Quote:
Originally Posted by SDCAL
Isn’t Gaspar up for re-election? Maybe she’ll lose and a more transit friendly supervisor will be elected?
I heard the make-up of her district puts her re-election in jeopardy
|
You're correct on both accounts. Gaspar wants to make this an election issue in her district, that's why she's been particularly outspoken and combative. Desmond is a climate change skeptic, he opposes increased taxation for transit on general principle. Their nakedly partisan tactics have the rest of the SANDAG board up in arms, with multiple North/East county leaders at taking offense at claims they represent their constituents' views.
But Ikhrata keep floundering his attempts to deal with them. The SANDAG director is a board appointed position, that means Desmond and Gaspar are technically Ikhrata's bosses (along with the other elected leaders on the board). His role is to bring together the conflicting demands of his bosses into a single workable plan, not to pick sides and attack people. It's bad optics and makes forming any sort of consensus that much more difficult. Even worse, his double talk between the board and the media is surrendering the moderate position to his opponents and starting to alarm his would-be allies. Ikhrata has in the past and continues to tell the board that no details about his plan have been finalized, and that his plan will provide "a balance between roads and transit". Then to the media he's said that his plan definitely won't provide any roadway improvements, and dismissing his opponents with a different view of that balance as wanting to pave over every square inch of SD with freeway lanes. Desmond and Gaspar are too smart for that, they're going to propose a fairly close split in funding between freeways/transit and Ikhrata will be left looking like a radical anti-car activist.
So instead yesterday's meeting consisting of a re-affirmation the SANDAG's board's commitment to a sweeping new vision, as Ikhrata desperately needed, it devolved into a mudfest of the pro and anti-Ikhrata camps mutually accusing each other of playing politics while the rest of the board silently questioned if such a progressive plan could ever gain consensus in historically conservative San Diego. The power players, the City of SD and Chula Vista, are now calling on both sides to come together for some sort of compromise. That's a loss for Ikhrata already, any agreement with Desmond and Gaspar is going to leave his visionary plan that much less visionary, but the lukewarm show of support from his strongest potential allies throws doubt on his ability to push revolutionary and controversial new transportation concepts through SANDAG's board, to say nothing of the voters.
Prev
Linear Mode
