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Roundtable Analyzes Peters-DeMaio, Cate-Kim Races And San Ysidro Teachers Strike

Roundtable: Peters-DeMaio, Cate-Kim Races, San Ysidro Strike
Roundtable Analyzes Peters-DeMaio, Cate-Kim Races And San Ysidro Teachers Strike
52nd Congressional, 6th City Council, San Ysidro Teachers StrikeHOST: Mark SauerGUESTS: Scott Lewis, Voice of San Diego David Rolland, San Diego CityBeat Matt Bowler, KPBS News

MARK SAUER: Joining me today on the Roundtable are my guests, Scott Lewis, David Rolland, and Matt Bowler. Carl DeMaio made his bones as an in your face performer. He stormed into City Hall years ago to battle for pension and physical form, but now the Republican trying to unseat Scott Peter in the fifty-second Congressional District is portraying himself as a bipartisan peacemaker. He is out to end Washington gridlock. Scott, is this a new Carl? SCOTT LEWIS: I think his former inner circle and others are little surprised that is the tactic. He has proclaimed he will end dysfunction in Congress and bring everyone together to make change. Even cited Donna Frye in the debate, who has turned away against him, that they worked together at one point. MARK SAUER: They did at one point, before he was on council they did town hall meetings. SCOTT LEWIS: Carl has gotten where he is at, and he has had the success he has had not by getting people together to compromise, but by disrupting things so much by so effectively framing things, dewriting his opponents, and even bullying them in some cases, to push them out of the framing that he has set. That is how he gets things done, and that's how he advances. There is an argument in Congress that you would disrupt things so much that he would potentially reframe the Republican approach so much, that things may fall into place to better advance the fiscal conservative views. The innovation and efficient government views. But he would not get Democrats and Republicans together, it would more be a Ted Cruz style politician who is better for liberals on social issues and things like that, which takes that off the table in some ways. The idea that he would bring people together is an odd one. MARK SAUER: The reaching across the aisle thing, but his ads have that way, he is really trying to frame himself that way, but of course his opponent Scott peters is trying to frame it completely differently. SCOTT LEWIS: The success of her time has been by pushing people, and dewriting opponents, and caricaturing them, bringing up issues. If you elect him, he will be one of those congressmen always on TV, always making a point about something, forcing people to talk about something he wants to talk about. That is what you want to invest in if you want him. But the idea that he is a cross aisle bipartisan is not the bright sealing point. But he has obviously done some sort of polling or research to see that is what people want to hear. MARK SAUER: Maybe the nature of that district, so close and divided that he has figured out this is the way to go. DAVID ROLLAND: That is exactly it, that district is is perfect for someone like Scott Peters. He has always been in that type of district. On the city council he was on the swing district, District 1. He was very moderate, pro-business and pro-environment sometimes. He was an establishment candidate with a reputation for being behind the scenes working with parties that were opposed, and trying to strike some sort of deal. He always had good marks for that kind of thing. When he says it, he has got reputation to back it up, and a record to back it up, as Scott was saying. Carl does not. MARK SAUER: You noted in your piece that Carl has said several times compromise doesn't work, that Leo DeRosier line, nice guys finish last. SCOTT LEWIS: He would mock me for the idea that people need to get together and hash things out. It is a perspective he has championed, we don't need to get together and get incremental change or shell out principles. He refused to vote for budget on council. When he has been saying, and what his approach is to change the conversation and force people onto his turf. He did not get the US Chamber of Commerce endorsement. This has been his trait throughout his career, rather than reframing that and say hey, we did not get it, look at what it says about my opponent, let it be about peters, he decided to attack the US chamber, and they ended up blasting him in and carrying the story further. It may have gone away quicker if he hadn't picked a fight with them. He picks fights, and likes to see how things settle was he does. That is his role. DAVID ROLLAND: He is saying the exact opposite of that in trying to sell himself to district voters. SCOTT LEWIS: That is his challenge, and maybe that is the only route they have seen, but there is also been a decided to move to the left. He has approached climate change, and he acted offended the other day when someone said he is not so committed to action on climate change. MARK SAUER: His party certainly isn't. DAVID ROLLAND: He is also trying to tread a thin line on climate change, saying that it is real, but we do not know why. SCOTT LEWIS: He denied that, he said I am on board. DAVID ROLLAND: That it's absolutely a human made problem. SCOTT LEWIS: And it needs action, and the equal paycheck rules, he came out and surprised some people. He's trying to make the case that he