Reader cover story, May 23, 2012

It's been another rough-and-tumble week so far for Nathan Fletcher, the newly hatched Democrat and chosen candidate for mayor of La Jolla billionaire/Obama backer/Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs.

As reported by U-T San Diego, the onetime Republican assemblyman is the only major candidate in the race not to open his academic record for public inspection.

Heavily redacted documents released under the state public records act by UCSD, as previously reported here, show that he got his degree in 2005, five years after he last attended California Baptist University.

UCSD continues to conceal Fletcher's emailed explanation of the delay.

Verlyn L. Fletcher, Nathan Fletcher's grandfather

In addition, Fletcher told the U-T that he would no longer say he was the first in his family to go to college. As reported here earlier, his father attended college, and his grandfather — a noted city manager and public official in both Nevada and Florida during the 1950s and '60s — held a degree from UC Berkeley.

Meanwhile, the GOP Lincoln Club, of which U-T publisher and real-estate magnate Douglas Manchester is a major backer, shows no signs of slowing down its campaign of hit pieces against Fletcher, now employed as a Qualcomm executive.

Jacobs's son Paul, Qualcomm CEO, has called the campaign of mailers against Fletcher and his role in the company "slanderous" and demanded an apology, which has not been forthcoming.

According to a disclosure filing dated yesterday, October 30, and posted online by the city clerk's office, the club has just bought $25,000 worth of "display advertising" and laid out another $20,425 in postage for its ongoing barrage.

Latest big donors to the club's anti-Fletcher cause, the filing shows, include Rancho Santa Fe's William Lynch ($25,000); McKinnon Properties ($25,000); Coronado's Fifth Ave Landing, LLC ($20,000); La Jolla's Finao Investments ($10,000); the Collins Development Company ($5000); and Paul Robinson, the downtown lawyer and super lobbyist who has been a contract lobbyist for Manchester ($1500).