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.

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.

Along with then-Mayor Jerry Sanders and then-Councilman Carl DeMaio, Faulconer, 47, was a key member of a cadre of San Diego GOP pols who brought sweeping reforms to City Hall in recent years. But in this campaign, he did all he could to obscure his party membership. He wooed the police officers’ union and celebrated its support. He defended gay marriage and in general avoided every last social conservative issue.

And while he won decisively, it’s worth noting that Faulconer beat an inexperienced, second-tier Democratic opponent. David Alvarez, 33, only became a known figure in city politics in 2010, when he won a City Council seat that traditionally goes to union-backed Latinos. The list of San Diego Democrats with higher profiles and better resumes is a long one: former Councilwoman Donna Frye, Assemblywoman Toni Atkins, state Sens. Ben Hueso and Marty Block, Rep. Susan Davis and interim Mayor Todd Gloria.

Faulconer will serve the remaining 33 months of the term that former Rep. Bob Filner won over DeMaio in 2012. Filner  resigned in August 2013 after an ugly sexual-harassment scandal.

Faulconer, a former communications consultant and San Diego State University student body president, will face tough sledding with any conservative reform agenda. He is certain to be replaced on an interim basis on the City Council by a Democrat, giving them a veto-proof 6-3 majority until Faulconer’s council term ends in December.

Alvarez and at least two of those other Democrats are interested in or ready to nullify or impede three voter-approved reforms, starting with a money-saving measure in which city workers compete with private firms for the right to provide certain government services.

And in the June primary and November general election, Democrats have a solid shot at winning Faulconer’s coastal seat and a central San Diego district configured to encourage the election of an Asian-American council member. The Republican now representing the latter district, Lorie Zapf, is running for Faulconer’s old seat.

Democrats may soon hold 7 of 9 San Diego council seats

By year’s end, Democrats could have seven of the nine City Council seats.

Even with Faulconer’s election, many business interests already have given up on the City Council as a constructive force for job creation and economic growth. They’re using ballot measures to try to overturn City Council decisions to vastly increase fees on commercial development and to rezone a shipyard industrial area in a way that business owners say will destroy thousands of jobs.

Direct democracy appears to be their only chance of getting big things done going forward. San Diego’s parallels with California at large are plain. A well-crafted, conservative ballot measure can still win passage, if voters believe it is constructive or in their best interests.

As for Faulconer, he may be forced to play defense until his 2016 re-election bid — fighting to protect the reforms that until 2012 made San Diego seem a poster city for small-government activism.

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.

Which brings us to the affordable-housing policies of the majority faction of the San Diego City Council.

I have lived in San Diego for more than eight years and believe that during that time, it has been a relatively well-run city in that it’s dealt with a fiscal crisis in a responsible manner; done a good job in keeping crime low; and avoided the ingrained hostility to business seen in so many coastal Califoria cities.

The most constructive politicians haven’t just been Republicans such as firebrand reformer Carl DeMaio and mainstream, businesslike former Mayor Jerry Sanders. They’ve also been City Council Democrats like former council leader Tony Young and Todd Gloria, presently the interim mayor.

That’s why I’m so stunned at the absolutely nutty approach Gloria and council Democrats are taking on the affordable housing front. The great majority of people who study economics with an empirical bent — including practical liberals like Slate economics writer Matt Yglesias — have concluded that the government command-and-control model of trying to dictate housing outcomes through regulations, impact fees and project conditions is an abject failure. Here is a sample of Yglesias’ thinking from last year after he had digested a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition:

Here’s the book Yglesias wrote on the topic.

Sacramento housing policies failing ‘by any measure’

That’s how the Golden State’s housing policies look from the outside. Here’s how they look to Sacramento lawyer and community activist Craig Powell:

“A discussion of what the city should do to increase the availability of affordable housing all too often turns into an argument between builders and low-income housing advocates. It’s the kind of discussion that opens up a gulf of ideologies and yields little common ground. But there is common ground on one point: The city’s existing low-income housing policies are, by any measure, failing.

“Look to North Natomas. It is one of several designated ‘growth areas’ where the city requires builders to set aside 15 percent of all new houses and apartments for low-income residents under the city’s inclusionary housing ordinance (also known as the mixed-income housing ordinance). The ordinance’s goals were idealistic: 15 percent of all new houses and 15 percent of all new apartments in North Natomas would be built for the subsidized poor who would live happily side by side with their unsubsidized neighbors, who would pay the full market rate for their houses and apartments.

