State watchdog agency pushes for licensing reform

Good morning. Since it’s only Tuesday, we’ll start with a dose of bipartisanship to inch us closer to the weekend.

One of the rare issues where politicians on the left and right increasingly agree involves occupational-licensing requirements – the oftentimes cumbersome government-approval processes that many workers must go through to become certified to work legally in their profession.

Both sides have come to recognize that excessive rules limit employment opportunities for the poor, quash economic development and force people into the underground economy.

Advocates for reform don’t argue against training and regulations per se, but they recognize that it’s unnecessary to, say, force African-style hair braiders to spend thousands of dollars and go through hundreds of hours of traditional barbershop training when the hair treatment they provide has nothing to do with the certification they receive.

There’s broad understanding that people within existing professions often impose unnecessary barriers to entry as a way to reduce competition and artificially inflate wages. Defenders of the system say the rules are needed, however, to protect health and safety.

California’s independent state oversight agency, the Little Hoover Commission, this month released a report on licensing barriers that could serve as a blueprint for the state Legislature when it returns to session in January.

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

• “Lawsuit filed Friday by a San Diego deputy city attorney claims a supervisor has been sexually harassing her for three years, including telling her to keep quiet about getting harassed previously by former Mayor Bob Filner,” reports The San Diego Union-Tribune. 

• “Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Monday that billionaire activist Tom Steyer is already ‘spending a fortune’ on the 2018 race for governor of California, despite not having declared his candidacy. ‘He’s running. He’s been running,’ said Newsom, who has announced he plans to run.” Politico has more. 

• “A proposition to legalize pot raises DUI concerns,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

• “More than half of voters on both sides of the aisle say the 2016 presidential race is a major source of stress, according to a report just released from the American Psychological Association. There are even physical reactions — headaches, spikes in blood pressure, stomachaches, sleep loss,” reports The San Jose Mercury News. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December. 

Gov. Brown:

• In Palm Springs for an 11 a.m. memorial service for Palm Springs Police Department Officers Jose Gilbert Vega and Lesley Zerebny.

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A case can be made that former House government oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa, the eight-term Vista Republican and wealthy tech tycoon, may even be an underdog to former Marine Col. Doug Applegate, his Democratic opponent, based on June primary results and the likelihood of a stronger Democratic turnout in November.

Issa, 62, represents the state’s 49th Congressional District. It spans from Del Mar to Dana Point, with the largest chunk of voters in Oceanside and Carlsbad, and is perceived as Republican territory. In 2014, Issa coasted to re-election with 60 percent of the vote against an unknown, poorly funded Democrat.

But in the June 8 primary, Issa won only 51 percent of the vote. Former Marine Col. Doug Applegate won 45 percent, with an independent candidate running as a marijuana advocate pulling the remaining votes. In the San Diego County vote — about 65 percent of the district — Issa only won 49 percent to 48 percent.

Issa downplayed the result, saying turnout was unusually strong in Democratic precincts for a primary. 

Quirky Republicans on San Diego coast

However, Issa is vulnerable on other grounds as well. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, is a good fit for his east San Diego County district with his social and religious conservatism. But such GOP candidates don’t play well on the wealthy coast, where social conservatism isn’t as important to many Republican voters as being simultaneously pro-business and good on the environment. Moderate Republicans such as San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and longtime county Supervisor Ron Roberts fit this mold.  

This unorthodoxy may be why Issa’s use of the government oversight committee to go after the Obama administration on many issues may have provided red meat for Republican candidates across the nation, but didn’t appear to resonate as well in the 49th district. It has seen a decrease of 10,000 registered GOPers since 2012.

Meanwhile, in Applegate, local Democrats have a candidate who hits a San Diego County sweet spot. The county has more active and retired military residents than any other county in the U.S. and his background as both a military lawyer and command officer is sure to play well. Camp Pendleton, the giant Marines base, is the largest employer in the 49th district.

The contrast with Applegate’s history and Issa’s tumultuous, brief stint in the Army is ready-made for attack ads. Among other issues, he was accused of car theft by a fellow soldier.

Applegate, 62, has  lived in north San Diego County since 1981.

