Roundtable Is Off To The Races: Trump Vs. Clinton, City Attorney, City Council, Prop. H

Donald Trump slams the job in -- judge in a lawsuit. Tillery touts her ex Bertie's -- Hillary touts her expertise. Voters are bombarded by a slew of negative contradict your emailers for city Council candidates. Proposition H may offer a cure. I'm Mark Sauer, the KPBS Roundtable starts now. Welcome to our discussion of the week top stories. Joining me is Steve Walsh. KPBS Metro reporter Andrew Bowen, Andrew Keatts of the Voice of San Diego and David Garrick who covers the City Hall of San Diego for the San Diego Union. At his downtown rally, Donald Trump went after the federal judge handling to class-action lawsuits against Trump University. Here's the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, attacking US district judge Gonzalo Kuril. The judges ought to look into judge curio, what he is doing is a total disgrace. We will come back in November, would not be while different president had to come back. While is the operative word. A lot of legal experts have expressed alarm. Why is talking about a federal judge a problem? It's seen as a problem, he is called out the judges, as Mexican, he's not Mexican, he's actually born in east Chicago. His parents are immigrants from Mexico. In calling out the judges heritage, saying he is disqualified himself because he's of Mexican descent, these are the things that are highlighting some of the -- You start thinking about that, would every Caucasian judge be disqualified if it involved collocations? There's no logic. The key thing, the big story was the Washington Post and the judge agreed. This dump of documents, what did they reveal. They went through a series, they released a series of what they called playbooks, the manuals for these courses. If you signed up for this course, this is how you were supposed to be trained. People paid for these courses, if you go through the sales playbook, what they did specifically, they found out people's credit ratings and how many credit cards you had, then they would quickly start pressuring people to take more and more of these courses. Trump's role at Trump you -- U. He was the owner of Trump University. There are questions as to whether or not he was involved in the day-to-day operations. They do say he was handpicking all of the instructors. There showing evidence that that didn't happen.'s what does Trump say himself. The New York Atty. General. -- Trump says he can point to cards that have been signed by people saying they enjoyed the course and gave it five stars. After these allegations came out he produced a couple of people who went through the course and said that they liked him. They thought they had benefited from them. Even one of those is backtracking. Yes. They were finding that he had business dealings with Trump. I heard the saying the other day it's not uncommon for folks in Ponzi schemes not to have been aware. The question would be when did they find the card. Was at the first afternoon or after they spent dirty $5000? Hillary Clinton has been exploiting some of this Trump stuff. She has. She made her first appearance in San Diego on Thursday. She touted her foreign-policy credentials. This was a speech that in many ways, was not a primary speech, but a general election speech designed to attack Donald Trump for his weaknesses. That's a beautiful segue, and -- Imagine, if he'd had more than a twitter account, but America's entire arsenal. We want him making those calls? Someone thin-skinned and quick to anger, who lashes out at the smallest criticism. She is going after Donald Trump. What are the polls saying? What do we think might happen on Tuesday? It looks like it's very close. There's a pretty interesting scenario where she loses California and that still gets enough delegates to become the nominee. That complicates the narrative. The tables will turn, when she was running against Barack Obama. She clearly wants to win, she has canceled several events, San Diego is the first of five days with her campaign. Could this Trump publicity, will that have bearing on the primary hearing Tuesday? I was headed event with Francine Busby, she makes people recognize the differences between the two parties. San Diego city attorney Jan Goldsmith has turned out and there are five candidates to replace him. It's unlikely any of them will exceed the 50% on Tuesday, forcing a November runoff. Andrew Bowen, let's do a rundown on who is running for Democrats and one Republican. Give us a thumbnail. Only one is in office. Mario L it is -- Elliott, despite that she is one of several chief deputies. She has some background in public education, public transit, she worked for the County Council's office. She has a lot of experience in municipal law and that's what the office needs. She's also been in the office for some time, she can say what works well and what needs improvement. You have Gil Cabrera, a Democrat, he's an attorney in private practice. He serves on the Convention Ctr., Corporation board. He's a judge pro tem, he subs for judges in the Superior Court. He's touting his experience as chair of the city ethics commission. He says you need an independent city attorney who can speak truth to power and hold officials accountable. Rafael Castellanos is also an attorney and looks -- works five real estate