is much more moderate, and he used social issues and got that off the table, and that has been pretty effective. It has been really interesting to watch for those who have seen him of the last decades in San Diego. MARK SAUER: You touched on the money, there's an extraordinary amount of money. More than $2 million for each candidate, a lot of that flowing in from outside. Matt, you don't cover politics, but you see the ads as we all do. Do you think they are effective? You'll see a lot of them before the next election. MATT BOWLER: I think people tune them out, I think people who watch the ads already know which way they are going to go. I do not think it will convert anybody. I think it is interesting, how always trying to remake his image. Running for mayor, he was trying to be this libertarian fiscal conservative. Now he was trying to be more of a beach Republican, the Republican okay on the environment and to the economy, working with Democrats. MARK SAUER: But he made his bones on fiscal conservatism. SCOTT LEWIS: I think the negative ads have an effect, and to keep people who might go vote for your opponent just to not vote. MATT BOWLER: To keep Democrats from showing up to the polls. SCOTT LEWIS: Look at what he has done, don't go to vote for him, that is probably more effective than convincing people to change their mind. MARK SAUER: In the few seconds left, I want to touch on something. The last few days created a stir, and I think that is the context for this. Tell us what happened earlier in the week when Carl DeMaio had to defend himself at his own press conference. SCOTT LEWIS: The LA Times Tony Perry said to him will you interviewed by sex crime detectives about allegations of harassment from a former staffer, and Carl DeMaio had a valley with him that was remarkable. That ended up surfacing these allegations by a former staffer Todd Bosnich, who says he was harassed over a period and try to be paid off. Carl DeMaio said he was fired for plagiarizing a report, and then he broke in to his office and tried to retaliate with these allegations. This is a really messy situation, but I think the biggest question I have is one, DeMaio said the police chief called him and said you are cool, we tried to get the police chief to confirm or deny this. She refuses to. MARK SAUER: That is unusual. The target of an investigation. SCOTT LEWIS: She talked to him, why won't she talk to us? Who is lying? What is going on? Is this staffer going to be charged with this break-in, because if he is not, that is going to really punch: this theory that Carl DeMaio has been putting out. It is messy and uncomfortable. There are a lot of questions that exchange ended up surfacing nationally. MARK SAUER: Nationally, locally, you guys did some stuff on it, but it has not been a full red meat blood in the water kind of thing. SCOTT LEWIS: It needs another shoe to fall. But they brought up those questions and we need answers for them. MARK SAUER: We will shift to another important local race with a potential big impact on the city of San Diego. Carol Kim is moving against Chris Cate in San Diego District 6, the only council seat in play the selection. What is at stake? They have Democrats, for the time being until the election, with a vetoproof majority. DAVID ROLLAND: To me, that is the story, and it is interesting that we were talking about the fifty-second Congressional District and the six council district, they overlap in a large area, so those people, maybe around Claremont will say something about these races. MARK SAUER: Turnout is critical here. Democrats are generally weak on turnout. DAVID ROLLAND: As you say, the council has six Democrats currently. Super majority able to override mayoral veto, as what happened with the minimum wage fight. Kevin Faulconer vetoed that, and they were able to take the same six votes that passed the ordinance in the first place and override the veto, and where we are with the referendum that may or may not be on the ballot. One of those Democrats, Ed Harris, is a temporary replacement that will be out in December. We have Lorie Zapf going from her current district 6 to district 2, which makes District 6 available. If Republicans and Chris Cate wins that, they will have five Republicans next year and four Republicans will not be able to override a veto. MARK SAUER: A split, and obviously the Mayor will get more power. DAVID ROLLAND: That offsets the majority of a certain party on the council, the power of the executive office. MARK SAUER: We will give a quick thumbnail on who these two folks are, starting with Chris Cate. DAVID ROLLAND: Chris Cate is very well known among the agenda setters in San Diego. He was the vice president of San Diego County Taxpayers Association, he worked for Kevin Faulconer for a little while at his council office. He is very smart, articulate, and tied into the business community establishment in San Diego. Interestingly, he lived in Carlsbad until not long ago. He is vulnerable to charges of carpetbagging. MARK SAUER: Tell us about his opponent. DAVID ROLLAND: Carol Kim is a brand-new base on the scene. She was not involved in politics until 2012, during Barack Obama's reelection campaign, where she got involved as an activist. She was trying to get out the vote. Her career has been in education, she worked in LA in an underprivileged school district in central LA. She has worked in AIDS