Despite his pluses, some GOP strategists downplay Applegate’s chances. Nearly 40 percent of the district’s registered voters are Republican, with 31 percent Democrats and 24 percent decline-to-state. Only 13 percent of district voters are Latinos, the group most likely to be upset with Issa’s increasingly enthusiastic support for Trump.

Issa’s net worth is the highest in Congress — a minimum of $299 million, according to official documents. He will not be outspent by Applegate.

But strange things have happened in presidential elections in San Diego County local races. In 2012, President Obama’s coattails lifted Rep. Bob Filner to victory in the San Diego mayor’s race despite ample evidence that Filner was a loose cannon with an anger problem and a vengeful streak. Filner resigned in 2014 after being accused by more than 20 women of improper advances and of allegedly trading administrative approvals for favors from developers.

But Applegate doesn’t have such baggage, and his emergence has such Issa critics as Daily Kos overjoyed.

The Fresno Bee has key details:

The Fresno Unified School District is asking the California Supreme Court to reverse a recent appellate court opinion criticizing its use of a no-bid contract, saying it could negatively impact hundreds of school districts and contractors across the state.

 

Fresno Unified attorneys said in the petition, filed earlier this week, that a 5th District Court of Appeal opinion released last month concerning a leaseback contract with Harris Construction has far-reaching consequences for the way school districts handle building projects.

 

“The Court of Appeal’s opinion and the issues presented by this petition impact hundreds of school districts and contractors who have participated, either currently or in the past, in hundreds of millions of dollars of lease-leaseback contracts on thousands of projects throughout the state,” the petition says. “The lease-leaseback arrangement between FUSD and Harris was structured exactly the same way as other school districts throughout California have structured their lease-leasebacks for years.”

 

Leaseback agreements were designed to allow cash-strapped districts to build schools by going outside of the traditional competitive bidding process and handpicking consultants who will front the cost of a project and then be repaid by the district in increments over time.

 

Contractor Stephen Davis took Fresno Unified to court, alleging that its contract with Harris Construction to build the $37 million Rutherford B. Gaston Middle School was not a true leaseback because the district had the money to pay for the project upfront. Davis also alleges the district broke state conflict-of-interest laws by allowing Harris Construction to provide pre-consulting services for a project it was ultimately awarded.

Trustee says FBI probing; superintendent surprised

Meanwhile, per the Bee, a Fresno Unified trustee says federal law enforcement as well as California appellate judges appears to have concerns about the Gaston deal.

Anderson has said little, but maneuvering by county GOP chairman Tony Krvaric and former state GOP chief Ron Nehring has made clear much is being done of his behalf. San Diego County Republicans took the unusual step of endorsing Anderson’s undeclared candidacy on Monday. This came after county supervisors voted to limit how much political parties could give in local campaigns, the plainest sign imaginable that the majority Republican board is at odds with Krvaric and Nehring and know what they are up to.

The Filner-DeMaio hangover

In conventional political circumstances, the San Diego GOP establishment’s attempt to oust a well-liked, generally conservative six-term incumbent would seem bizarre. Jacob has been a steady advocate of smart, restrained government and has been part of a long-standing GOP majority on the county board that has steered it to great credit ratings and to a better reputation for delivering services than is enjoyed by most of America’s other most populous counties.

But San Diego’s dynamics are not conventional. Krvaric and Nehring are not reticent at trying to throw their weight around, and they despise Jacob’s campaign manager for helping later-disgraced Democratic Congressman Bob Filner get elected mayor of San Diego in 2012. U-T San Diego politics editor Michael Smolens details this story behind the story:

The firm Revolvis has been the preferred agency by GOP leaders and that’s who many of their candidates hire.

The company certainly has been the choice of Republicans at City Hall, working for Mayor Kevin Faulconer and council members Chris Cate, Mark Kersey and Scott Sherman. Revolvis also consulted for an independent committee that supported Councilwoman Lorie Zapf. (Jason Cabel Roe at Revolvis said the company “won’t be involved in Joel’s race.”)

