, where politics has turned into a Mexican telenovela.

Amy Reichert, a Republican who ran for office a few times in that city, with no luck against this political machine, has outlined this clown show with this tasty tweet:

The storyline goes as follows:

Nathan Fletcher, a rising Democrat politician who ran the county board of supervisors and became its most powerful politician after the mayor, was thrown out of office for sexually harassing young women on the job. But he was in deep with the public employee unions, such as SEIU, and seems to have owed them "debts."

To 'deliver' for them, he named Cindy Chavez, a Santa Clara County labor leader who was became a county supervisor there, to become the city's Chief Administrative Officer, a $400,000 a year job administering an $8 billion city budget in what is sometimes called 'the mayor of the county' job.

Obviously, a job like that requires some significant financial chops to avoid scandal stories about $60 billion losses on homeless programs as has been seen in corrupt San Francisco, but Chavez didn't have that, nor did she have any obvious ties to the city. The unions who supported her, according to La Prensa, didn't even know her.

But one for all and all for one is the union way.

Fletcher's successor, Nora Vargas, wasn't quite so malleable or unioned-up or in debt to unions as Fletcher, so she rescinded Fletcher's job offer and said she would be interviewing other candidates, which is her prerogative.

That didn't go over well with unions, who were obviously going to get something from this appointment, wrecking their big plans for whatever it was they had going with Chavez, so they raised a stink and accused Vargas (note that name) of anti-Latina racism, despite, as Reichert notes, the city's top positions being comfortably overrepresented of Latinas of the leftist stripe, (conservative Latinas need not apply).

In the San Diego Union-Tribune, dueling op-eds were run a couple days ago, one from Liz Ramirez, the leader of the Chicano Federation, who said she had behind her a host of similar Latino groups standing by Vargas (Nora, that is), and unioned-up Rep. Juan Vargas (no relation to Nora) who urged the former union leader Chavez to be reinstated in her job offer.

As a sideshow, the activist demanded the resignation of a white labor leader, Bridget Browning, who had used vulgar Spanish-language argot against Vargas (Nora, that is) for squelching Chavez's appointment, and thus appropriated their culture. Vargas (the congressman) wrote the other op-ed and called that flap "a sideshow" and urged that the Latina activists forgive Browning for her vulgar language and Chavez to be brought onboard.

Ramirez wrote:

We will continue to stand in solidarity with workers, but we cannot condone discriminatory, vulgar and racist behavior. No one gets a pass on offensive behavior. No one.

So let’s put election year and insider politics aside and denounce hate speech. It has no space in our communities. We are better than that.

Chicano Federation joined more than 130 other organizations denouncing Brigette Browning’s racist and offensive attacks on Nora Vargas — including organizations like the Latino Victory Fund, National Latina Business Women Association of San Diego, Hispanas Organized for Political Equality, MAAC and MANA National — and more than 100 Latino leaders across our state. We are all standing up in solidarity and saying “no” to hate. Because if we don’t do it, then who will?

We cannot stand by and allow vulgar speech — like that used by Brigette Browning — to be normalized. It’s not OK!

If people feel comfortable mocking Spanish speakers and Brown people at a public press conference, I can only imagine what they do behind closed doors.

Chavez, based on the looks of her from her pictures, could best be described as a white Latina. But that's not stopping the union faction for calling anyone who opposes her as city manager anti-Latina racist, too, even if they are real Latinas, as Vargas is.

Vargas (the congressman) wrote:

We were disappointed to see that Ms. Cindy Chavez was removed from even being considered for the county’s top job. Ms. Chavez is a highly qualified Latina leader who county supervisors themselves were ready to hire a year ago.

The Santa Clara County supervisor would have been the first-ever Latina CAO in county history. As a first generation Mexican-American and someone committed to social and economic justice, it was an inspired choice. This week we also saw misleading attacks leveled against Labor Council President Brigette Browning after she fiercely questioned the county’s decision.

Prior to this current board, the county was long indifferent to the plight of San Diegans living in poverty. Ms. Chavez’s support from unions and her pledge to prioritize economic justice would have been a strong step towards change and a new, brighter chapter. Mrs. Browning and the unions she leads were absolutely right to speak out forcefully for working people who will be the most harmed if a Latina leader like Ms. Chavez is not even considered.

That’s exactly what unions should be doing: fighting for workers to be heard, holding those in positions of power accountable. Yet some in our community attacked Mrs. Browning for speaking out under the pretense that she used an insulting Spanish phrase. Were her words inartful? Maybe, and she has since made clear she never intended to insult or offend anyone.

Vargas (the congressman) asserted that he was speaking out on his authority as a Latino.

As a senior Latino elected official, I represent one of the most heavily Latino congressional districts in America. What does offend me is people purposefully distorting Mrs. Browning’s words to mask their true intentions: undermining unions and dragging county government backwards.

But it's not just a racism-on-racist matter as both sides are trying to gain the upper ground on, the Fletcher/Gonzalez/big labor faction is claiming that Vargas (Nora, that is), an avowed leftist, is in cahoots with that rara avis on the board of supervisors, Jim Desmond, who is a Republican. Desmond, see, is more powerful than any of the leftists in control in San Diego, with a Svengali-like power to get avowed Democrats, like Nora Vargas, to do what he wants.

It's all pretty ridiculous, and it gets even more ridiculous when Amy Reichert brings up that Nora Vargas doesn't want Cindy Chavez anywhere near the city owing to some kind of love interest gone bad back when the pair were in the statehouse as most of these characters have been, including both Gonzalez and her wayward hubby Fletcher.

She rightly calls it a backroom deal, this bringing in of the unqualified Chavez to a major job with control over the county purse and like anyone, including the Latina activists, she opposes it. Obviously, someone's ox is being gored here, there's no guarantee that Vargas (the county supervisor) will appoint someone less a crony, so the two leftist factions are going at it with all the racism accusations they can hurl. The Republicans, with no political power, stand on the sidelines as the fight over money and influence goes on.

Meanwhile, the border stands wide open with San Diego at the epicenter of the migrant surge in, the migrants are rolling in by speedboat in broad daylight, crime is skyrocketing, the cops have retired at their desks, the potholes draw attention to Tijuana's superior street maintenance, and the beaches are being fouled by TJ's raw sewage. 

Sound like a telenovela? It does to a lot of us.

Image: Screen shot from Office of Lorena Gonzalez video, via shareable YouTube

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