CAVANAUGH: I'm Maureen Cavanaugh, it's Thursday March 29th. We'll be talking about haft night's mayoral debate. But first Alison St. John joins us to talk about a vote by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. That vote reversed a plan that would have marginalized community plans groups. Welcome to the show. ST. JOHN: Hello, Maureen. CAVANAUGH: Now, traditionally, what role do community planning groups play in land use decisions? ST. JOHN: Well, these are advisory groups. And it's important to make the point that they're only for the unincorporated areas. But those are the areas that developers are most interested in. There's 26 of these groups around the unincorporated areas of the county. And they vary in how active they are. But they have the authority to advise the planning commission on applications for permits for new developments. CAVANAUGH: So who wanted to do away with them in a sense, and why? ST. JOHN: Well, are the county, it is true, a lot of time is taken to apply for permits. And so the idea was that the red tape reduction task force would come up with ways of streamlining the process of getting permits from the county. This is a task force initiated by supervisor Bill Horn and Ron Roberts last year. They worked for about a year and came up with these recommendations which included a lot of recommendations about the culture at the county, about the staff ands bureaucracy, and the forest that developers had to get through to get a permit. But it also recommended either eliminating or radically limiting the role of the local planning groups. CAVANAUGH: And why was that? ST. JOHN: Well, I guess the people on the red type task force, and many of those people were either developers or people connected with new developments. This is one of the criticisms that opponents of this recommendation made of that task force, felt that some planning groups asked too much of developers and are obstructionists and that they have a not in my backyard attitude, and that nothing developers can do can please them. So it would be a way to streamline the process if that role was restricted. CAVANAUGH: Now you did a report that played this morning on KPBS morning edition about this meeting before the supervisors yesterday. How did the groups defend themselves before the board? ST. JOHN: Well, about three dozen -- more than 30 people showed up the day off work and came down and very passionately spoke about the fact that these plans groups in some ways represent a democratic tool for the county in a system where, you know, there's some pretty powerful interests, and a lot of money at stake with these developments. And the local communities could get overwritten if the planning groups didn't exist. One of the speakers said, look, many of you guys up there are on first name bases with some of the developers, you might not even know when the community is thinking unless you had a planning group. Other people said, look, these groups represent years and years of experience on the ground, they are invaluable to the staff as well as to the county Board of Supervisors in giving you feedback about these new developments. So essentially there was an outcry about how this is a tool for the supervisors, that they would be ill advised to eliminate. CAVANAUGH: And the community planning groups won the day. Tell us what the supervisors did. ST. JOHN: Well, are the supervisors basically voted that there should be better training for the planning group. Of the big complaint from supervisor horn has been that he's felt there was a risk the county would be liable for a lot of legal fees if there were any, for example, Brown Act violations, open government type ethics rules might be breached if some of these volunteer advisory groups weren't properly up to speed on, you know, government regulations. He had accused them of costing the county a large amount of money. Once somebody found out how much they had cost the county, it turned out to be penny, literal $16 per year. So that particular argument seemed to be nixed. So the outcome seems to be that there will be better training devised by the county staff for these planning group members. They will have to take those -- the classes either online or in person before they're seated, and once a year. But then they did -- supervisor Horn and Roberts said there will be no forgiveness if somebody on the planning group breaks one of those laws and for example breaks the Brown Act, confers with other members of the group illegally before a meeting, the county would not back them. CAVANAUGH: Right. But for now, they stay. ST. JOHN: But they will continue to operate and be a part of the planning process in the county. CAVANAUGH: All right then. Thank you. ST. JOHN: My pleasure. CAVANAUGH: KPBS senior metro reporter, Alison St. John. CAVANAUGH: Now to the top story on Midday Edition the four top contenders for mayor faced questions last night from and about San Diego's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community. The debate took place at the center in Hillcrest. And Tom Fudge moderated. He joins us now. Hi, Tom. FUDGE: Hi, Maureen, how you doing? CAVANAUGH: I'm doing great. Thank you for joining us. And KPBS metro reporter Katie Orr reported on the debate. Welcome, Katie. ORR: Thanks Maureen. CAVANAUGH: What was the mood of this debate? FUDGE: I would say that it was raucous but happily not out of control. CAVANAUGH: Because of you? [ LAUGHTER ] FUDGE: Well, I actually tried the best I could just to ask questions that were provided to me by the audience. So my job was basically being the traffic cop, and you did need to call a cop every once in a while. People got very excited in talking to these candidates. So it was a big crowd at the center, and they were very Raabingous, and the interesting thing about this is of the four top people -- candidates for mayor of San Diego, two of them are openly gay, and both of them, Carl DeMaio, and Bonnie Dumanis, are Republicans. CAVANAUGH: Yes, that's right. Now, when Tom says Raabingous, can you fill us in? What does that mean? How did that manifest itself? ORR: Well, I've been covering politic enforce some time, and I have not really seen rye debate like this. People were shouting. There was a lot of whistling, cheering clapping, even some boos and hisses for answers they didn't like. It was a very vocal crowd. At one point a reporter from the LBGT weekly stood up and was trying to ask Carl DeMaio a question because they said he had not responded to them. So people had to sort of quiet him down and get him out of the room so they could continue with the debate. It was just a very interactive, I think is a good wonder, debate. It was really engaging. FUDGE: And getting back to the subject I was talking about before the two gay Republicans there was one question. When I asked it, it got a very loud cheer and a very big response. And the question was from a member of the audience, if you're gay, why are you Republican? And that of course was put to both DeMaio and Bonnie Dumanis. And after I asked the question, everybody yelled and cheered. I guess they were Democrats. CAVANAUGH: I'm going to ask you more about that. I imagine that you earned the pay that you didn't get from this experience, Tom. [ LAUGHTER ] CAVANAUGH: What was the focus of this debate? Was this a wide variety of LGBT issues or was it more expansive than that? FUDGE: It's difficult to say. My short answer is it was more expansive than that. There were questions about pension reform, there was one question about the plan to create a connecting bridge with car traffic, a few car traffic bridge in Balboa Park. And the LGBT from is only about 2 blocks away from Balboa Park. So that was a big issue. So it was a wide variety of issues. But I guess I would say that that question that I mentioned before, if you are gay why are you Republican, may have summed up the experience very much. And if I can, I guess, try to encapsulate what those two candidates said, Carl DeMaio said well, I am gay, and he is I would say liberal on social issues, but he is a libertarian type Republican, so he's very conservative on fiscal issues. Bonnie Dumanis has said in the past, one reason she's a Republican is she believes that she wants to be a free thinker. I think she also had to run for a county district attorney, are and it's hard to elect a -- district attorneys tend to be Republican. But she told a story last night of her parents who are very hardcore Democrat, and she said it was more difficult to tell her parents that she had become a Republican than to tell her parents that she had become gay. CAVANAUGH: That's a nice answer. [ LAUGHTER ] MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: I'm wondering, Katie, it is an unusual race in San Diego because two of the major candidates for office are gay. And one would perhaps expect that in front of the LGBT community, they would be the favorites. Is that how this debate worked out? ORR: Oh, well, just based on applause, I would say no. I mean, it's a very liberal part of the city, and Congressman Bob Filner certainly got a huge reception. I would say that City Council man Todd Gloria who represents the area by far got the biggest cheer of the night. But he was not part of the debate. Bob Filner got a lot of support, and he seemed very comfortable in front of the crowd, he felt at home, he was making jokes. He seemed to be one of the favorites there. That's not to say that the other candidates didn't have their pools of support. They all got cheers. Carl DeMaio was the one who received the least warm reception. He was booed several times, hissed at for some of his answers. And again it just speaks to the diversity of the LGBT community. Just because you're part of that community doesn't mean you're a liberal Democrat. We clearly see that in the candidates. Some of them are conservative Republicans. It just talks about how these are complete voters, dynamic voters. CAVANAUGH: Sure. FUDGE: I should mention that one of the sponsors of the debate was the log cabin Republicans, which of course is a gay Republican group. And asking Carl DeMaio, well, if you're gay, why are you Republican, it's a little bit like asking a black man who is Republican, if you're black, why are you Republican? And I think his answer, DeMaio's answer was reasonable. Well, I'm a fiscal conservative, and this is what I believe in. I can do that and be liberal on social issues too. And in fact if you look at mayor Jerry Sanders, that describes him pretty well. He has been very outspoken, for instance, on gay marriage, he's very much in favor of gay marriage. Yet he has sort of played the role of the Republican in City Hall. He's been kind of fighting the unions and trying to get pay cuts and pension benefit reductions, so he's managed to do that, be fiscally conservative while being socially liberal. CAVANAUGH: Now, the big news that broke yesterday about the mayor's race was that Nathan Fletcher switched from being a Republican to an Independent. Was there much talk about this in this debate? ORR: I was surprised that this it didn't seem to be an overriding issue. Nathan Fletcher brought it up a couple times, Bob Filner sort of ribbed him about it. But it wasn't a dominant source of conversation, and that may be because the Republicans knew they were speaking to a more liberal crowd that night, and they didn't want to draw attention to the fact that they were still Republicans. CAVANAUGH: That they were still Republicans. ORR: And Nathan Fletcher might be more appealing to some people in the crowd now because he is no longer a Republican. CAVANAUGH: There was also a controversy came up about a letter that Nathan Fletcher