PhotosRichly Rath Phil Rath, the longtime Republican insider and close advisor to San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer, continues to clean up on the local lobbying circuit, according to his latest personal statement of economic interests, ...
June 3, 2020
Matt Potter has been a staff writer and editor at the San Diego Reader since 1989. He reports on politics and local institutions such as the Union-Tribune, UCSD, SDSU, and the City and County of San Diego.
He is the author of the weekly Under the Radar column.
Besides breaking the Cheetahs corruption story a year before the FBI raided the offices of the San Diego city council, he has written extensively on governance, medical ethics, and human experimentation issues at the University of California San Diego.
Some notable Potter stories:
June 1, 1989:The Egg Women (Mayor O'Connor, Joan Kroc, Helen Copley, and the Faberge eggs)
April, 25, 1991 Mayor Moves to Create Death Valley-like Wasteland in Point Loma (O'Connor house landscaping)
June 20, 1991: A Son by Any Other Name (Helen Copley's adoption of son David revealed)
Aug. 8, 1996: Welcome, GOP Delegates to San Diego, City of Shame
May 22, 1997: La Jolla Gentlemen and the Party Boy (secrets of Andrew Cunanan, gay serial killer)
Oct. 25, 2001: Did Bin Laden's Brother Lead a Secret Life in San Diego?
Nov. 29, 2001: Did Casey Gwinn Try to Get Don Bauder Fired? (City Attorney vs. tough reporter)
July 31, 2003: Fun with Ralph (Inzunza's eating companions at Dobson's)
Articles by Matt Potter
Phil Rath – San Diego's busiest lobbyist
Faulconer's politics of carotid restraint
After years of inaction, it took a countrywide inner-city meltdown and the political ambitions of termed-out San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer to end the city's long-controversial carotid restraint procedure, widely known as the chokehold. "We ...
June 2, 2020
I Am My Brother's Keeper gets a Lyft gift
On May 5, San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott announced her office was joining a lawsuit against gig transit companies Lyft and Uber for violating Assembly Bill 5, authored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a fellow ...
May 29, 2020
Lorena Gonzalez still feeding from Disneyland trough
Lorena’s fantasy Disneyland has been closed since March 14, sending ripples of angst through the ranks of investors and tourists alike. But before the park locked its gates against the COVID-19 pandemic, a crew of ...
May 27, 2020
Will a $46,000 federally funded COVID-19 drone fly in El Cajon?
San Diego politicos are finding some novel uses for federal COVID-19 bailout funds, judging from a review of coming city council agendas from the county's eighteen incorporated municipalities. In El Cajon, the police department wants ...
May 22, 2020
San Diego Convention Center – homeless shelter way beyond this summer
Homeless convention When Measure C, a $5.8 billion convention center expansion and homeless relief plan to hike the tax on hotel stays, died at the polls last March, some backers vowed to challenge the public’s ...
May 20, 2020
Public relations power sought by SDG&E foe
While a host of local public bodies are vowing to slash programs and lay off staff in the face of the financial onslaught that is the COVID-19 pandemic, the newly hatched San Diego Community Power ...
May 20, 2020
Cave paintings of Juan Cabrillo ship, marijuana farmers of Cuyamaca
Mommy, why are they shooting at us again? “I don’t take my kids to the park anymore on Sundays,” says Luís, a young Tijuana father of three — eight- and six-year-old sons, and a five-year-old ...
May 17, 2020
Juan Vargas as cash magnet, J. David Dominelli as town sugar daddy
San Diego State's growing contempt for undergrads “We have pulled resources out of undergraduate education in order to build expensive, elite PhD programs that cater to very few students proportionately." By Joe Deegan, March 27, ...
May 16, 2020