Carl DeMaio for San Diego Mayor?
“I’m not running on a slogan or a smile. I’m running on a specific plan that has been out for a year.”
At the San Diego Tea Party’s December meeting tonight, City Councilman Carl DeMaio reminded us that today’s pension crisis was only really a surprise to the establishment; the math was obvious.
When we started talking about the pension crisis, as a government watchdog when I started shining a light on the city of San Diego’s financial problems, what did the special interests, lobbyists, and the labor unions say? And the politicians, and a Republican mayor? What did they say in 2003?
“Pay no mind. Nothing’s wrong. It’s all good. These government pensions are fine…”
We know all too painfully what the record has been. Those pensions have run up a debt that we now have to grapple with. They’ve resulted in cuts in our services in every neighborhood. We’ve seen our roads now fall apart, and our roads are now worse than the East coast roads where they have snow and sleet.
This is clearly not a new crusade for DeMaio. In 2006, he “helped craft and sponsor” Propositions B and C, giving voters final say on pension benefit increases, and requiring competitive bidding for city functions. In 2010 he led the fight to defeat the proposed San Diego tax increase—an increase that was supported, with time and money, by other San Diego politicians including most of the city council1 and mayor Jerry Sanders, and the government unions, to the tune of half a million dollars, outspending the “no” campaign by over 50%.
He’s a major reason San Diego is now on the road to a defined contribution plan instead of the defined benefits plan that is bankrupting cities across the nation.
Remember when the mayor, the council, and the unions said “don’t be talking about that pension reform business. Because it’s all locked into contracts that we can’t change anyway, so raise your taxes, cut your services, let your roads go to pot, you can’t do anything about it, accept your fate.”
No. I’m a businessman.
I read my contracts.
And the one thing that the labor unions have learned with me… to fear… is this phrase: “Gentlemen, I have read the contract, and I’m exercising every single right of the taxpayers.”
He has a history of winning tough fights against the establishment.
On June 3, 2008 Carl DeMaio was elected to the San Diego City Council to represent District 5. Carl made history as a non-incumbent taking a Council seat by the widest margin in a primary-winning 66% of the vote.
DeMaio also gets the tea party movement. He called it “the conscience of the accountable government movement”. He also gets reform: “you start with the simple ideas and implement them first.”
He’s also running, in one sense at least, a very unconventional campaign. The centerpiece of his campaign is “A Roadmap to Recovery”. It’s nearly 90 pages of specific reforms that put San Diego back in the black and, among other things, fixes the roads. I was originally going to say that he’s the Chris Christie of San Diego, but he’s not. He’s our Paul Ryan—but one of the reasons Paul Ryan isn’t running for president is that by conventional wisdom, putting out a specific plan opens you up to specific criticism. It means that all of the special interests that will be hurt by that plan will fund your opponents.
DeMaio recognizes this. But “voters don’t deserve, and should not accept, a slogan and a smile from their next mayor. They should insist on specifics… We do not have to accept the failed style of leadership of the politicians that got us into this mess.”
We’re not going to come in and punish. We’re going to give you something that you never gave the taxpayers in all the years of negotiations. We’re going to give you a fair deal… [and] under my labor contracts, the promises I make, I will be able to keep them, because I can afford them. And you will work for a financially stable city government, and not one on the verge of bankruptcy.
That really ought to count for something.
I haven’t yet read the roadmap—I just got back from the meetup. I have downloaded it and loaded it on my iPad. As soon as I’m done with Throw Them All Out• I’ll be starting A Roadmap to Recovery.
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?
There are eight members of the San Diego City Council; six are Democrats and two Republicans. The six Democrats voted for the tax increase; the two Republicans, Carl DeMaio and Kevin Faulconer, voted against it.
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- Carl DeMaio for Mayor
- “Carl’s platform for getting city government back on the right track includes a 90-page step-by-step plan for balancing the budget, reforming the pension system, fixing crumbling infrastructure, and restoring ethics and accountability to every level of city government.”
- A Roadmap to Recovery: Carl DeMaio at Carl DeMaio for Mayor (PDF)
- “To hold city leaders accountable, I believe we should work together to prepare a plan, submit it to voters, and be bound by it. By articulating 10 Commitments—and by placing several items up for a public vote—the Roadmap puts reforms into an irrevocable contract imposed on city leaders by the public.”
- San Diego Sales Tax and Financial Reform Package, Proposition D (November 2010)
- “City councilman Carl DeMaio, an opponent of Prop D, said, ‘The public is a lot smarter than the labor unions think. You can’t throw up a bunch of ads saying that if you don’t raise your taxes the world will swallow your house whole and have any credibility, particularly when people know in San Diego about the full extent of the pension crisis.’”
- San Diego Tea Party
- “San Diego Tea Party is a grassroots organization… created, and are run by people from all walks of life, with one common belief: ‘If we continue to do nothing about our failed system, and remain silent, our situation in America will get worse’.”
- Throw Them All Out•: Peter Schweizer (hardcover)
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So far, this has been a fascinating and frightening work. Peter Schweizer details not just the insider deals that congress engages in, but how they can get away with it—by making sure that the laws they create don’t apply to them.
- Who funded the pro and con Proposition D campaigns?: Craig Gustafson
- “The sales tax issue was the most expensive city ballot measure in more than a decade.”
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.
- Nathan Fletcher, desperate politician?
- Is Nathan Fletcher desperate for another political job before his current term runs out?
- 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?
- One more page with the topic Carl DeMaio, and other related pages
More Election 2012
- Romney-Ryan 2012: It’s the only way to be sure
- A highly partisan environment has one major advantage: it means we have a choice.
- Stephanopoulos: No bias in media
- George Stephanopoulos must have forgotten what he wrote in his autobiography if he doesn’t believe there’s a liberal bias in the media.
- A tale of two speeches: Condi Rice and Paul Ryan
- Rice and Ryan. Now there’s a ticket.
- Proposition B opponents: city salaries grow from magic beans
- Where do they think city worker salaries come from?
- Fair and open competition—closed and bitter politicians
- The arguments against Proposition A are based on a law that passed less than a month ago, in response to Proposition A. That response is a prime example of why we need to break the chain that locks government unions to politicians.
- 15 more pages with the topic Election 2012, and other related pages
“I want to challenge each of us to make San Diego a model for fiscal reform, transparency, accountability. We can do that.”