San Diego Community News Network – SDCNN, the parent company of San Diego Uptown News, San Diego Downtown News and Gay San Diego – has been providing hyper-local news for the Uptown, Downtown and LGBT communities since 2009, starting with the launch of Uptown News in July of that year.
We take great pride in the service we, as a news organization, provide to these communities and strive to bring you meaningful, solid, objective and relevant local news each and every week.
Bob Filner has an incredibly long history of public service to the community of San Diego, dating back to 1979 when he first ran for election and won a seat on the local School Board, where he served alongside current Rep. Susan Davis until he was elected to the San Diego City Council in 1987.
Filner went on to serve six years on the City Council, until he was elected to newly established Congressional District 50 in 1993, representing North, Central and Coastal San Diego County.
Ten years later, Rep. Filner took over indicted Rep. Duke Cunningham’s District 51, which served Imperial County, South Bay and the Southern California border communities. In 2007, Rep. Filner was selected by his peers to concurrently serve as chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
After 20 years in congress, Rep. Filner resigned December 2012 in order to take over as mayor of America’s Finest City. It was a hotly contested election, one in which he was pitted against the first openly gay Republican candidate for mayor, and his election made him the first Democratic mayor San Diego had seen since 1992.
We commend him for his nearly 35 years of service to our communities in all of his different capacities.
Though our three newspapers could be seen as progressive, we did not endorse Filner in last year’s race for mayor, because historically, the editorial board of SDCNN has chosen to not make political endorsements.
We think that is the right thing to do as a small community newspaper.
In addition, we also choose to not use the opinion page to encourage – or chastise – any politician with regards to taking certain actions.
We don’t see it as our place to do so.
However, in recent months, the growing concern – both in our communities and in our offices – over Mayor Filner’s alleged behaviors toward (and his admitted “lack of respect” for) women, has given us great pause and increasingly with each passing week, we have felt compelled to speak out.
Today we do.
Women make up a large portion of the readership of our three newspapers, and they are also our mothers, our sisters, our wives, our partners and our daughters. They serve on the city’s payroll, they educate our children, they work on local community organizations, and they volunteer countless hours to help make the quality of our lives better and they walk among us on the street.
Sexual harassment is a very serious circumstance with lasting consequences for its victims and does not belong anywhere in a civilized society, including in the day-to-day business of our elected officials.
Since the allegations against the Mayor first surfaced in June, one by one, local elected official after elected official have come out and requested the mayor’s resignation. Most of these elected officials are women: Assembly Majority Leader Toni Atkins, Rep. Susan Davis, Assemblymember Lorena Gonzales, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer. In addition, every member of the San Diego City Council has now come forward and asked for the mayor’s resignation.
At the recent Politifest event held at Liberty Station and produced by Voice of San Diego, Council President Todd Gloria encouraged everyone to come out and ask for the mayor’s resignation (see our front-page story).
In light of this and recent events, we do that today.
We believe that in order for San Diego to get back to the business of the region and enhancing the everyday lives of the citizens of this great city, Mayor Bob Filner should step down immediately.
It is clear that the mayor has a problem and we hope he seeks the help he needs, but he cannot get better and neither can the city, unless he steps aside and focuses on his personal needs.
We are confident that San Diego will be stronger because of this, however our main concern remains the women he has directly affected as well as all the other women and men who work or live in this city, who have been directly or indirectly affected by these circumstances.
Thank you for your continued readership and the support of our three newspapers.