It’s a different story at the county. Supervisors Greg Cox, Bill Horn, Ron Roberts and Jacob — all Republicans — have relied on longtime San Diego consultant Tom Shepard, despite pressure from some party leaders to drop him.

Shepard was a political adviser to Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders, who clashed mightily with Councilman DeMaio. Shepard had worked to elect Fletcher mayor in 2012 and then shifted to Democrat Filner, further earning him the enmity of Krvaric and others GOP officials.

GOP maneuvering’s checkered record

But as Smolens points out, maneuvering by the county Republican establishment …

… hasn’t always worked out.

During the 2012 San Diego mayoral campaign, the party endorsed Councilman Carl DeMaio over Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, who also sought the endorsement and then later left the party to become an independent (and eventually a Democrat). DeMaio and Democrat Bob Filner knocked Fletcher out in the primary, but the Democrat went on to win in November.

Polls showed that Fletcher likely would have defeated either man in a runoff, possibly becoming mayor as a Republican had the party not endorsed DeMaio.

Also in the 2012 election, many GOP leaders lined up behind Steve Danon, a congressional aide who entered the race against longtime Republican Supervisor Pam Slater-Price in a North County district. Slater-Price decided against running for re-election, but Danon lost to Solana Beach Councilman Dave Roberts, who became the first Democrat on the Board of Supervisors in nearly a generation.

Given Jacob’s popularity and the impression that San Diego County conveys of being well-run — even though it is an impression that arguably isn’t merited — it is difficult to imagine her losing to Anderson. But that result wouldn’t be all bad for Anderson, who would still have two years left as a state senator.

Faulconer’s remarks came Wednesday in his first State of the City address. The Republican city councilman became mayor in February 2014 after a special election triggered by the September 2013 resignation of Democrat Bob Filner following a scandal- and peccadillo-filled eight months as mayor.

Beneath the blandness of Faulconer’s stadium remarks appeared to be a cold political calculation, local observers believe. There is no larger U.S. city with a GOP mayor than San Diego, and Faulconer wants to maintain that distinction after the November 2016 general election.

Filner defeated Republican Councilman Carl DeMaio 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent in 2012 despite an awful reputation for his personal behavior, a reputation he proceeded to amply confirm when the 20-year congressman moved from the relative anonymity of the House to the spotlight of being mayor of California’s second-largest city.

Because of widely reported early returns that showed Faulconer with a 9 percent edge in his special election mayor’s race against unseasoned 33-year-old Democratic challenger David Alvarez, there is a state and national perception that he won easily in the eighth-largest U.S. city. But final results showed Faulconer’s edge to only be 52.9 percent to 47.1 percent in an election dominated by older, whiter and wealthier voters.

Alvarez might well have won in an election with general election demographics. A Democratic candidate with a longer track record would have been a clear favorite over Faulconer in a race with no incumbents and the turnout seen in November 2012 and expected in November 2016.

This leaves Faulconer with political dynamics which compel him to seek the center ground. The idea of public subsidies for a stadium have been politically poisonous in San Diego since its pension debacle triggered a city fiscal crisis in 2004 and 2005. The idea of providing indirect subsidies, such as giving city-owned properties to the Chargers to develop, has not emerged as an alternative that an elected official or major political leader is ready to champion. (Disclosure: My newspaper’s editorial page has advocated this option.)

And so the mayor is likely to keep saying he wants to keep the Chargers from leaving without ever offering the sort of stadium subsidies that are common in U.S. professional sports.

The irony is that more than a few city insiders believe that the Chargers have been playing the same PR-optics game for years. A marginally successful NFL franchise based in Los Angeles would be immensely more valuable than a moderately successful NFL team in San Diego.

The patriarch of the family that owns the Chargers, 91-year-old developer Alex Spanos, has been in poor health for years. Many insiders think his passing would lead to a much quicker exit for the team.

The owners have a year-to-year option to pay to get out of the lease at Qualcomm Stadium in Mission Valley. They announced well before the Feb. 1 deadline that they will be back at the half-century-old stadium this fall.

A dozen years ago, the Spanos family backed a proposal to renovate Qualcomm and redevelop adjacent areas. That possibility was scuttled by the collapse of the real-estate bubble after 2005 and by the 2004 election of a city attorney, Mike Aguirre, who saw the Chargers as unworthy partners of taxpayers.