outreach to my trying to help at-risk populations. MARK SAUER: A community organizer, as Obama himself was criticized for. DAVID ROLLAND: Right, she is has always been doing the do-gooder work throughout her career. MARK SAUER: This race has gotten nasty. They talked about voting records, who is voting and who is not, and Republicans parachuting in to take advantage of this open seat. Is this getting nasty down the stretch? DAVID ROLLAND: The negatives that Carol Kim has not voted in several elections, which is one of those separate issues that more of a qualification issue that seems to resonate, and they of use a similar type of thing against Nathan Fletcher. She has hammered him for Proposition Z, the school bond that increases taxes and provides support for local schools. It has become negative, and she tried to challenge the basic qualification for the races wealth that he claimed a tax credit in Carlsbad, but supposedly lived in the district. MARK SAUER: There was a tax document that said you did not accurately fill this out, which is subject to perjury. There was the whole thing that that was a mistake, and you are exploding that. DAVID ROLLAND: He said look, I told the county that I moved from Carlsbad and the county agreed they screwed it up, which brought the question to me about how much they screw up at the assessor's office. MATT BOWLER: And Ernie Dronenberg was quick to settle for everybody. SCOTT LEWIS: It was a seventy-five dollar thing, he will get a bill for seventy-five dollars, and the new bill will be fixed. It is not earth shattering, but it brought up a way to frame that charge. I think the problem is that lack of deep roots in that community, whether her approval and disapproval ratings will be the finer, which is whether she is able to get voters out and make up any difference that she has about the roots that he has built. MARK SAUER: It's an interesting district, with redistricting recently, this district has a large Asian population. Whoever wins will have an Asian candidate representing the district. It's not something that San Diego has seen. Todd Gloria has a Filipino-American background. DAVID ROLLAND: I think I seem to remember during redistricting, the Asian community was disappointed in the results of that, but it turns out they are going to get a representative this time around. SCOTT LEWIS: The biggest question I have, there is a theory going around that if the city council pulls back the referendum that signatures have been gathered for the minimum wage hike, there is a theory that they would put a larger minimum-wage hike, no would be yes and yes we know. If Chris Cate wins, are they going to have enough time to get another minimum-wage hike on the ballot? DAVID ROLLAND: Offhand, I don't know the timing with the deadlines. MARK SAUER: I'm sure that's all yet to be decided. SCOTT LEWIS: That is one of the consequences, this is a big deal, it may the Democratic majority, but it may give Democrats a majority overall. DAVID ROLLAND: These are nonpartisan offices. Recently, that has been true, with people like Tony Young and Todd Gloria, Scott Peters, Democrats who often voted with Republicans. It was not clear-cut. Lately, very recently, it has been, and on the big issues, they are really divided by party. MARK SAUER: We'll see how that will go. We're moving on to these teachers strike in San Ysidro, where they went on strike this week for the first time in the districts history, and pay is not surprisingly the central issue. Teachers want a raise, and school administrators say they do not have the money. In fact, they want to roll back salaries. Start with the situation down there. You're down there this morning, and I think we have got a bite to play, what happened this morning? There has been a dynamic play the last couple of days. MATT BOWLER: This morning the teachers and parents were organizing to parade down through San Ysidro through Willow and elementary, about a mile and a half away. I started at Willow elementary, the largest school in the district, with about 1100 students and forty-five teachers thinking this would be where the big event would happen. They walked over and we walked up to the district parking lot and there are probably about 100 parents and teachers in the working lot at the front door of the district offices, all with a piece of paper with a request for teacher qualifications. The parent's right to know, a request for teacher qualifications. MARK SAUER: They came armed ready to go. MATT BOWLER: They came armed, demanding to know who the substitutes are, what their qualifications are to teach. MARK SAUER: Obviously supporting the teachers on strike. MATT BOWLER: All wearing red, all in support of teachers. Banging on the door, after about forty-five minutes, the doors were finally opened, and they were led into the hallway. But the superintendents stayed in their offices and no one came out to talk to them at that point. Before we came on here, officials asked the parents and students in the hallway, because they were blocking the entire highway shoulder to shoulder, asked them to leave and asked all of the teachers that had joined that part of the strike to go across the street, because as part of a strike rule, they cannot strike on district headquarter property. So they had to go across the street to the middle school. MARK SAUER: Are the teachers and administrators talking? MATT