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This makes no sense in San Diego, of all places; it’s pretty mind-blowing that an openly gay candidate would be courting the anti-gay lobby, but City Councilman Carl DeMaio is banking getting in bed and sleeping with the enemy. (LGBT Weekly):
San Diego LGBT Weekly has been reporting for several months about the fact that DeMaio has garnered and boasted of endorsements from numerous anti-LGBTequality activists and major financial backers of 2008’s Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in California.
The list of donors and endorsers includes powerful right-wingers, such as local storage-industry multi-millionaire, Brian Caster, and former San Diego mayor and talk-radio host, Roger Hedgecock, as well as former judge Larry Stirling.
This was uncovered when an email was leaked that was written by one of the well-known anti-gay forces in the city, Charles LiMandri, who was the attorney for the NOM during the Prop 8 battle.
City Councilman Carl DeMaio’s mayoral campaign says DeMaio “ … specifically promised me, as a condition of my support, that he would not push the gay agenda issues (including same-sex marriage) as did Mayor Sanders. Rather, he was emphatic with me that he did not believe that the mayor should concern himself with these issues as they are not his responsibility.”
Wow. That’s some promise there. And who was the recipient of this email. An “ex-gay” anti-gay activist (who claims to have cured himself of AIDS), James Hartline. Hartline was the one who gave the email to CityBeat. Why?
[B]ecause he felt LiMandri was undermining the conservative agenda by supporting DeMaio.
Perhaps Barista Autumn Sandeen, who lives in San Diego, can shed light on what is in the water there that’s creating the nutso political soap opera there.
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A couple things to keep in mind about this election in San Diego:
There are two openly gay candidates: city councilman Carl DeMaio and District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis. Both are Republicans although the city elections here are nonpartisan affairs.
Of the two, Dumanis could best be described as moderate. DeMaio, on the other hand hates public worker unions, and all city workers for that matter, and wants to privatize as much city business as possible, ostensibly by selling off city infrastructure to people funding his campaign for pennies on the dollar. He just uses fiscal austerity as a cover making him the perfect ‘beard’ for San Diego’s monied interests. As much as Chuck LiMandri is about Jesus and the Catholics, he’s also about money, so no surprise there.
Put simply, DeMaio’s an amoral opportunist with no core values. Add to that, he is possibly one of the sleaziest candidates to come down the pike here in years and it’s surprising that he doesn’t leave a snail trail of slime behind him wherever he goes. I really can’t overstate what a horrible person he is; it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that he’d sold his mother into slavery just to get another step up the ladder.
Because of the money behind him, DeMaio will undoubtedly be one of the two left standing after the primary. Fortunately there is a very strong “Anyone But DeMaio” faction in San Diego.
It’s gonna be an ugly November election.
Without meaning to sound like I’m stereotyping, I was astonished at the sheer number of that kind of people there were in San Diego when I lived there from 1986-1991. I’m from near Houston, Texas and have lived in the state most of my life but by far the most intolerant, superficial community I’ve lived in was in San Diego. So many of them exude this absolute confidence that they are superior in every way to anybody not of there and/or from there. All cities have their ridiculous “civic pride” paradigms but San Diego raises it to a whole new level altogether.
This shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that all or even a majority of San Diegans are shallow, self centered, sometimes bigoted assholes or that the phenomenon is exclusive to that city but there are some incredibly noisy, seemingly ubiquitous ones there.
This comes from our inability to comprehend why anyone would choose to live anywhere else but here. This is not exclusive to us. See: New York City.
The local politics over this, as my editor Thom Senezee and publisher Stampp Corbin have been reporting and editorializing about for numerous issues, is just wacky.
You should also read the piece on the issue of Councilmember DiMaio’s life partner Johnathan Hale that’s also in this week’s LGBT Weekly as well the piece is entitled Why the background of the mayor’s partner is relevant. The details as laid out in the piece are quite disconcerting — there’s a photo in the piece highlights just one of the disconcerting issues that Mr. Hale presents us San Diego voters.
Hey. I live in NYC. And there is definitely a snobbery associated with it. Yes, it is incomprehensible anyone would live anywhere else! (kidding.)
But there is no sense exclusion associated with it. For myself it is precisely the absence of that attitude that I love about NYC. Black, white, Asian, gay, straight, poor, well off? We all get on the same subway together and live in peace. Many of us revel in the melting pot of diversity and it’s why we came here.
My daughter is moving to Manhattan in August for grad school. Hilarious hijinks to follow.
Yeah. I said that. See my comment @2.
Book Salon up with Paul Kiel’s The Great American Foreclosure Story: The Struggle for Justice and a Place to Call Home hosted by Cynthia Kouril
“by far the most intolerant, superficial community I’ve lived in was in San Diego.”
Superficial? Sure, we have our share – intolerant? I don’t see that at all. I guess it depends on what you are talking about. Were you in El Cajon perhaps? I am intolerant of willfully ignorant, intellectually lazy people, but hey, that’s me. Maybe I am just an elitist snob!
:::shrug:::another neo-mattachinist currying favour with conservatives…quelle surprise–there seems to be an unending stream of these accomodationists…The Republican partly would likely have no strategists at all without gay men who later make public mea culpas…
It’s called “politics” for a reason, people.
Would you rather it be the way it was ?
Progress comes in all manifestations.
Even in ones that you might not particularly care for.
We’re not invisible anymore.