In recent years, the team has pushed for a team in the downtown area of San Diego, near the popular and well-regarded Petco Park, home of San Diego’s major-league baseball team.

Petco opened in 2004. It was partly paid for by taxpayer subsidies approved after the Padres’ 1998 World Series appearance.

The Chargers have no such goodwill dividend to draw upon. While their team has had an average to good record for most of this century, fans and the media alike have perceived them as underperformers based on their talent.

But in 2012, when 20-year paleoliberal congressman Bob Filner was elected mayor along with a Democratic council majority, things changed drastically in America’s eighth-largest city.

Normally, that sentence would be followed with a reference to an all-but-unprecedented law extending rights/government protections/transfer payments to a downtrodden group.

In Filner’s case, it was Huey Long time.

A populist progressive takes the helm

He told powerful companies seeking routine city permit and planning approvals that “you don’t get free things,” demanding costly favors for his administration. Starting with championing marijuana clinics and micromanaging planning decisions, Filner appeared ready to roll out a long checklist of liberal initiatives that would win the attention of the national media and the admiration of the Daily Kos left.

Instead, Filner’s obnoxious-from-the-start behavior bothered everyone at City Hall and limited how much he could force through. Then his criminal sexual behavior led to his forced resignation in September 2013.

In February 2014, polished veteran GOP Councilman Kevin Faulconer beat little-known Democratic Councilman David Alvarez 53%-47% in a very low turnout election deciding who served the remaining 34 months of Filner’s term. Despite his inexperience and shaky hold on the Democratic base, Alvarez would have won easily in an election with the usual demographics.

That led me to write the following for CalWatchdog:

San Diego’s politics are undergoing what might be called a “Los Angelization.”

The city’s school board was taken over by the local affiliate of the California Teachers Association in 2008, when union muscle elected a new board majority that instituted policies that drove away an acclaimed reformer superintendent and yielded an operating budget in which an astonishing 92 percent of funds goes to employee compensation. The CTA control of the school board only increased with the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Now the same thing is happening with the City Council. Union-favored Democratic candidates — such as Alvarez — are increasingly likely to beat Democrats with independent streaks. As recently as 2011, there were Democrats on the council who occasionally would take on unions — politicians with backgrounds in engineering and small business, as well as party members who appeared eager to hear out business interests’ concerns.

But now the union muscle-flexing not only has Alvarez near an improbable mayoral victory, it has prompted hard-left decisions by the City Council in the months since Filner quit — decisions supported by formerly semi-independent Democrats who see the writing on the wall.

Last fall, on a party-line 5-4 vote, City Council Democrats approved increasing fees on commercial development by at least 377 percent to provide more funds for affordable-housing programs — even though the programs have a horrible record of actually getting people in homes.

And on another party-line 5-4 vote, council Democrats approved a restrictive new master plan for a job-rich shipyard industrial area adjacent to the Barrio Logan neighborhood in Alvarez’s district. They did so despite dire warnings from many CEOs and business owners that it would give leverage to environmentalists and community activists to shut them down.

California and America, meet Sherri Lightner

But instead of San Diego continuing its inexorable metamophisis into Santa Monica south, something unexpected happened.

A Democratic councilwoman who’s an unpredictable, inscrutable engineer — how’s that for a unique category? — threw city politics for a loop. On Wednesday, Sherri Lightner of La Jolla ousted San Diego City Council President Todd Gloria — widely considered a rising star — with the help of the City Council’s four Republicans.

So a California city that is basically about 8 in a 1-10 scale of conservatism vs. liberalism has a Republican mayor, a Republican city attorney and a Republican-anointed City Council president.

Normally, the assumption would be that the Democrat who defected wanted to be a triangulator like 1996 Bill Clinton. But no one knows what Lightner thinks — and the Republican pols who got her elected aren’t talking either.

Lightner is expected to make public remarks today explaining her actions and her agenda.

The indictment released Wednesday of state Sen. Leland Yee depicts a San Francisco-Oakland-Daly City culture in which gangsters traffic in a long laundry list of crimes — in this case, with the alleged assistance of a Democratic officeholder.

