Dear “Sister” Gonzalez,
Words cannot express how disappointed I felt to read your message endorsing Nathan Fletcher for Mayor. One would never know by reading your message that just 3 1/2 months ago you served as Secretary-Treasurer of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council.
In one fell swoop, your public endorsement of Nathan Fletcher not only undermines the Labor Council and the progressive coalition you worked hard to build during your tenure with the Labor Council, but it also calls into question your own political judgment and integrity.
You were the one who implored us for years to “remain united” and not to “get out in front of” the Labor Council and its endorsement process. You were the one who insisted that all affiliates remain neutral until the Labor Council process was complete. And it was you who understood better than anyone that the price to pay for failing to maintain a united front was that labor would become divided, and hence less powerful, as a result. Yet, you now have used your “early endorsement” to deftly accomplish that which we were always struggling to avoid–a schism within labor, in order to obtain your own personal goal of electing your close friend Nathan Fletcher.
For a long time now you have made it clear that you support Nathan Fletcher. It started during the last campaign for Mayor when Fletcher was the Republican candidate (and possibly even much further back than that).
You will easily recall that I was the most vocal critic on the Labor Council Executive Board of your mayoral primary plan to try to inflict as much damage as possible on DeMaio rather than support the Labor Council’s endorsed candidate Filner. In hindsight it is clear that your agenda was always to clear the field in order to get Fletcher into the run-off, not to increase Filner’s chances of being elected.
Furthermore, it now seems clear that your efforts to convince Filner to run in the first place were not motivated by a concern for the interest of labor in San Diego, but instead by your own political ambitions. Getting Filner to run opened up his congressional seat, which Vargas easily won, which opened up Vargas’s senate seat, which Hueso then easily won, which then opened up Hueso’s assembly seat, which, surprise, you ended up winning! How about that!
You will also recall that when you first took the Labor Council job you were conflicted between running for the Assembly at that time, or running for Secretary-Treasurer of the Labor Council. Although you ultimately chose the Labor Council position, your desire had always been to run for the Assembly. Your Labor Council stint was apparently just a bump in the road for you.
And what makes all of this surreal saga even more Machiavellian is the fact that you apparently were well aware of Filner’s indiscretions with women before the Labor Council even endorsed him for Mayor yet you remained silent throughout the entire campaign. The fact that it was none other than your brother who organized the first press conference bringing Filner’s transgressions to light and calling for his resignation is clearly no coincidence.
In your endorsement of Fletcher you note that he assisted local janitors in winning healthcare benefits. To you this is evidence of his support for labor, but the fact that this action was taken in the weeks before a closely contested mayoral primary seems like stronger evidence that Fletcher was motivated by political calculations and a desire to stake out a position to the left of DeMaio and perhaps peel off some labor support from Filner. We can certainly argue about Fletcher’s motivations, but this fact is not in dispute: Nathan Fletcher has a lifetime 18% voting record on labor issues.
That means he has voted against labor 82% of the time he has had the chance.
As the former Secretary-Treasurer of the Labor Council, any reasonable person would conclude that would be enough evidence for you to not support a candidate with this voting record for any office. The fact that you are purposely choosing to ignore this fact, in addition to his terrible record on the environment, women’s issues, education, etc., and to then give him your endorsement defies all logic and common sense.
And to add insult to injury, your calculated efforts to undermine the same Labor Council you led only months ago by virtue of your early endorsement quite frankly makes me seriously question if all the years of hard work were only done to achieve your own personal & political gains.
You have been a friend to labor in the past, and I hope you will continue to support labor in the future, but your recent actions lead me to seriously question your commitment to this cause. I am not sure why you address me as “Brother” since you don’t appear to be a member of my labor family anymore.
Jim Mahler, President
AFT Guild, Local 1931
San Diego & Grossmont-Cuyamaca
Community Colleges