By Arturo Castañares
Publisher
A longtime downtown power player resigned as a paid advisor to the Mayor’s office on the same day he started raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Todd Gloria’s re-election campaign from individuals, businesses, labor unions, and other special interests.
Steve Cushman, heir to a local car dealership and real estate empire, has been a longtime figure in downtown circles, from serving as an appointed Port Commissioner, to lurking around City Hall as an unpaid advisor to several San Diego Mayors, all while retaining his family’s business interests as his number one priority.
Up until last week, Cushman had been serving as a paid advisor to the Mayor’s office through a five-year, $24,999 contract signed by Gloria under a City policy where the Mayor can approve small contracts without any Council approval or public process.
Presumably, Cushman, a wealthy businessman, was being paid a nominal fee to avoid a self-dealing conflict-of-interest the City’s former real estate broker Jason Hughes had when he “volunteered” to help the City without pay but later was revealed to have taken $9.4 million in unreported backend profits on two City building deals.
During the past few months, Cushman had been helping Gloria negotiate a controversial proposal for a 1,000-bed homeless shelter near the airport that was introduced without any public process or community input before being criticized by residents, experts, and even the City’s own Independent Budget Analyst after Gloria proposed a 35-year lease and $30 million a year budget to operate it.
A government ethics expert called Cushman's role in the Mayor's office a "conflict of interest" with another role Cushman plays as a member of the City's Housing Commission which manages other homelessness programs.
Assuming Cushman was any good at his job as the Mayor’s consultant, he knows exactly how many shelter beds the City had, has, and is hoping to have as Gloria works to better a worsening homelessness crisis.
That's what makes the past week’s fundraising and $500,000 worth of TV commercials both concerning and newsworthy.
Campaign finance reports show that Cushman and a band of cohorts have kicked in over $900,000 to an “independent” expenditure committee ironically called San Diegans for Fairness PAC; it’s ironic because nearly everyone who gave money wants access to the Mayor’s office for projects, proposals, or pay raises at the expense of taxpayers.
Their pay-to-play access doesn’t really seem fair, as their name might suggest.
The contributions include $25,000 from Cushman himself, $175,000 from the CA Apartment Association that represents rental property owners, $105,000 from the Sycuan gaming tribe, $85,000 from the San Diego Chamber of Commerce that pools contributions from big businesses, $25,000 from the Building Industry Association, $25,000 from Otay Mesa developer David Wick, $10,000 from billionaire Irwin Jacobs of QUALCOMM, and hundreds of thousands more from labor unions, short-term rental owners, and others who need access to the Mayor.
And what did Cushman do with the money?
They bought airtime to run a commercial touting Gloria’s success in reducing homelessness by creating “70% more” shelter beds during his four years as Mayor, but the spot has been called out as being false.
Cushman’s claim is so misleading that both the Voice of San Diego and the San Diego Union-Tribune —who are usually supportive of Gloria— called the claim false, if not a flat-out lie.
The rub is that Gloria and his bagman Cushman are using fuzzy math to claim a 70% increase in shelter capacity that is really only 32%, and here’s why.
When Gloria took office in December 2020, the City had 1,409 shelter beds, but soon after, the Convention Center stopped serving as a temporary shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic and the City ended up with only 1,071 total available shelter spaces by April 1, 2021.
So in order to make the exaggerated claim, Gloria and Cushman are using the lowest number —from April 2021— to claim a larger increase in shelter beds. 32% isn’t bad, but it’s clearly not the 70% they are claiming, and they know it.
And Gloria and Cushman also know the problem is about to get worse because the City will lose nearly 1,000 shelter beds after the end of the year when Golden Hall will stop serving as a temporary 600-bed shelter, Father Joe’s 350-bed Paul Mirabile Center is converting to a detox center, and the 40-bed Rachel’s Promise women’s shelter will close.
Cushman has previously been blamed for pushing the City into an intractable position that led the Chargers to leave San Diego, he pushed to move Tailgate Park under City control that led to this week’s court ruling to invalidate its sale to the Padres, and he pushed the City to spend millions to attract the 1996 Republican National Convention to San Diego which started down the path that has now led to the over $4 billion underfunding of the City's pension system, so his track-record isn’t something to brag about.
At the time, the Chargers' negotiator said it's "an extraordinarily odd situation that someone whose background is as a car dealer, and who has racked up such a staggering list of civic failures, continues to be assigned to important projects.”
But the icing on the cake is that both Cushman and Gloria —in Chicken Littlesque emails to their donors this week— claimed they need to raise up to a million dollars to combat two contributions to a pro-Larry Turner campaign given by a local retired lawyer, and they lied to try to make him out to be some sort of boogeyman.
They have called him “angry”, “far-right”, and having some “personal interest” in the outcome of the election.
The truth, again, is much different from what Gloria and Cushman are spinning.
Unlike Cushman and the other special interests who are rushing to defend their benefactor Gloria, the donor they refused to name in their emails is Steven Richter, a 70-something-year-old semi-retired lawyer who has no current clients, business interests, real estate deals, or any other needs before the City.
Richter, born and raised in New York, told me in an exclusive interview that he was a lifelong Democrat until a few years ago when he dropped his Party registration, and he and his wife are both voting for Kamala Harris. No far-right. No partisan motives.
The Richters have no interest in the election except to provide a level playing field for Larry Turner to reach voters and give San Diegans a real choice between the status quo, downtown pay-to-play culture under Gloria, and Turner, a retired US Marine Lt. Colonel and now police officer who is a nonpartisan independent with grassroots support but very little campaign funds to deliver his message.
The City’s voters now have two clear choices in next week’s election:
Continue down the path of bad real estate deals that screw taxpayers and end up in court, a pay-to-play culture where monied special interests buy access and action from the Mayor, and flat-out campaign lies to trick voters into believing things are better than they really are being funded by the very people who need the system to continue operating in their favor.
Or, supporting a first responder who has selflessly put his life on the line for over 30 years in service of others, who has never been registered with any political party, who wants to make San Diego a better place to raise his family, and an independent campaign funded largely by a concerned philanthropist with no self-interests at stake.
Numbers and facts don’t lie, but politicians and their henchmen do. Voters should look carefully at their choices.
La Prensa San Diego has already endorsed Larry Turner. We encourage you to vote for him to turn San Diego around.
