Painting the town pink

Since absolutely no one else seems to have picked up on this, I figured I'd give it a mention.

San Diego, the quaint little Enron-by-the-Sea that gave me to the world, has been mired over the last few years in a series of scandals involving its esteemed elected officials. One involves the systematic underfunding of the city pension plan, which has led to the city being accorded junk-bond status by Wall Street and thus effectively crippled the city's ability to borrow money; the other involves corruption case brought by the FBI in which two city counselmen were accused of taking bribes from a mobbed-up strip club owner who wanted them to relax the laws on touching dancers.

The former led to the resignation of Mayor Dick Murphy, who was narrowly reelected last year in a shades-of-hanging-chads decision that involved the fact that a few thousand supporters of the write-in candidate, Donna Frye, didn't bubble in the bubble next to the line where they wrote her name, thus putting Murphy ever-so-slightly ahead. Murphy resigned last Friday, and he was replaced for the interim by Michael Zucchet, one of the councilmen accused in Tittygate. Zucchet and his fellow accusee, Ralph Inzunza, were convicted on Monday, and they resigned on Tuesday. Aside from the farcical fact that Zucchet's tenure as mayor is a possible candidate for the Guinness Book of World Records, this turn of events has a layer of even greater interest: Toni Atkins, the councilwoman who represents the neighborhood I grew up in, as well as San Diego's hoppin' homo hood, Hillcrest, is now acting mayor. That's right, the little Navy town that could is now governed by a card-carrying, bouffanted dyke. At least until next week, when the special election is scheduled to take place, after which - since the two whiteboy Republicans seem likely to cancel each other out - it is entirely possible that ex-stoner surfer-dudette Donna Frye will take the reigns. It would be so, so sweet.