U-T gushes over Faulconer event

When is a city-hall-lobbying special interest referred to as a “brand”? When the Union-Tribune covers it, per the paper’s write-up last week of San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer’s One San Diego and its annual “Neighborhood Experience” on the Broadway Pier downtown, backed by an impressive array of the city’s highest-spending influence-seekers.

“This event showcases San Diego’s unique cultural, artistic, entrepreneurial, and culinary diversity,” says One San Diego’s website, listing as sponsors a roster of registered lobbyists, including Sempra Energy, SDG&E, Pardee Homes, Westfield, Rick Engineering, and AT&T. Avoiding use of the “L” word, the U-T story calls the group “some of the most recognizable brands in San Diego.”

The story goes on to quote ex-U-T reporter and current Faulconer flack Craig Gustafson as saying the mayor “is proud of his efforts to raise money that give so much back to the community,” with Gustafson omitting mention of the lobbyists’ financing of Faulconer’s annually televised Thanksgiving turkey giveaways to burnish his image in poorer parts of town.

With wags casting renderings of a giant new real estate development on the site of Mission Valley’s Qualcomm Stadium as a vision akin to the horrors of Alphaville, the 1965 sci-fi film noir by France’s Jean-Luc Godard about a repressive state, promoters of the contentious San Diego project are taking measures to protect its newly hewn name, Soccer City, for future commercial use.

On January 31, an outfit by the name of MLS SD Soccer Pursuit, L.L.C, filed with the federal trademark office to claim Soccer City for “management and administration of sports, entertainment, restaurant, and bar facilities and surrounding offices, hotels, residential, and parking structures.”