“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.

In the first debate involving the three leading candidates in the San Diego mayoral special election to replace Hall of Fame perv Bob Filner, Fletcher struck a novel pose on the subject of his political shape-shifting: If you bring it up, you’re a bad person who wants to hurt San Diego’s image. I’m not making this up.

This is from the U-T San Diego story on the debate:

“Former Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher challenged his rivals in the San Diego mayor’s race on Friday to run clean campaigns free of attack ads and focused on civic issues in the first major debate that included all three of the top contenders.

“The challenge came in the middle of a discussion on how to improve the city’s emergency-response times at the ‘Spirit of the Barrio’ debate which focused heavily on neighborhood issues. City Council members David Alvarez and Kevin Faulconer didn’t respond directly to Fletcher’s pledge although Alvarez, who spoke next, quipped that he would use his time to actually answer the debate question.

“Fletcher’s political evolution from Republican to independent to Democrat since March of last year has drawn heavy criticism and skepticism from the left and the right. He’ll likely face an onslaught of negative advertising ahead of the Nov. 19 special election for that along with changing his position on key issues.”

Why no attack ads? Speciousness doesn’t get more extreme

But here’s where things take a hilarious turn. Fletcher contends his proposal isn’t to protect him from attack ads. Instead, it is prompted by his noble motives. I’m not making this up.

“Now a Qualcomm executive, Fletcher said he was making the clean-campaign pledge because of the negativity caused by former Mayor Bob Filner’s sexual harassment scandal and speculation that the race to replace Filner would likely get ugly.”

I got to know Fletcher a bit more than some elected officials in recent years because of the Chelsea King tragedy and his subsequent effort to win a law that reformed some California laws in mostly smart ways. Unlike Jon Fleischman, I’m not a Republican who feels personally betrayed by Fletcher’s “growth” and his lurch across the political spectrum. I still think he’s an able guy who may get a lot done in his lifetime. But the problem is that over the past year and a half, he’s been drinking the Kool-Aid about his personal greatness.

For Fletcher to seriously argue at the first debate that attack ads are bad form — but not because he’s most vulnerable to such ads but because he’s nobler than the rest of us — well, wow. That is a legitimate Oh-My-God-You-Cannot-Be-Saying-That-With-A-Straight-Face moment.

I know it doesn’t embarrass Fletcher. The Kool-Aid has him believing that any decision he makes is correct, because he’s Nathan Fletcher, and he’s just not wrong.

But if I were a Fletcher supporter, and I heard him make an argument that insanely specious and self-serving, I would wince.

Unless, of course, I too had partaken of the Kool-Aid.

In that vote, Republican-endorsed City Councilman Carl DeMaio narrowly edged Democrat-endorsed congressman Filner, while then-independent assemblyman Fletcher finished a fairly close but not that close third. So it was DeMaio vs. Filner in the November runoff, which Filner narrowly won, helped by coattails from President Obama’s spectacularly successful voter-microtargeting campaign.

Here are the June 2012 results:

Faulconer doesn’t have DeMaio’s downsides

In a special election, even more so than in a primary election, voters are usually partisan die-hards. So if Fletcher couldn’t finish in the top two in a primary election with two credible Republicans (DeMaio and DA Bonnie Dumanies) and one credible Democratic opponent (Filner), how likely is the newly minted Democrat to make the runoff in a special election against one credible Republican (City Councilman Kevin Faulconer) and two credible Democrats (Alvarez and former City Attorney Mike Aguirre)?

There will be those who say Fletcher, a polished, handsome war veteran with wealthy backers, is a much stronger candidate than the low-key Faulconer or Alvarez, a 33-year-old who has had an unremarkable stint on the City Council.

But Faulconer has far fewer hard edges than DeMaio. And while this shouldn’t matter, it probably does: Unlike DeMaio, Faulconer isn’t gay. He’s a poster-child hetero family man.

And Alvarez has not just pretty strong union support but this ethnic-pride element going for him: He has a solid chance to be heavily Latino San Diego’s first Latino mayor.

Will that doom Fletcher? Perhaps. Maybe political science and karma will be on the same page, for once.

I wrote about the Fletcher freak show in an editorial for the U-T San Diego that made several key points.

No. 1: This is not a normal U.S. politician party switch

“There are examples of politicians who switched parties and made a credible case that it wasn’t about expedience but about larger circumstances that changed. Many conservative Democrats in Southern states joined the Republican Party in the Reagan years, such as former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. More recently, socially liberal Republicans in the Northeast have shifted to the Democratic Party, such as Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee.

“Fletcher’s political evolution, however, is one of a kind. He went from being a traditional Republican with a near-reflexive opposition to organized labor and a slight maverick streak, to being a righteous independent who looked down on both parties, to a union Democrat — all in little more than a year.”

No. 2: It's not just party flip; he used to disdain both parties

“In a video posted on YouTube on March 28, 2012, Fletcher said that in a 'decision I’ve been struggling with for sometime,' he’d become a political independent. 'In my heart, it’s what I believe is right … . I’m leaving behind partisan politics (and a) system that is completely dysfunctional.'

“In a March 29, 2012, interview with the U-T San Diego Editorial Board, Fletcher depicted both political parties as deeply flawed. 'I didn’t [become a Democrat] because I think there’s an unwillingness on that side as well to step out and solve problems whether we’re talking about pensions or managed competition or some of these other types of issues,' he said. In shifting from Republican to independent, Fletcher said, 'My positions haven’t changed. My beliefs haven’t changed. My core values haven’t changed.'

“Fourteen months later, Fletcher wrote on Facebook about his realization that his values had changed — in ways that made him comfortable in the Democratic Party. Fourteen months after bragging to Republicans about his hostility to labor unions, he realized his values were those of the party that in California is defined and dominated by unions.”

No. 3: Fletcher still — STILL! — thinks he has moral high ground

” … as strange as this saga is, it gets even stranger: Fletcher and his backers argue that he’s not the cynic — it’s the critics who see a hunt for political advantage in his shape-shifting. Fletcher’s supporters contend it’s 'unfair' to point out that he says things now that are diametrically opposed to things he said 18 months ago.

“But it’s completely fair to note the oddity of what Fletcher calls his 'journey.' To note the gap between his old words and his new words. And to note the slick huckster vanity of his claim to always hold the moral high ground — whether he’s a pro-business Republican, an above-it-all independent or a union Democrat.

“After what San Diegans went through with their last mayor, we hope they are skeptical about all the candidates. But that is especially so about Nathan Fletcher, a politician with the gall to sell spasms of expedience as principled personal growth.”

In the 19th century, academics touted the “Great Man” theory of history, in which one leader of such stature and charisma came along that he lifted a whole nation to a much better place. Given that Fletcher has followers who have stood by him when he was a 90 percent conventional Republican, a pious nonpartisan and a 90 percent conventional Democrat, maybe the “Great Man” theory is having a San Diego revival, just with a guy who hasn't shown greatness.

Or maybe it's just a cult of personality thing. But it's going to be interesting to see if Nathan Fletcher can pull off what he's trying to pull off. And it's going to be depressing if he does.