“The reality turned out to be dramatically different. It turns out that it’s exceedingly difficult to make subsidized low-income single-family homes work in the real world. It’s hard for such folks to get financing, even at subsidized home prices. It’s very expensive for builders who must incur the same cost to build a subsidized house as one they sell at market prices. Once a subsidized home is bought by an eligible buyer, it turns out they can’t sell it in the future for a profit: They have to turn any profit over to the government and the home must be sold to another qualifying low-income buyer. Such a limitation on resale lasts for 45 or 50 years. How would you like to buy a home, take on all the risks of a mortgage, but never be able to benefit from the appreciation of your property?

“So North Natomas builders of large subdivisions, being rational actors, decide to meet their 15 percent low-income housing mandates by building less expensive low-income units in apartment houses with 200 units or more, where 80 percent to 100 percent of the residents would end up being low-income tenants—exactly the sort of environment that created no end of social pathologies in large-scale public-housing projects in cities built throughout the country over the past 60-plus years. … the city’s inclusionary housing ordinance has, in practice, led to precisely the sort of housing that everyone acknowledges is a major mistake.”

$31 million project yields 96 beds!

None of this history has sunk in with Todd Gloria and San Diego City Council Democrats Marti Emerald, David Alvarez (the Dem mayoral candidate in Tuesday’s special election), Sherri Lightner and Myrtle Cole. They want to sock commercial developers with a huge fee increase to provide more funding for traditional government command-and-control housing-creation polices. They say that the fee now up for a raise was cut in half in 1996, and that’s a prime reason housing is so expensive.

Oh, come on! Even if the fee is increased by the massive amount council Democrats want, it will only provide about 100 homes a year — in a city with tens of thousands of families on a waiting list for affordable housing.

Then there’s this: the insane way the city of San Diego has used the money it did have for affordable housing, most notably $31 million on 96 beds. I repeat, $31 million for 96 beds.

“The new permanent homeless shelter downtown, former World Trade Center, is costing more than $450,000 per room, according to news reports. 

“Demanding brand-new affordable housing in redevelopment areas costing more than $337,000 per unit is akin to demanding Mercedes-Benz to sell 20 percent of its new cars to people who can’t afford them.”

That’s from an essay written by former San Diego Councilman Fred Schnaubelt, an expert on land-use issues who once was invited to testify before a presidential housing commission. Schnaubelt makes more sense on this issue than anyone in San Diego — and he’s not just a critic. He offers what for California is out-of-the-box thinking:

“In 2010, 18,228 ‘used’ or previously occupied apartments sold countywide at a median price of $110,664. Just one of many reasons so many Americans think the government is on the wrong track. What’s wrong with a used car or used house for people with limited education, limited work experience and limited income? It is a question needing an answer.

“In 30 years, not a single person has been able to explain why poor people, many without a high school diploma and who self-report to the census they can’t speak English, are entitled to enjoy the most expensive consumer product in society — a brand-new home or apartment. Or why housing for the poor should cost more than triple the housing occupied by most self-supporting renters.

“According to a University of Michigan study, ‘New Homes and Poor People,’ the construction of 1,000 new dwelling units, both homes and apartments, makes it possible for 3,545 households to move to better accommodations. Of the 3,545 moves surveyed, 1,290 were by low- and moderate-income families. This is the essence of upward mobility. Anyone who didn’t move to a brand-new house when they left their parents’ home or graduated from college knows how the housing market works. Used housing is ‘affordable housing.’”

Unfortunately, Schnaubelt hasn’t been on the San Diego City Council since 1981, and his smarts have no influence on San Diego’s present loony policy, namely (my words) the following:

“Let’s throw millions of dollars at a problem with an approach that has a history of meager results. And let’s raise the money to throw at the problem by socking it to commercial developers with a huge fee increase at a time when competition for their projects is intense.”

No wonder business interests are trying to get the fee hike overturned at the ballot box.

The boilerplate paragraph that’s never found

But what’s also unfortunate is how rare it is to see basic context in any story about government command-and-control housing policies.

I have whined for 25 years that any stories on Cuba that are more than 500 words should have a paragraph like this:

“Although Cuba is a socialist state associated with progressive values, in a key way it resembles pre-1995 South Africa. Black and part-black Cubans make up more than 60 percent of the population but are rarely found in key positions, which are held almost entirely by Cubans of Spanish descent.”