BOWLER: They haven't had any contact at all. MARK SAUER: What is the reason for that? MATT BOWLER: The district says, from what I have heard, that because they did not make cuts when the recession was hit, that they dug into reserves, and spending money that they should not have, so now they have to make the cuts. MARK SAUER: Mismanagement all around. MATT BOWLER: This district has had a fair share of major problems. The teachers union is saying that is not true, there is plenty of money, and they should be using this money to pay teachers. They also immediately point to the fact-finding report, the union on the other hand says the factfinder did not have all of the information, and the district held back information because they did not get data until they get theirs in June, and new money came from the state after that. There's a lot of back and forth in the union. The California Teachers Union president is here as well, and they are more or less accusing the district of lying. MARK SAUER: Scott, do you remember the last time teachers went on strike and the animosity in this district or county? SCOTT LEWIS: I guess there was last year in the Alpine. That got heated. I think this defines almost all of these types of conflicts, that the district will propose some sort of future raise change or benefit change. And teachers will say you are hiding money, or there is money you're not talking about, you're not looking for money, you're not demanding more money from state. But they never agree on the basic facts. That is what is frustrating about this, there has to be a reality at the heart of this. MATT BOWLER: How can you agree if you do not even agree what you are negotiating about? SCOTT LEWIS: That is why these alternate the way they do, is there any independent research on the facts? MARK SAUER: You would think if you were hemorrhaging students and not getting money back. MATT BOWLER: They keep losing students. MARK SAUER: Don't we have numbers on that? MATT BOWLER: There's grant money, according to the union, you have the district people saying one thing and the union saying the other, and maybe there is some truth. The county board of education has a financial advisor working on it, and they have to sign off. This district is negatively certified by the state Department of Education. They are number five on the list of seven districts in the state of California that are fairly close to receivership, and Tony Martinez is the vice president of the board, and he is probably the most media friendly member of the school board. If they do not get things settled, they could get possible receivership by me. DAVID ROLLAND: That makes me wonder and hopeful about what you're bringing up, it is hard to even know what field you are playing on. The state might have to get involved, because they are on a state watchlist and the state may be able to sort it out. MATT BOWLER: That might be the only objective way, and that is what this teachers sounded like, that we're going to talk about. If the state comes in, they can at least give us an objective look on what the finances are. SCOTT LEWIS: Let's remember what happens, with that. The state takes over, but someone in charge, and the elected leader influences gone at that point. They can make autocratic decisions on that, and the state is basically loading the district money at that point to fix things, and that loan has to be paid back. It is a multi-year process that some districts had to go to, and some are just emerging from. That is a pretty draconian things, and many receiverships are, but it is a big deal. MATT BOWLER: And it's one of those long-term solutions that you may not see the benefits for in years. I know some districts and Central Valley have been into receivership. SCOTT LEWIS: It often comes with a chunk of money, that alleviates some concerns. But the economy is lost. MARK SAUER: These district losing enrollment, isn't there compensation for that? That would be on a school administrator, if you're losing a lot of kids and the money tied to them goes out the window. Can't the states compensate? MATT BOWLER: I'm not sure the state can compensate for a laws in students because this is how they pay districts. But the district is saying they are identifying students are leaving the district. One reason was kindergarten classes in San Ysidro are all part time. Parents want full-time in a garden for students, so they want to make full-time, because once they go someone else, what happens is, you send your son elsewhere, and he will stay in that school because that's where his friends and teachers are, and you will send your younger daughter to that school as well. They don't just lose one kid, they lose the family. MARK SAUER: The district wants to take a pay cut to roll it back. MATT BOWLER: The offer I last heard from the superintendent was a six and half pay cut across the board to all teachers, or increase in benefits and a lengthened kindergarten day, and a shortened school year. And five days of professional development. That was the last offer that I heard from the interim superintendent. MARK SAUER: They are a long ways from compromise at this point. This can go on for a while. MATT BOWLER: They were hoping they would be back at the table at some point this week. MARK SAUER: We will certainly watch for your reporting on that. That wraps up another week of stories at the Roundtable.

