U-T San Diego reporter Craig Gustafson does a superb job detailing the cast of now outed (there’s some irony in that word) characters who tried to bring down Carl DeMaio last year, or at least attempted to keep him out of the mayoral runoff election. The story details the effort to research DeMaio’s background, the resulting “dossier” produced, and the mostly failed attempts to get the media to do anything with the information. It’s a must read…
SD Rostra blogger Barry Jantz joked about it on Facebook, saying, “In local political circles, the most well-known but unpublished packet of ‘info’ in maybe more than a decade,” and gave kudos to Gustafson for digging into the details.
After the story was published on the UT website at 4 p.m. Saturday, the local Twitter response was what has come to be expected, fast and furious.
Of note in the ensuing conversation, Gil Cabrera, outside counsel for the City of San Diego Ethics Commission on the matter, mentioned on Twitter that had the group funding the effort to research DeMaio simply filed political financial disclosures at the time, there wouldn’t have been a follow-up Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) investigation.
It was that investigation which ultimately made public all of the email correspondence between those involved. It appears Gustafson was then able to obtain the information from the FPPC through a public records act request.
In other words, the personal email correspondence would have stayed that way had the group researching DeMaio filed disclosures as a political committee.
A hi-lite of the resulting discussion may be Voice of San Diego’s Scott Lewis calling Fred Mass a “Gay baiting asshole,” saying the mastermind of the DeMaio research project was “too chicken to publish” the information himself.
Below is some of the Twitter discussion so far (this was updated with Sunday morning conversation).
Please feel free to comment on this story here.
http://storify.com/sandiegorostra/local-discussion-on-the-investigate-demaio-story
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