The Economist agrees with me about Cuba’s ruling “white gerontacracy.”

I have whined for nearly as long that stories on affordable housing in California that are more than 500 words should have content like this:

“Affordable-housing programs in California that use fees from developers and project conditions have a weak track record of actually decreasing rents and home prices.”

 Sure, that content could be made even more thorough:

“Affordable-housing programs in California that use fees from developers and project conditions have a weak track record of actually decreasing rents and home prices. But advocates for the poor say alternatives have not been offered by Republicans and contend many conservatives simply don’t care about making housing affordable for the less affluent and the underprivileged.”

If that second part were included, that would be fine by me — because at the very least, we’d have every story of more than 500 words making the point that existing policies aren’t working. Then maybe it would dawn on politicians in San Diego and elsewhere that failed public policies shouldn’t be continued ad infinitum.

Dumb de dumb dumb.

But when its implementation was allowed, its record was strong. This is from the U-T San Diego overview just after Filner took office:

“Publishing services: Slashed costs by 30 percent and eliminated 12.5 positions. Implemented in July 2011. Annual savings: $967,000

“Fleet maintenance: Reduced costs by 13 percent and eliminated 80 positions. Full implementation pending procurements for outsourced services that were part of employee bid. Annual savings: $4.2 million

“Street sweeping: Trimmed costs by 12 percent and eliminated 8.75 positions. Will be fully implemented this month. Annual savings: $559,000

“Miramar Landfill operations: Slashed costs by 31 percent and eliminated 11.5 positions. Not yet implemented as labor negotiations continue. Annual savings: $5.6 million

“Street and sidewalk maintenance: Cut costs by 7 percent and eliminated 14 positions. Not yet implemented as labor negotiations continue. Annual savings: $875,000”

‘Managed comp’ likely to be big issue in mayor’s race

Now Filner is gone, and a February special election looms to replace him. Republican Councilman Kevin Faulconer, an ardent supporter of “managed comp,” is likely to make a big deal of the issue going forward. Plans thwarted by Filner involved bidding to provide trash service — something that could save San Diego taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in coming years were it privatized.

His Democratic opponent, Councilman David Alvarez, has a rich — some would say redolent — record on the issue.

This is from a column I wrote in May 2010 when Alvarez was making his first bid for city office.

“[Ben] Hueso is leaving his District 8 seat to run for the Assembly … . In recent weeks, the U-T editorial board has met with candidates seeking to replace [him]. … [C]andidates from local political semi-dynasties – Felipe Hueso and Nick Inzunza Sr. – offered the usual doublespeak on outsourcing, talking about ‘doing it right’ and making sure it actually saved money.

“But the candidate considered the front-runner – David Alvarez – essentially said he wouldn’t support implementing ‘managed competition,’ period. How arrogant can you get?

“Maybe this is how Alvarez got to be the unions’ favorite over the dynasty candidates – he most boldly stated his intent to nullify the public’s vote on outsourcing. But at least he didn’t play semantic games – or tell the U-T editorial board something different from what he told other groups.”

Candidate says he will honor voters’ ‘intent,’ not their blueprint

So now young David Alvarez is one of the two finalists to be mayor — and he still isn’t pretending he likes “managed comp.” In an interview Friday on U-T TV San Diego with former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock, Alvarez refused to say he would implement the reforms that voters endorsed.

Instead, he said he would honor voters’ “intent” by pursuing increased government efficiency.

Feel free to groan. And groan and groan some more.

CalWatchdog has paid close attention to Nathan Fletcher over the past year, detailing the former union-trashing Republican assemblyman’s odyssey across the ideological spectrum.

When the local GOP wouldn’t endorse him over libertarian crusader Carl DeMaio in the 2012 San Diego mayor’s race, Fletcher declared the party unworthy of him and became an independent. He finished third in the June 2012 vote with 24.0 percent of the vote.

But then in May 2013, he shifted once again, declaring himself to be a Democrat. That 14 months beforehand he’d been a union-basher and now was a union-lover? Details, details. Incredibly, Fletcher asserted his core values never changed as he lurched from right to left.

