Nathan Fletcher, desperate politician?
Is it a disservice to taxpayers show governments how to provide better and more efficient service?
Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher is flooding my mailbox with bad ads; he’s coming across as a typical dishonest beltway1 politician. He’s just making stuff up and throwing it at the mailbox to see if it sticks. Over the last five days I’ve received three large advertisements from his campaign misrepresenting Councilman Carl DeMaio’s record.
Yesterday’s ad asks, in screaming yellow,
How can Carl DeMaio claim to be the taxpayers’ watchdog when HE GOT RICH OFF TAXPAYERS through government contracts?
Well, off the top of my head, what if his contracts were to show public officials how to spend less of our taxes and provide better service? Does teaching public officials how to not raise taxes count as being a taxpayer watchdog? Why yes, I think it does.
Fletcher’s yellow screamer is layered atop a blurred-out Union-Tribune article, headlined “Government contracts fueled DeMaio’s business success.” But the first paragraph of that article, which Fletcher blurred out so that it can’t be read?2
The political career of City Councilman Carl DeMaio has been built on his reputation as a successful businessman who knows what it takes to make governments run better.
DeMaio, quoted in the article, adds:
“I actually built a private think tank dedicated to improving government,” he said. “That’s my life’s work. If the unions want to try to distort that, I can’t control them. They can say what they want to say, but the reality is my passion is government reform, government improvement. Translating best practices from the private sector into government to cut costs, save money and improve performance. That’s a record that’s unassailable.”
Fletcher’s yellow screamer would be a lot more accurate and a lot less useful to Fletcher if it included the full context of that article.
I’m wondering if this is a result of California’s term limits. This is Fletcher’s second term; if he ran for the state assembly this year, it would be his last race: in 2014 he’d be term-limited out, with little options for other seats. In the mayor’s office, however, he could have eight years of relative job security, up to the end of the decade in 2020.3
In response to California 2012: 2012 is going to be a very important election for San Diego. Do we continue to reform the city’s financial state, or do we resume the path to insolvency?
- May 22, 2012: Ask Carl This?
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The mayoral campaign is really heating up. Assemblyman Fletcher now has a web site, AskCarlThis, that pretends Carl DeMaio isn’t answering questions. It’s headlined “Carl won’t answer the questions”, but you can go straight to DeMaio’s web site to see the direct answers to most, if not all, of them.
The most ridiculous is the charge that DeMaio attempted to “defund the ethics commission”. Fletcher is exhibiting the typical beltway mentality here: any attempt to cut costs on a project is morally equivalent to shutting the project down.
DeMaio’s response about the “defunding”:
From 2006 to 2008, the commission’s budget increased dramatically, by over 34%. The cost savings I proposed for the Ethics Commission budget of $307,000 was actually significantly less than the $350,000 budget increase during that two-year period. The reductions were geared towards a secondary ‘education and outreach’ function of the commission’s budget, not its primary enforcement operation. As a comparison, this reduction was less than half of what I recommend for the City Council and it’s administrative ($669,400).
Over two years, it increased by $350,000; DeMaio’s proposed budget wouldn’t even have rolled it back two years. If we can’t reduce budgets without being accused of completely withdrawing support, we will never get our budget in line without continually raising taxes. This is part of what got California—and DC—into its current mess: basing every budget on the previous year’s budget, and calling any attempt to cut budgets as sacrilege. That needs to change, and it sounds like DeMaio is trying to change it.
Yes, I know, that’s DC. Work with me here, I’m on a roll.
↑Besides blurring it out, I’m pretty sure he replaced the entire article with boilerplate, just to make sure the ad didn’t provide even subliminal context. The length of the blurred out words don’t seem to match up with the text of the Union-Trib article. The three columns of blurred-out text don’t even appear to have any paragraph breaks.
↑Similar concerns from other politicians are probably behind Proposition 28, which increases the number of years a politician can remain in the state assembly from six years to twelve years, and the number of years a politician can remain the state senate from eight years to twelve years.
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- California State Legislature at Wikipedia
- “Members of the Assembly are elected from eighty districts, serve two year terms, and since 1990 are limited to being elected three times. Members of the Senate serve four year terms and are limited to being elected twice. There are forty Senate districts, with half of the seats up for election on alternate (two year) election cycles.”
- Carl DeMaio, Taxpayer Watchdog at Carl DeMaio for Mayor
- “Carl DeMaio is a businessman-turned-civic watchdog who is running for San Diego Mayor. Carl offers voters a simple but timely pledge: Clean Up City Hall.”
- Government contracts fueled DeMaio’s business success: Craig Gustafson at San Diego Union-Tribune
- “The political career of City Councilman Carl DeMaio has been built on his reputation as a successful businessman who knows what it takes to make governments run better.”
- Proposition 28 is a complete and total SCAM
- “The proponents of the measure are longtime opponents of term limits who have long wanted to roll back California’s voter-approved legislative term limits. When you clear away all of the misleading and dishonest rhetoric, Prop. 28 increases the number of terms one can serve in the Assembly from three to six, and in the State Senate from two to three.”
More Carl DeMaio
- Carl DeMaio talks about expanding the San Diego Convention Center
- Looks like San Diego city councilman Carl DeMaio is backing an expansion of the convention center to ensure that Comic-Con stays in San Diego. The anchor, who I can’t pick out of the Channel 6 line-up, mentions both Anaheim and Vegas as places that would like to entice the convention away.
- Ask Carl This?
- If you’re getting campaign ads about “questions Carl won’t answer”, you should go to his web site. Chances are, Carl Did Answer.
- Carl DeMaio’s salary
- Yeah, the San Diego mayor’s election is heating up. “We just can’t afford hypocrite politicians like Carl DeMaio.” says Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher’s campaign.
- Bonnie Dumanis or Carl DeMaio?
- Two of San Diego’s mayoral candidates are running on a platform of fiscal sanity. Which is the best choice for 2012?
- Carl DeMaio in Mission Hills
- Carl DeMaio connects with voters in secret community coffee in the Mission Hills/Hillcrest neighborhood.
- One more page with the topic Carl DeMaio, and other related pages
More Nathan Fletcher
- Ask Carl This?
- If you’re getting campaign ads about “questions Carl won’t answer”, you should go to his web site. Chances are, Carl Did Answer.
- Carl DeMaio’s salary
- Yeah, the San Diego mayor’s election is heating up. “We just can’t afford hypocrite politicians like Carl DeMaio.” says Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher’s campaign.