firm, he says his experience in real estate law and land-use is going to be really helpful. Bryan Pease was a late entrant. He is a Democrat and entered in January as a public interest lawyer making a name for himself in free speeches. The one Republican is Robert Hickey, deputy district attorney at the county level, he leads the gang unit. He's running on that experience of enforcing the law. Especially, as a lot of California felonies or downgraded two misdemeanors, he says that it's prosecutorial experience will be important. We need to take a nap now. How do you sort these out, if you are the voter. You read the background and the thumbnail biographies. In large part, a lot of people don't know what the city attorney does. The city attorney has three main roles, they prosecute misdemeanors, advice the city Council and staffers and Mayor on different legal issues, litigate, in this particular race, the and door Spencer less important for Robert Hickey because he's the only Republican. On the Democratic side, I think County Democrats didn't endorse anyone in this race. It's especially important for them, if you're a loyal Democratic voter, you might not know which candidate most reflects your valleys. Indicates -- Andrew Keatts, you did a story on mean ablation? There was a male or that when out that went to Democrats. It was ostensibly in support of Hickey, it made it very clear that if it was an attack on the Democrats it didn't do very well. It described them in terms, that I think most Democrats would see as favorable. This was seen as a Republican party example that they wanted to support this candidate. Rafael Castellanos was the one that they selected. Pisan Elliott are considered less of a threat. Gil Cabrera thinks that the GOP sees Rafael Castellanos is vulnerable. Regardless of whether there's merit, his opponent will exploit that to the greatest extent. Especially, here where we have a history was sexual harassment. It is inside politics, the details are, theme -- the mail flyer was made by an independent committee. The spokesperson said that they wish they hadn't done it, it was hurting Hickey's chances. That issue, people expect will come out, it hasn't come out in the primary. It's an indication that people don't know what city attorney is. There isn't that much money to spread around. You don't have enough money to attack your opponent. You have to spend the money you have just getting your own name and idea out. These prices, -- races, there is no polling. We haven't seen any of them. They do apples. -- Have polls. We are going to move on, it's certainly an odd election year. Incumbents have a big advantage, there is intriguing a few of these districts. Start with district 1, La Jolla, University City, a bit of nastiness there. If the city attorney is the race that hasn't gotten negative, there's not enough money, district one has all the money they need and they have used it to attack each other. It's Barbara Bry, versus the Republican. Whoever wins will presumably give the deciding vote to whichever party is in control of the city Council. A big swing district. This determines control of the city Council. The main attack line has been that Barbara Bry by virtue of supporting the citizens plan, that would raise hotel taxes to facilitate a convention center downtown, she is the fact oh supportive of a Chargers Stadium. Ellis has hit her on that relentlessly. She has said that his attacks are dishonest. It's a pretty esoteric debate. She has said definitively, I don't know what to tell you, I don't want public funds to go to a Stadium. The argument from the Ellis camp and one that was to say that there is an indirect subsidy, if you use the convention center to reduce the cost of the Stadium, you can't separate the costs. It is philosophical and indirect. From my reading of the way that Bill works, it's not from left field. Beyond all the complex details, there has been some mischaracterization of what it is exactly. I think by both campaigns that are supporting, they have called Barbara's plan as if she wrote it. If she had written it, she wouldn't have included the legal pathway for a downtown Stadium to be built. She says she doesn't support it. She says the good outweighs the bad. She said a big part of the citizen plan is what is done with the site in mission Valley. It reserves that for potential expansion for parkland. The focus on the Stadium and that's what the citizen plan is is it disingenuous. It appears to be an attack by Ellis and his fading hopes that he can win outright. There are three other candidates in the race. It appears a runoff is lightly. It appears that he got aggressive. If you go to January, there was a one-on-one race. It started to look very good for Ellis to win outright any June electorate. He's taking his best shot now. Once you get into November, it's less likely. Less -- let's shift to district 3, Hillcrest, part of downtown, it's had an openly gay representative. Is that a prerequisite? That's an interesting question. There are two Democrats running, one works for Todd Gloria a loyal Democrat, one works for Marty Block, Chief of Staff. Chris Ward is a gay person. Anthony Bernal is not. None of these attacks have been explicitly about that. What they have mostly been about, is that Anthony Bernal took a considerable donation from Doug Manchester