The mayoral race heats up
Yesterday the San Antonio Police Officers Association endorsed mayoral candidate Julian Castro as their candidate for the 2009 mayoral race. The endorsement is one of the most coveted one’s in any city race and especially so in San Antonio. Who wouldn’t want to be the the police officer’s choice as a candidate and be viewed as the public safety choice in a race? Of course that endorsement set off the claims from the other candidates, some petty, some childish, some down right wrong.
In an opinion piece by Ken Rodriguez in the Express-News he calls the race the Mayoral Slugfest, 2009. That’s probably a pretty fitting name in light of the comments made by both of the other candidates to try to and downplay the endorsements. Both make claims to be the choice of the rank and file and cite examples that resemble a game of “I can do better than you can.”
DeBerry-Mejia cites riding in a patrol car in one of the most dangerous areas from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. I wonder which area that might have been and if it was dangerous in her eyes only. Did she actually get south of downtown finally? She also claimed to lose by a narrow margin in the endorsement race. However Rodriguez cites a source that of the 16 vote board Catro secured 75 percent, DeBerry-Mejia 25 percent and Cibrian 0 percent. Donze Lopez, DeBerry-Mejia’s spokesman, tried to claim that she was the only candidate to ride in a patrol car except for the fact that Lopez forgot about the period when Castro was councilman and rode in one then. Hmmm.
Cibrian apparently doesn’t feel the ride-along matters in this area and dismissed DeBerry-Mejia’s act as nothing more than a stunt. This coming from the queen of stunts. Remember Booby Rock? Cibrian does continue with claims of adding 200 officers to police force as if she alone pushed this through council. Actual numbers show that over the past term. Actually only 122 have been added and 58 will be added in the coming year totaling 180 officers. Hmmm.
As you can see this race is going to turn into one that will require our own version of FactCheck.org to keep the claims straight.
