Social justice? Unions savage gay, black Democrat in San Diego

by CalWatchdog Staff | May 26, 2013 6:15 am

May 26, 2013

By Chris Reed

San Diego’s recovery from its self-induced pension debacles a decade ago has been sufficiently vigorous that the state’s second-largest city is arguably in better shape than Los Angeles, San Jose and many big cities in California. But now the bipartisan coalition that got a lot done in recent years is mostly gone. GOP Mayor Jerry Sanders has been replaced by Bob Filner, a liberal former congressman who is blocking innovative, voter-backed efforts[1] to reduce the cost of government services. And last week, a vacant City Council seat previously held by pragmatic Democrat Tony Young was won by a union official who was plucked from obscurity and powered to victory by union money and muscle.

[2]But Myrtle Cole’s triumph over community activist and fellow Democrat Dwayne Crenshaw in the southeast San Diego district race wasn’t a tidy win. It was extraordinarily ugly.

Just as they had done with Republican mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio[3], unions and their allies played innocent while offering up frequent reminders that Crenshaw was gay. But they also played the race card, raising utterly discredited allegations that Crenshaw — who is African-American — liked to hang out at a crack house. This is from the Voice of San Diego[4]:

“’It was 3:30 am and Dwayne was sitting outside a crack house,’ the mailer reads. It goes on to imply that Crenshaw, who was attending San Diego State University at the time, was lying about being there to rescue a friend. It quotes a San Diego police officer saying Crenshaw was making up a story. “Everyone found outside a crack house at 3:30 am says they’re there for a friend and not for themselves,” the mailer says, under a banner called ‘The Truth.’

“The mailer is a rehash of a claim the San Diego Union-Tribune thoroughly discredited more than a decade ago when Crenshaw ran unsuccessfully for a council seat. Crenshaw’s opponent at the time, Charles Lewis, sent out a similar mailer. The officer quoted in the mailer, Lawrence Cahill, told the U-T in 2002 that Lewis’ mailer took his comments to San Diego State’s student newspaper about the incident out of context and that he was ‘very angry’ about it.

“‘That night I saw Dwayne 10 years ago, you could tell he wasn’t into the drugs, he was deeply concerned about his friend,’ Cahill told the U-T.

After being elected May 21, Cole refused to apologize for the ad and its ugly implications about Crenshaw, even though Cole is also African-American and presumably opposed to playing on ugly stereotypes about black men and drugs. The ends justifies the means. Another triumph for “social justice.”

School board member works for unions. Literally.

But that wasn’t the only union, er, mischief in San Diego. There was this:

[5]

“In California, it’s not just conservatives who think labor has too much power. In 2005, for example, The Los Angeles Times endorsed Proposition 75, which would have required public employee unions to obtain written consent from members before using their dues and fees for political purposes. Why? Because ‘public employee unions’ in many local governments ‘have gained control over both sides of the negotiating process,’ the Times’ editorial page noted.

“Eight years later, we have a glaring local example of this problem. San Diego Unified school board member Richard Barrera has been named to lead the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, an umbrella group of 135 unions. Barrera intends to remain on the school board, a part-time post, where he may recuse himself from voting on contracts with unions that are his bosses at his full-time job but can’t help but influence overall policies that affect those unions. The labor council’s executive board includes Bill Freeman, president of the San Diego Education Association (the city’s teachers union), and Jane Bausa, an official with the California School Employees Association.

“How tidy.”

Private sector far more accountable than public sector

That’s from my U-T San Diego editorial. For all the very appropriate anger about Wall Street’s mendacity and its central role in our recent recession, it can’t be pointed out enough that behavior is tolerated in the public sector that would be criminal or banned in the public sector. Whether it’s CalPERS asserting the pension crisis isn’t real, the rail authority lying the bullet train bond to passage[6] or gross conflicts of interest like the Barrera case, the government is unaccountable[7].

Great. Just great.

 

Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2013/05/26/social-justice-unions-savage-gay-black-democrat-in-san-diego/

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