the financier of California's ban on may get -- gay marriage. You have to ask Anthony Bernal weather that thousand dollars was worth it, their faces have been together on mailers ever since. No one is saying Anthony Bernal should not be elected, because of his sexual connotation. There's a long history of that district being represented. There are two other candidates in all of the races that are also gay. Gerogette Gomez and -- in District 9. As long as you mentioned district 9, Carlos Flores and his opponents are maneuvering thanks. In some ways, it aligns with what's happening in District 3. Ricardo Flores is running and has the financial support and the explicit support of Mayor Faulconer. Tells you about how the two districts are different. Anthony was happy to have the rape -- support. You go down the checklist, they are close to each other on a lot of things. We will have to sort all of this out. Finally, voters on Tuesday are going to be asked to approve a plan to tackle a gigantic problem with crumbling infrastructure. What is proposition H and how it fund these repairs? The theory is that the city has been neglectful in the past. This is a way to force the city to not ever do that. It takes future savings from pensions. It takes future sales tax revenue growth and sets it aside over the next 25 years toward infrastructure. It doesn't raise any new revenue to fix the streets? That's a big complaint. A lot of folks have wanted the city to do a general obligation bond. It's a separate pool of money. Exactly. New money. This is cordoning off future revenue. Talking about the scope, how much money? The city's improvement budget is like $300 million, you look at this, it's a lot more than that. If you look at the budget analysis, they say 1.4 billion. That's over the next five years. That's just a list of the projects coming in the next five years versus the revenue expected in the next five years. There still doing facility assessments. I would save $4 billion or $5 billion, that's comfortable. Critics will say with the sea level arriving in concerns that we need to address the infrastructure. We could be way off. Proposition H, for the conservatives the selling point is that there is no tax increase. There stamping get as we are fixing the infrastructure regardless of intent a lot of people will see this and say were fixing the infrastructure without raising taxes. The definition of the deficit is that we don't have enough money coming in and we will need to raise taxes. The supporters seem unwilling to acknowledge the fact that infrastructure deficit is really about how much money the city is taking in. To be clear, the numbers that the Prop H would support would eventually produce don't become sizable unless you start viewing them in decades. It's over a 25 year period, that you get to a point where it's a substantial number. Over the next five years, it doesn't raise anywhere near what the neatest. The need exists today. When you're talking about crumbling infrastructure, each year gets worse. The streets are really bad here in San Diego. To belabor the point, what this would do is slow the rate at which things get worse. By its own admission, it does not make things better. It makes them get worse more slowly. The other thing is, the phenomenon that creates the new revenue, the process by which sales tax receipts will increase will also affect the need, which will also be subject to inflation and get big. Budgets grow over time, that's not free money. We need more money, the cost get bigger. I hear everything you say, it was passed with bipartisan support. There's no fund in opposition to it. It does appear, you can't be sure, likely to pass. When constituents ask, they always say infrastructure. That's funded opposition, there are people against it. There were some concern from the councilman who supported this, they list firefighters, nurses and other folks as opposed. That implies that the unions are against it. There were concerns at this takes away from pension. Some of these pension savings may need to go to hiring future organized labor. It will make it harder for city workers to get raises. One of the dangers is, a lot of people are going to see infrastructure and no new taxes and they will go for it. San Diego has been building up momentum towards improving the infrastructure. If at some point, Marcus he himself says this won't fix the problem. -- Mark Christie himself says this will fix the problem. How do voters react? Even though this doesn't increase taxes, will it have that same effect of convincing people that something material has been done. If everything on the ballot, this will matter the most long-term. We talk about prop be -- prop B. This is something that several years for now, people will ask how much money is available and how much has to be taken out because of prop H. Just because it's on the ballot, it may pass? I wouldn't be shocked. We're going to leave it there. We urge everybody to follow KPBS in the Voice of San Diego and the union Trevon -- union Tribune. That wraps up another week of stories at the KPBS Roundtable. I would think Steve Walsh, Andrew Bowen, Andrew Keatts and David Garrick of the San Diego Union Tribune. All the stories are available on our website. I Mark Sauer, thank you for joining us on The Roundtable. Be sure to vote on Tuesday.