Newland Sierra lost the campaign for Measure B

Kelvin Barrios leads the race to replace his former boss, Georgette Gomez.

Sierra Club’s top enemy

Developer Newland Sierra lost the campaign for Measure B, its ballot battle against the high-end Golden Door spa over a massive residential project in North County in last week’s election. The University City concern did better with its money in San Diego, coming up with $10,000 on March 3, election day, for a so-called independent expenditure committee run by the Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 89 on behalf of city council hopeful Kelvin Barrios. A former employee of the union, Barrios placed first in the race to replace another of his former bosses, fellow Democrat Georgette Gomez, who came in second to Sara Jacobs in the 53rd congressional district primary.

Barrios, who last year was hit with a $4000 fine by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for spending money from another campaign to defray a variety of personal expenses, will run off against Sierra Club-backed Sean Elo. Newland was joined in contributing to labor’s expenditure committee by a bevy of union political action committees, including Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 1309 PAC, California Laborers for Equality and Progress, San Diego Works, Laborers Pacific Southwest Regional Organizing Coalition PAC, as well as the Southern California District Council of Laborers PAC, for a total haul of $140,000 as of last report.

Mike Bloomberg

Facebook is out

with a list of its biggest political advertisers in California from February 2 to March 2. Not surprisingly, ex-New York mayor Mike Bloomberg’s quixotic presidential bid was at the top with a whopping $4.3 million. Next came fellow billionaire Tom Steyer with $1,082,890 and Democratic primary victor Bernie Sanders with $897,140. Placing seventh with a spend of $202,987 was San Diego’s own Yes on C campaign, the heavily funded but ill-starred effort to hike the tax on hotel stays to fund an expansion of the downtown convention center and homeless relief.

Shrinks’ paradise

As the county’s lone Democratic supervisor, Nathan Fletcher has been pushing an ambitious effort to reform local mental health delivery for the poor. “The Behavioral Health System in San Diego is broken,” says Fletcher’s county website. “The services available are fragmented and not easily accessible. People with Behavioral Health struggles are ending up on the streets.” Whether or not more public spending works, the price for new professional services is emerging on the county’s help-wanted job site. Salary for a psychiatrist to become Medical Director of Behavioral Health will run between $240,000 and $250,000 plus a host of benefits. “This position will oversee the medical activities of the San Diego County Psychiatric Hospital in addition to assigned clinical activities within Behavioral Health Administration,” says the job notice. There are also open spots for two psychiatrists, to make between $171,849 and $220,688 a year each.

Will laid-off Men’s Journal J.R. Sullivan editor resurface in Carlsbad?

Carlsbad adventures

New York’s loss has become Carlsbad’s gain, sort of. “Bad news! The entire Men’s Journal staff got laid off today, including me!” said a tweet last month from the publication’s senior editor J.R. Sullivan quoted by the New York PostFebruary 20. “I feel nothing but gratitude for my time at the magazine, and I’ve been fortunate to work with an incredible group of writers.” The Post reported that Men’s Journal owner American Media laid off 20 editorial workers and announced it would relocate headquarters of the magazine to Carlsbad, where the rest of the Adventure Sports Network is based. “The strategic decision to merge Men’s Journal’s editorial operations with the passionate and talented staff of the Adventure Sports Network in Carlsbad, California, which American Media acquired a year ago, ensures the continued growth and success for Men’s Journal as well as ASN,” said the company.

American Media’s David J. Pecker — the owner of the National Enquirer during the Donald Trump hush-money scandal — bought Men’s Journal in 2017 from ex-Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, pledging to keep the title alive and growing. But the latest word has it that after moving to Carlsbad, the magazine will drop from 10 to 6 issues a year and cut circulation to one million. The move comes at a fluid time for Adventure Sports, with the unexplained exit of Norb Garrett, who ran the operation for a decade, according to a February 24 account on the sports media website ShopEatSurf.