Well, it’s here in all its full-blown glory. The election is upon us, bringing the arrival of the hair-brained, the half-baked, the unethical, and the mendacious—the time of full employment for the consultants, pundits, and hangers-on. Hail the beginning of “Silly Season.”

Just a few ramblings about the mayor’s race this week:

A few people who attended the Hyde Park Neighborhood’s Mayoral Forum last Thursday all had the same thing to say about the San Jose mayoral candidates—they all look tired, worn-out and “beat to a pulp.”  I think it’s fitting to liken running for mayor to the Sharks trying to win the Stanley Cup—it’s hard to do and you get a lot of nicks and bruises along the way.  But, how much weight do those forums really hold? Are the candidates burning the candle at both ends for nothing?

Judy Chirco Next After Hearing Their Vociferous Cortese Outbursts

After several years of silence as elected officials, San Jose Council Members Nora Campos and Nancy Pyle underwent successful voice box transplants at Stanford University Hospital and, just hours later, were able to attend their first council meeting with the ability to verbalize their thoughts.

Having just returned to my downtown lair from a week of hiking in the southern desert, it is easy for me to see and feel the positive effects of open spaces on the human psyche. Perhaps that is why I am finding it even more difficult than usual to tacitly swallow the Coyote Valley development boondoggle as inevitable. Apparently, given the facts presented in the new financial analysis of the planned community there, and the strong “go-slow” position taken by the Mercury News in a recent editorial, others feel the same way. However, I would describe my own attitude as more of a “no-go” for the development.

How we trust the men and women in blue may be an age-old question, but this time it is not from the usual perspective. We know that in San Jose we have an outstanding contingent of officers who add credit to the uniform in most every encounter. This has long been the tradition of the San Jose PD.  But politics reared its ugly head during the regime of the current mayor when the Police Officers Association (POA) freely gave thousands of dollars to an informal slush fund. This dwarfed the small amounts of money that has been given to all past candidates and previous mayors.

Much has been said about the Grand Prix lately, using words like “swindle” and “shameful” and talking about how it is a huge waste of money.  Now, rumblings have turned into accusations that there were some backroom deals made in order to make this event happen. What is really going on here?

Document Proves Pair Justified Attacking Iraq Prior to Congressional Authority

New revelations in London’s Sunday Times seem to confirm a long held rumor that Mayor Ron Gonzales and Vice Mayor Cindy Chavez held secret meetings with President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair—long before Congressional approval of the war—in which they discussed ways to deliberately mislead the public by fabricating justifications for the invasion of Iraq.

When the promoters of the San Jose Grand Prix went to the mayor and vice mayor for a $4 million public handout in August, the answer should have been a quick and simple “no.” Instead, according to information uncovered by the Mercury News this week, the city administration of Mayor Gonzales, aided and abetted by Cindy Chavez, acted surreptitiously behind the scenes to do a deal like thieves in the night, deliberately keeping their colleagues on the council and the citizens of San Jose in the dark.

I know that this is a long shot, but I am appealing to members of the San Jose City Council to please not get along so well. It seems that, during the current unparalleled crises of confidence in city government—the resignation under threat of indictment of one of their colleagues, the public censure of the mayor and the on-going grand jury investigations—council members continue to act in an ostrich-like manner, as if we are in the most placid of times. We are not.

I thought when everyone talked about San Jose and looked into its future, we all agreed that we didn’t want to become another Los Angeles.  Well, it looks like, yes folks, right before your eyes, we are.  The plan for Coyote Valley and the other new developments in the area are just leading us down the path of becoming another suburban-sprawled city like L.A., but does anyone in City Hall see it that way?

Joins a Growing List of Retired Generals Urging the Defense Secretary to Give Up His Post

After a unanimous vote supporting his publicly funded election proposal, and perhaps feeling a confidence he hasn’t felt since his reelection, Mayor Ron Gonzales made a bold bid for the national spotlight Wednesday by joining with several retired generals in demanding the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Of the five major candidates, four of them—Chavez, Mulcahy, Cortese and Reed—have received more than 30 percent of their total monies from development interests, and that’s fine.  This is what you would expect, given that land use and development is central in the decisions of any mayor, as well as being crucial to the fundraising of candidates. However, we must watch how they vote on critical items.

Will San Jose ever get a professional baseball team or are we holding onto a pipe dream?  I would love nothing more than the Oakland A’s to call San Jose their home, but honestly, we need to talk about the fact that this probably will never happen in this city.  Why do I bring this up now?  Because a few of my friends, who are strongly leaning towards voting for Michael Mulcahy in the mayor’s race, said that the things that were “important to them are important to Mulcahy.”  Amongst other things, this means they want a baseball team in San Jose (join the club) and they think Mulcahy is the man to get the deal done. 

But Many Still Choose Oppressive Dictatorship Over County Government

Good news seems to beget good news.  Just days after a community poll showed that an overwhelming majority (51%) of people living in San Jose think that their city is a good place to live, another independent and unrelated survey shows that most people prefer San Jose’s amenities to those found in Iraq.

There has been a great deal of second guessing and gnashing of teeth at the massive defeat suffered by the City of San Jose in their lawsuit with the county over the Fairgrounds Theater.  It was a sad result, no doubt.  The Monday morning quarterbacks are having a field day; it’s the most fun since the 49’ers blew a commanding lead to Detroit in that title game of the late fifties. 

I think that we all ought to slow down and take stock of this impending election. There has certainly been a lot of heated debate on this site lately on the relative merits of the candidates for mayor. If I have it correctly, much of it is centered on two candidates, Cindy Chavez and David Pandori.  Now, partisans would have you believe that Cindy is a “do-nothing” council member, a pawn of dark forces, while Pandori is portrayed as a loner DA incapable of getting along with even his family.  Not surprisingly, the truth is very different.