On last week’s podcast, Francine Busby, chair of the San Diego County Democratic Party gave a candid description of what happened in a very important recent meeting where they party decided on endorsements.

Mickey Kasparian, president of the local United Food and Commercial Workers and the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, said it was too candid and she was wrong.

Kasparian came on the podcast this week to clear up what he thought were misrepresentations of what he said at the meeting. Busby had said it appeared as though Kasparian was pushing the Dems to be cautious because of regrets he had for supporting Bob Filner and later David Alvarez for mayor.

Filner, he tells us this week, was indeed unfortunate but not labor’s fault.

“Labor didn’t make a mistake,” he said. “He made the mistake – Filner – it wasn’t labor.”

Kasparian said his groups don’t want to endorse anyone until clear leaders emerge from the June primary. He also made sure to put in a bold word on labor’s persisting political influence.

“Certainly we reached out to several people to try to get people to run but we came up with a doughnut and that’s unfortunate,” Kasparian said. “But that doesn’t take away form labor’s power and influence in this city.”

Also on the podcast, Andrew Keatts and I evaluate an interesting admission from the Chargers camp: That they tried to figure out a way to pay for a stadium without public funds but couldn’t in good conscience make that argument. And we think local politicos who panned the Chargers’ new plan might be laying a trap they’ll trigger when they want to support other projects.

Keatts also admits that he’s pretty much constantly battling existential angst and Lewis gets scolded for ending a sentence with a preposition, but is ultimately redeemed by a big fan.

Hero of the Week:

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis is launching the “George ‘Woody’ Clarke Conviction Review Unit,” an initiative that’ll search out and investigate potential wrongful convictions.

Goat of the Week:

Lori Saldaña called a public records request for her emails and other information relating to her role as a public employee “sleazegate.” But requesting public documents isn’t actually that sleazy since public documents should be made public no matter the motive of those who request them.

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This Week in the VOSD Podcast Network

Good Schools For All: Trish Boyd Williams from the California State Board of Education joins the podcast to talk about Common Core and how it shifts things from less memorization of isolated facts to more focus on bigger ideas.

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