“A 137-page criminal complaint charges 26 people — including Yee and Chow — with a panoply of crimes, including firearms trafficking, money laundering, murder-for-hire, drug distribution, trafficking in contraband cigarettes, and honest services fraud.

“Yee is charged with conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license and to illegally import firearms, as well as six counts of scheming to defraud citizens of honest services.”

Similarly, the details in the indictment of state Sen. Ron Calderon depict a Los Angeles County political culture in which lots and lots of folks strive to make dirty money — either by doing compensated favors for private businesses using their political connections or just figuring out a way to skim from government, especially in health care:

“The U.S. attorney’s office [announced] ‘charges being filed in a political corruption matter and a case involving a massive healthcare fraud scheme.’

“An affidavit obtained last year by Al Jazeera America includes allegations that Ronald Calderon accepted $88,000 in bribes from an undercover FBI agent and a businessman to affect legislation to extend film-industry tax credits and to change workers’ compensation laws.

“The document also said there was also probable cause to believe that Ronald Calderon ‘participated in a separate bribery scheme with Michael D. Drobot,’ the chief executive officer of Pacific Hospital of Long Beach. The lawmaker allegedly accepted $28,000 from Drobot in exchange for ‘supporting legislation that would delay or limit changes in California’s workers’ compensation laws,’ the affidavit said. … the FBI investigation has looked into the Central Basin Municipal Water District, where Calderon’s brother Tom worked as a consultant.”

The FBI smells a rat — lots of them — in CA

Then there’s the case of former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner. People remember the sexual harassment and the groping. But Filner was getting FBI attention even before his lurid scandal — for turning America’s Finest City into shakedown street, one in which people seeking city assistance needed to understand they “don’t get free things.”

This is from early July 2013 — before the memorable press conference at which three of Filner’s former allies denounced him as a perv:

I like this thesis — I think the sooner California Republicans go libertarian lite, the sooner they’ll be relevant again at the state level. I offered my version of it here.

But you know what? Maybe there are no lessons from the San Diego mayor’s race beyond standard California chestnuts about low-turnout special elections favoring Republicans, the party that does best with absentee voters.

“According to [political science professor Vlad] Kogan’s analysis, 64 percent of voters who supported President Obama in San Diego in 2012 did not come out to vote in the special 2014 runoff election for mayor last week. In the same analysis, only 23 percent of people who supported Mitt Romney failed to vote in this special election.

“And that’s at the heart of Alvarez’s loss. The coalition behind Alvarez spent millions trying to avoid this and failed.”

That’s from the Voice of San Diego.

In the latest tally, Faulconer has a 6.4 percent lead over Alvarez.

What happened the last time San Diego had a special, standalone mayoral election,  in July 2005?

Republican candidates got 6 percent more of the vote than Democratic candidates.

What is interesting about Kogan’s analysis is what it says about Obama’s amazing coattails in 2012. No wonder Democrats are worried about losing the Senate this fall. Not only is Obama not on the ticket to motivate marginal voters, Obama 2014 is far less popular than Obama 2012.

The early conventional wisdom was that the clear favorite was Republican Kevin Faulconer, 47, the longest-serving council member and a community figure since his election as president of San Diego State University’s student body a quarter-century ago. Not only was Faulconer like the congenial moderate Republicans who have led San Diego for much of the last four decades, his opponent was a neophyte.

Democratic Councilman David Alvarez, 33, only became a public figure in 2010 when he beat out scions of two local political dynasties to win a seat representing a largely Latino district south of Interstate 8 — the dividing line in city politics between blue-collar communities nearer the Mexican border and the affluent neighborhoods from La Jolla to inland Rancho Bernardo.

That conventional wisdom has given way to a new assumption: Faulconer may win, but it will be very close — and he may be the last Republican that San Diego elects as mayor.

Given the Democrats’ hold on nearly all of California’s 10 largest cities, Faulconer might be the last big-city GOP mayor to be elected in the Golden State — barring a change in our political dynamics or demographics.

