The Mayoral race has gotten off to a blistering pace: DeMaio, Fletcher, and now Filner are in; Faulconer is out. Surprisingly, there is a swift and early movement to coalesce center-right establishment support behind Dumanis. In just the last 36 hours Dumanis has received the endorsements of both Faulconer and Sanders. At the same time a SurveyUSA poll, sponsored by 10 News, shows DeMaio up substantially. He leads among every major demographic but women.
Although very early, the big loser so far is Fletcher. After spending nearly a million dollars on his first two elections, he barely registers in this poll. His announcement was trumped by DeMaio’s and the centrist community seems to be getting in line behind Dumanis.
Dumanis is a Republican but has come out against pension reform, has a Democrat consultant, and is cozy with certain sets of labor. She seems to be positioning to be the centrist in the race. DeMaio has been the hawk on everything fiscal and is the poster boy of “Reform”. He is clearly the conservative. At the same time, Fletcher seems to be in Republican no man’s land, unable (or unwilling) to take a stance on anything controversial and stuck in single digits in polling.
So the real question is…where does Fletcher go from here? Does Fletcher really think this is an election year where the tagline “A New Generation of Leadership” will sell if he shows absolutely no leadership on any of the controversial issues?
What say you?