Race In 52nd Gets Weird
Well before the June 3 primary, Scott Peters and Carl DeMaio were locked in a wildly expensive, very nasty, business-as-usual battle for the 52nd Congressional District, one of the few toss-up races in the nation.
Events began to get interesting on May 12, when the "National Journal" accused DeMaio’s campaign of plagiarizing one of its reports. DeMaio apologized and said that although his staffers were at fault, he was not one to “throw my staff under the bus.”
DeMaio's campaign aide, Todd Bosnich, says he was fired on May 19 — for plagiarism, says the campaign. For complaining about sexual harassment by DeMaio, says Bosnich.
On May 28, there was an apparent break-in at DeMaio headquarters, with lots of vandalism around the office. The only theft reported to the police was of gas debit cards.
On June 2, Bosnich gave an interview to KFMB radio’s Mike Slater detailing how, he says, DeMaio sexually harassed him over several months. The interview never aired on KFMB.
On Oct. 8, Tony Perry of the Los Angeles Times asked DeMaio about the sexual harassment allegations during a press conference.
On Oct. 10, a CNN reporter got ahold of the KFMB interview and put Bosnich on national TV.
Finally (or maybe not), at a taping of KNSD’s Politically Speaking on Oct. 17, DeMaio turned to Scott Peters and asked him if he had received DeMaio’s campaign strategy book, which apparently he said contained all his campaign strategies and tactics and had been stolen in the break-in. Peters said yes, political information about DeMaio's campaign showed up in June, and he turned it over to police within 24 hours.
On Monday San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis announced that her office had insufficient evidence to prosecute either the break-in or the sexual harassment charges.
On Thursday, ABC News posted "A Brief History Of The Craziest Congressional Campaign of the Year."
Yep. The 52nd.
Prop 1 — A Good Start Or A Bad Policy?
State Proposition 1 is a $7.5 billion water bond on the November ballot.
The money borrowed will allow the following:
• $2.7 billion for water storage projects
• $1.5 billion for watershed protection and restoration
• $900 million to clean-up contaminated groundwater
• $810 million for drought and climate change mitigation projects
• $725 million for wastewater and salt water recycling
• $520 million to improve water quality
• $395 million for flood management
Environmentalists and political activists are against it as inadequate, short-sighted, wasteful, and offering no new sources of water.