GOP held sway in San Diego not long ago

Although Democrats had long enjoyed a voter-registration edge in California’s second-largest city, Republicans did surprisingly well until 2012. It was that year that Filner, an abrasive 20-year paleoliberal congressman, edged out GOP Councilman Carl DeMaio, a small-government crusader who helped win huge changes in city compensation practices in his one term in office.

Many observers credited Filner’s 51 percent to 47 percent win to the strong turnout triggered by President Obama’s re-election campaign among Latinos and African Americans — 29 percent and 7 percent of the city’s population, respectively — and young people of all races. Also seen as a factor was DeMaio’s combative manner; the gay libertarian, the theory held, turned off the independent voters that Jerry Sanders attracted in his successful mayoral campaigns of 2005 and 2008.

So when Filner resigned in August, Republicans were confident after DeMaio decided instead to run for Congress and the well-liked Faulconer emerged as the sole credible GOP mayoral candidate. In the first special election, in November, Faulconer led with 42 percent, with Alvarez second with 27 percent, and Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat former Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher third with 24 percent. In this week’s runoff special election — runoffs typically have light turnout — the assumption was that reliably Republican absentee voters would carry the day.

Instead, the last published poll showed Faulconer only ahead 47 percent to 46 percent, within the margin of error. Millions of dollars in campaign spending by the national chapters of local unions — most of it for negative ads trashing the GOP candidate — had taken their toll.

But Republican insiders — and scores of business executives — are worried about much more than just this election.

The “Los Angelization” of America’s Finest City

It’s not just the usual concerns of GOP operatives in California: that the party’s hot-button social issues turn off young voters and that Latino voter turnout is steadily increasing. It’s that San Diego’s politics are undergoing what might be called a “Los Angelization.”

The city’s school board was taken over by the local affiliate of the California Teachers Association in 2008, when union muscle elected a new board majority that instituted policies that drove away an acclaimed reformer superintendent and yielded an operating budget in which an astonishing 92 percent of funds goes to employee compensation. The CTA control of the school board only increased with the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Now the same thing is happening with the City Council. Union-favored Democratic candidates — such as Alvarez — are increasingly likely to beat Democrats with independent streaks. As recently as 2011, there were Democrats on the council who occasionally would take on unions — politicians with backgrounds in engineering and small business, as well as party members who appeared eager to hear out business interests’ concerns.

But now the union muscle-flexing not only has Alvarez near an improbable mayoral victory, it has prompted hard-left decisions by the City Council in the months since Filner quit — decisions supported by formerly semi-independent Democrats who see the writing on the wall.

Last fall, on a party-line 5-4 vote, City Council Democrats approved increasing fees on commercial development by at least 377 percent to provide more funds for affordable-housing programs — even though the programs have a horrible record of actually getting people in homes.

And on another party-line 5-4 vote, council Democrats approved a restrictive new master plan for a job-rich shipyard industrial area adjacent to the Barrio Logan neighborhood in Alvarez’s district. They did so despite dire warnings from many CEOs and business owners that it would give leverage to environmentalists and community activists to shut them down.

No more independent Democratic voices

The contrast between the current council Democratic majority and past Democratic majorities was striking. In 2007, an effort to punish Wal-Mart for the sin of being anti-union died when then-Councilwoman Donna Frye — the most popular Democrat in San Diego — changed her mind and opposed an anti-“big box” ordinance. Frye candidly admitted that her constituents liked Wal-Mart and didn’t want it punished.

Present council Democrats appear incapable of such candor. In voting for the massive fee increase on commercial development, Council President Todd Gloria — the interim mayor since Filner’s resignation — repeatedly insisted that not only would there be no negative economic fallout from the hike, it would help the local economy.

The same Gloria once stood up to unions by backing a “managed competition” process in which groups of city workers vied against private businesses for the right to provide city services — a reform strongly endorsed by voters.

Alvarez has made clear he plans to nullify voter-backed reforms. Will Gloria stand up to him? Maybe he would have a year or two ago. But now that San Diego politics are becoming as union-dominated and doctrinaire as those of Los Angeles or the California Legislature, probably not.

