Commentary: Ousting Gloria didn’t make much sense

The reports of Todd Gloria’s political death are greatly exaggerated.

Let us begin by unpacking the current narrative. Council Republicans feared that returning as Council President would give Gloria the power and profile to launch a challenge to Mayor Kevin Faulconer in 2016. So they conspired with new Council President Sherri Lightner to elect her to the position.

Politically, this doesn’t make much sense.

The Council Presidency was a terrible place for Gloria to launch a mayoral bid. It will help Gloria to have held that title, as well as iMayor, but he had gotten all he could out of it politically. He’s proven his leadership, gained the name recognition, and come out looking like a bipartisan hero for leading San Diego through some of its darkest days. In the waning months he was even able to push through a minimum wage hike that burnished his progressive cred without costing him much in the middle.

God willing there will be no crisis to match the Filner debacle, so a Council President Gloria really had nowhere to go but down. Given that Republicans now hold enough votes to uphold mayoral vetoes, Gloria would have two options: cast votes on compromises that would anger the left, or preside over gridlock and be tagged as an ineffective leader.

Still, it wouldn’t have done for Gloria to not seek the office. While being unemployed is a plus for campaigning (e.g., former Sec. Hillary Clinton and former Gov. Mitt Romney), voters don’t like you to shirk responsibility (e.g. former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin).

The Council Republicans clearly wanted Gloria out, as they had the chance to re-elect him on the first ballot and passed. Less clear is how they got Lightner on board after the work Gloria did for her re-election. Gloria is certainly smart enough and savvy enough to have planned this out with her, but I doubt he did. He has a sincere commitment to serving San Diego and would likely have wanted the office as long as he could do it well.

That Lightner also passed on electing Gloria on the first ballot shows that she must have wanted the job. Whatever her motivations, Gloria apparently decided the best move was jujitsu, using his opponents energy against them.

The optics of the day suggest he succeeded. Numerous San Diegans spoke in support of him, while Lightner was so isolated she was compared to the “Maytag Repair[wo]man.” Gloria, the “loser”, left shaking hands with an adoring crowd while the victorious Lightner was reportedly in tears. Any prior rifts with labor seemed on the mend with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 135 President Mickey Kasparian lauding Gloria and Councilmember David Alvarez in the same Facebook post.

As a San Diegan, I’m upset that Gloria wasn’t re-elected Council President. I don’t know what more anyone could have done to merit another term. Gloria himself could be anything from disappointed to devastated to enraged. The one thing he is not is politically dead. Republicans hoped to demote Gloria from Council President to Councilmember. Instead, they gave him the only promotion a hero can really get. They made him a martyr. Consider what gets done in the name of dead martyrs, and it becomes hard to imagine anything more politically powerful than a live one on the ballot.