I’m a First Amendment guy. Unfettered, free expression is the ultimate sign of a free society. When SCOTUS ruled on Citizens United, I rejoiced that people were allowed to express themselves collectively. Corporations (like unions) really ARE made up of people — employees and stockholders.
As such, I don’t understand the outrage with Nathan Fletcher’s “make work” job at Qualcomm. If the employees and stockholders of Qualcomm want to get together and finance a mayoral candidate, why should I or anyone stand in their way?
People who disapproved of the Citizens United ruling could rightfully cry that the Qualcomm stockholders and employees are trying to buy our “democracy”. I don’t buy that argument, though. I might prefer that corporate stockholders and employees use this technique to finance their candidates’ elections because it’s completely transparent. In this case, the Qualcomm stockholders and employees want Nathan Fletcher to be mayor so much that they are willing to offer him a salary of $400,000, to wait out the mistake the unions and San Diego County Democratic Party gave the City of San Diego.
The Filner mistake and the way the Qualcomm coalition “attempted to correct” it bears examination, too. A teachers’ union president has already suggested that supporting Filner (despite Lori Saldaña’s warning) was a tacit plan to get Vargas into Congress, Hueso into the Senate, and Gonzalez into the Assembly. When one looks at the players involved in the not-so-secret plan to install a Qualcomm employee as mayor of San Diego, one wonders if the other Qualcomm employees and stockholders are trying to expand their influence in federal, state and now local government.
Nathan Fletcher is an ambitious politician with a less than robust work ethic. His flexible principles afford him the freedom to gravitate towards political organizations offering him a chance to realize that ambition without the commensurate industriousness required. That ambition makes him the perfect target for a “sponsor.”
The Office of the Mayor of San Diego is for sale. On it’s face, it looks like the Qualcomm employees and shareholders are trying to buy it.