wrote with to San Diego rostra, criticizing Carl DeMaio. Did that come up? FUDGE: What you're talking about is a letter that Nathan Fletcher apparently wrote where he -- I don't have it in front of me, but I believe he accused Carl DeMaio of pushing the issue of sexual orientation too much, as if he was trying to use that to his advantage. And Nathan Fletcher was critical of that, which may suggest he was being critical of DeMaio are being openly gay or something like that. I wouldn't spoken with Fletcher, so I haven't asked him to bring that up. But I looked through all of the questions, I was the moderator, and looked through all of the questions looking for somebody who was going to question him about that comment, and I couldn't find any. So it didn't appear to be a big issue at the crowd last night. ORR: And Fletcher spent a lot of time talking about his support for the LGBT community, are he came out strongly against Don't Ask, Don't Tell, he I believe was the only Republican to support a bill at the California level that mandated teaching gay history in California schools. And he was questioning DeMaio on that again and again, asking him if he would have supported that bill. And DeMaio certainly did not respond to that question. It was interesting, the dynamic to see Fletcher go after DeMaio, whereas he had a more of a joking relationship with Bob Filner, even though those are the two frontrunners. So it'll be interesting to me, anyway, to see how that dynamic plays out as we get closer to the election. CAVANAUGH: Speaking about that, and certainly dynamics and so forth, before we end our conversation, I want to ask you about a new poll that has come out. And it came out specifically after Nathan Fletcher made that switch from the GOP to Independent; is that right? ORR: Yeah, they did the poll last night. 10 news did the poll with survey USA, and they found that 12% of eight hundred adults said they had switched to support Nathan Fletcher. 4% said they switched to not supporter him anymore. So he got a net gain of 80%. So that's a significant bump. I've reached out to the other campaigns to get their response, and certainly they'll say, you know, polls can be manipulated. But that's significant. CAVANAUGH: That is interesting just overnight. FUDGE: I just wanted to say that last night, LGBT maybe could have stood for lesbian gay bisexual and transparty given Nathan Fletcher's switch to being an Independent. But I just wanted to say that Katie did a very interesting interview with Nathan Fletcher yesterday where she asked him, well, how is becoming an Independent going to affect your political future? And he said something along the lines of well, I don't care about my political future, which I'm sure is not true. But it does strike me as being a very risky thing for him to do, a very old and risky thing. If he doesn't become mayor of San Diego, if he wants to go back to Sacramento, where is he going to caucus? Who are going to be his political allies? So I think that question will come up if he doesn't become the next mayor of San Diego. CAVANAUGH: As we get closer to June, this race becomes more and more interesting. Thank you both so much for speaking with us.
It was a "not what you'd expect" evening in some ways as the four major candidates for mayor of San Diego -- two of whom are gay -- sparred before a raucous audience at the LGBT Community Center in Hillcrest last night.
Questioning from the audience of several hundred focused on a variety of issues facing the city, but a majority of the queries centered on issues affecting the gay community.
Audience members greeted the candidates -- Councilman Carl DeMaio, Congressman Bob Filner, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher -- with cheers and applause, or boos and hisses, depending on their answers.
DeMaio and Dumanis dealt with questions about the perceived incongruity of being both gay and Republican.
DeMaio, whose council district is in the north section of San Diego, answered cat-calls by acknowledging that he hasn't been as proactive on certain issues affecting gays as the community would like. But he stressed that he has focused his efforts on bringing all of San Diego's various communities together.
Along with DeMaio, Dumanis was asked how she could be both a Republican and gay. She joked that telling her parents she was a Republican was harder than telling them she was a lesbian. She added that the best way to change attitudes within the staunchly conservative GOP was from the inside and that serving as San Diego's first gay mayor would be a huge step toward that.
The debate came on a day when the race for mayor was shaken by Fletcher's announcement that he was leaving the Republican Party to become an independent. Surprisingly, he wasn't asked by audience members about the switch and it remains unclear what impact it may have on the nominally nonpartisan election.
The candidate who clearly drew the most applause was Filner, the lone liberal Democrat on stage. He emphasized his stark differences on issues from the other three candidates, often doing so with a joke. Filner strongly denounced the pension-reform measure backed by DeMaio and the others that would end pensions in favor of 401-K plans for most new city employees. Filner also said he's against the controversial plan backed by current Mayor Jerry Sanders to build a bridge in order to remove vehicles from Balboa Park.
Fletcher focused on his differences with DeMaio. The tension between them has heated up, both accusing the other of dirty campaigning.
Fletcher stressed his support for state legislation that gay history be taught in schools. He repeatedly asked DeMaio whether he would support it; DeMaio was noncommital. Fletcher also touted his support for President Obama's push to end the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.