It's Hot In The 52nd Congressional

Scott Lewis takes a look at the race for San Diego’s 52nd Congressional District. It's now neck and neck (a U-T San Diego/10News poll says it's a virtual dead heat), so the campaigns of Scott Peters and Carl DeMaio have received a ton of national attention and a slew of campaign funds.

As of the last reporting period, Democrat Peters had raised $2.5 million, including nearly a million from PACS, or political action committees, while DeMaio, a Republican, had pulled in $2.2 million, with just $270,000 from PACS.

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In TV ads, which are everywhere, all the time, Peters accuses DeMaio of being a tool of the tea party; DeMaio accuses Peters of voting for $700 billion in cuts to Medicare. DeMaio's ads say he will heal divisions in Congress, Peters worries about the middle class in his commercials.

Both seem to be sympathetic to issues affecting women.

And It's Sizzling In The 6th City Council Race

David Rolland dissects the campaign for the 6th City Council District seat. Democrat Carol Kim and Republican Chris Cate are running in the pivotal district, the only open seat on the City Council.

Kim has accused Cate of perjury, fraud and lying. Cate accuses Kim of naiveté and intentionally misleading voters. Each has accused the other of not voting.

Cate has far more political experience and has raised twice the funds Kim has. Kim supports the minimum wage increase, while Cate emphatically does not. Both say no to public funds for a Chargers stadium.

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If Cate wins, Democrats lose their veto proof majority on the City Council.

San Ysidro Teachers Are Just Plain Steamed

Matt Bowler has been following events in the San Ysidro School District, where last minute negotiations failed, and more than 200 teachers went out on strike Wednesday.

The district cites a report which says it needs to reduce overall costs after declining enrollment led to a loss of $2.8 million from the state over the last few years. The union accuses the district of mismanagement and says it is hiding money to gain a better negotiating position

A state fact-finder recommended an across the board two percent pay cut for teachers, retroactive to August 1. That did not go well.

On Tuesday, the district offered a two percent raise for the current school year and 1.54 percent for each of the next two years, accompanied by a five-minute increase in the school day. Teachers voted no.

Schools remain open with the district attempting to hire 230 substitute teachers at a reported rate of $250 a day.