On Wednesday, Fletcher conceded in the San Diego mayoral special election to replace resigned deviant Bob Filner, beaten by Republican Councilman Kevin Faulconer (44 percent of the vote) and Democratic Councilman David Alvarez (26 percent) — even though Alvarez was a virtual unknown until a month ago with just three years experience in politics.

Now? Fletcher has decided it’s time to move on. This account is from the U-T San Diego. Before his press conference, aides announced grandly that he was “leaving public life.” In fact, he gave himself plenty of wiggle room to return.

And he got 24.3 percent in this run for office. If he keeps picking up 0.3 percent in support each year, he might make a runoff by 2018, and in 2099, he could finally crack 50 percent support.

Faulconer the clear favorite to be next San Diego mayor

The runoff between Faulconer and Alvarez will be at some point in February.

Faulconer, 46, was president of the San Diego State student body before going into corporate PR. He’s been on the City Council since 2005 and has become an increasingly effective leader, especially since coming out from behind DeMaio’s imposing shadow over the past year. He helped negotiate Filner’s exit in August.

Helping him greatly is his affable manner and moderate image. He should be able to build on the 47 percent of the electorate that the hard-charging, occasionally abrasive DeMaio won in November 2012.

Alvarez, meanwhile, won’t benefit from President Obama’s coattails the way Filner did in 2012. Turnout was far higher than normal in many city districts for the presidential election as young and minority voters turned out to back Obama and his fellow Democrats. That won’t happen in February’s special election.

Given that Democrats have an edge of 91,000 over Republicans in voter registration, Alvarez could still win — even though he is 33 and has a very thin resume to be mayor of a big city. But Faulconer dominated among independent voters in Tuesday’s election. If he does well with them again, he should give California Republicans one of their biggest wins in some time.

The conventional wisdom has always been that it would be Republican Councilman Kevin Faulconer versus the versatile Nathan Fletcher, a Republican assemblyman turned independent assemblyman turned Qualcomm executive Democrat, in the runoff made necessary because no candidate in the multicandidate race would earn a majority of the first-round vote.

Democratic Councilman David Alvarez was seen as too inexperienced and too uninspiring to beat Fletcher for second place, even though Fletcher has been a Democrat for all of six months. Why? Fletcher is handsome (undisputed), charismatic (somewhat disputed) and a gigantic political talent (spare me), according to his admirers.

The latest poll suggests the conventional wisdom may be on the ropes — at least if ethnic solidarity comes to the fore in voting:

“San Diego’s Latino voters may play a key role in determining whether David Alvarez or Nathan Fletcher advance to a runoff election against the almost certain winner of Tuesday’s special election, Kevin Faulconer, according to SurveyUSA research conducted for KGTV-TV 10 News and the Union Tribune newspaper. Either Fletcher, who today is at 24%, or Alvarez, who today is at 22%, could be the candidate to face Faulconer, who today is at 40%, short of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff.

“Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll conducted 2 weeks ago, Fletcher is down, Alvarez is up, and Faulconer is flat. In the battle for 2nd place, Fletcher had led Alvarez by 11 points 2 weeks ago; today Fletcher leads Alvarez by 2.

“Latinos today divide this way: 34%, a plurality, vote for Alvarez. 31% vote for Faulconer. 27% vote for Fletcher. A larger than expected Latino turnout favors Alvarez. A smaller than anticipated Latino turnout favors Fletcher. Whites and Asians both favor Faulconer. Among white voters, Fletcher’s lead over Alvarez has gone from 15 points 2 weeks ago to 3 points today. Among the youngest voters, the contest is effectively a 3-way tie. Among the oldest (and most reliable) voters, Fletcher leads Alvarez by 10, but trails Faulconer by 23.”

The poll’s margin of error is 4.4 percent.

“SurveyUSA interviewed 700 city of San Diego adults 11/11/13 through 11/14/13. Of the adults, 577 are registered to vote. Of the registered, 510 were determined by SurveyUSA to be likely to vote before Tuesday’s 11/19/13 deadline. This research was conducted using blended sample, mixed mode. Respondents reachable on home telephone (86% of likely voters were interviewed on their home telephone in the recorded voice of a professional announcer. Respondents not reachable on a home telephone (14%) of likely voters, were shown a questionnaire on their smartphone, tablet or other electronic.)”

I have never trusted polls of less than 900 people. But stat experts I’ve talked to say I’m a dope. Nevertheless, I still don’t trust polls of less than 900 people. We’ll see what happens Tuesday.