In response to Ryan Purdy’s recent post, Bob Filner’s Week of Lily Pond Lies, commenter La Playa Heritage writes, “By Monday, please stop encouraging Lillygate stories. Enough.” LPH then asks that we “move on to actual civic issues.”
Really? Monday? How Random.
Let’s make something perfectly clear. The Balboa Park Lily Pond vandalism incident of last week started as a story about just that: a night time party resulting in damage to the pond. Directly related to that story was the secondary one of whether the San Diego Police Department, knowing in advance of the party, should have done anything to monitor it or respond while it was “playing” out.
The third story wasn’t one at all, well, at least not until La Playa Heritage’s candidate for mayor, Bob Filner, made it one by falsely accusing opponent Carl DeMaio of being connected to the Lily Pond incident, then repeating the unsubstantiated claim throughout the next several days.
The incident was not an issue in the mayor’s race, nor should it have been. Filner chose to make it one.
Today’s U-T San Diego editorial called Filner’s lies a question of character, noting “that he has little regard for the truth, meaning he has little respect for San Diego voters.”
Filner’s supporters like LPH beg for the blood-letting to end. Yet, the candidate was the one wielding the knife in the first place.
If he let’s up, maybe the request will be considered. Maybe it will be in mid-November.
Filner’s character may not be the civic issue his supporter’s want covered. But, it is a civic issue, no different than a few years ago when then City Attorney Mike Aguirre made his constant clownish attacks against his often self-created opponents into a civic circus.
How is Bob Filner any different than Mike Aguirre?