A Faulconer victory in Tuesday’s mayoral election may quiet GOP worries about the radicalization of San Diego City Hall — but not for long.

“The Tuesday special election in San Diego, triggered by the resignation of Democratic Mayor Bob Filner, caps a tumultuous stretch in the seaside defense-contracting-and-tourism hub that was once a stronghold of California Republicanism. Rocked in the past few years by a public-pensions meltdown that drove one mayor from office and again last year by Filner’s lurid sexual harassment scandal, San Diego politics is now buffeted by a different kind of force: overwhelming outside spending.

“At a moment in politics when Democrats are usually the ones complaining about heavy-handed electioneering from powerfully funded groups on the right, the race in San Diego is a vivid counterpoint — an illustration of the shock-and-awe impact national liberal groups can have when they engage outside federal elections.

“By the end of January, Washington-based labor unions had donated more than $1.2 million to outside groups supporting Democrat David Alvarez, a 33-year-old freshman city councilman who would be San Diego’s first Hispanic mayor. The $1.2 million figure matches the entire independent expenditure budget for GOP outside groups in the race … .”

“Faulconer has far outdistanced Alvarez in fundraising for his campaign account, taking in nearly $2.2 million to the Democrat’s $734,000. But union-backed independent expenditure groups have spent more than both those figures combined: the most imposing organization, the AFL-CIO and AFSCME-backed Working Families for a Better San Diego, has raised about $3.6 million to boost Alvarez.”

Among young, GOP woes go far beyond being outspent

So why hasn’t the national Republican Party jumped in to try to give the GOP its only big-city mayor? Because it might do more harm than good.

“In the face of heavy spending from the labor-backed Democratic coalition, there has been minimal national conservative engagement in the race. In part, that’s a matter of necessity: the national GOP brand could be toxic for Faulconer in a diverse, increasingly liberal-leaning city. A Republican National Committee official said that there’s field staff on the ground for the 2014 cycle, but there’s not a comparable financial investment from GOP-oriented groups. …

“To veterans of San Diego politics, the city’s leftward drift is a striking case study in what heavy-duty partisan investment can do in lower-profile elections — and a testament to the GOP’s desperate straits with the young people, minority voters and cultural liberals who are heavily represented in big cities.”

That last point can’t be made enough. It reminds me of the 2004 debate between Thomas Frank and George Will, but in reverse.

That was the year Frank’s book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” came out. Its premise was that social conservatives were so manipulated by hot-button Republican campaign tactics that they voted against their own economic interests.

On TV and in print, Will responded by questioning the notion that Democrats would bring more prosperity to the average Kansan than Republicans. But he also made the point that in a post-Cold War era, the stakes in voting were much less grave, and that people who were doing OK economically might not vote their pocketbooks:

“Hence many people, emancipated from material concerns, can pour political passions into other — some would say higher — concerns. These include the condition of the culture, as measured by such indexes as the content of popular culture, the agendas of public education and the prevalence of abortion.

“So, what’s the matter with Kansas? Not much, other than it is has not measured up — down, actually — to the left’s hope for a more materialistic politics.”

The Dems who don’t vote their pocketbooks

Now, a decade later, we have the opposite phenomenon in California. An overwhelming case can be made that Democratic hegemony has been bad for the average Californian since 1999, and that poverty and unemployment would be reduced if there wasn’t such Dem opposition to helping the private sector prosper. But among the majority of Democratic voters who have jobs, their relative personal success inoculates them from this GOP argument. And GOPers have no counter to undo the perceptions about their party, especially among the young.

To paraphrase Will:

Hence many people, emancipated from material concerns, can pour political passions into other — some would say higher — concerns. These include the condition of the culture, as measured by such indexes as the expansion of gay rights, the availability of contraception and abortion, and the concerns of environmentalists.

The younger cohort of such people may be lost to Republicans forever, even if they register independent — unless the GOP figures out a new tune, and soon.

As for San Diego, I still think Faulconer squeaks through to victory in the special election despite the influx of outside union cash. But when he’s up for re-election in 2016 after completing what’s left of Filner’s term, watch out. The demographics of general elections don’t bode well for Republicans in San Diego — and just about everywhere else in California.