Marching inexorably to March 4 election

So much has been written and said (by me, among many others) about all this that it is impossible to summarize it in any truly effective manner. The podcast I co-host, TheGamePeninsula.com, includes several episodes on the issue. I recommend you look at the interview with Supervisors Noelia Corzo and Ray Mueller and the interview with former Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, where she comments on the election. Friday afternoon, Bob Marks, Frank Bravo and I will be interviewing representatives of the Yes on A campaign from the rank and file of the Sheriff’s Office. That will post later in the day.

For the sake of the permanent record, I have made numerous requests to interview Corpus, and her sidekick, the good doctor, Victor Aenlle, for this column and for the podcast. Several times, each of them has said they would do an interview and would get back to me with some possible dates and times. To date, they have not done so. The offer remains. Corpus and Aenlle have done a small number of interviews, but they were quite gentle and one-sided.

Corpus, meanwhile, has done little to create a meaningful public record. She has made few public appearances and has relied almost entirely on press releases to her own social media lists, a limited audience, at best. Those news releases have been angry and defiant; some of have been replete with misleading crime data, as ably reported recently in the Palo Alto Daily Post. Her main response to wave upon wave of allegations and criticisms is that everyone else is lying, a response that is especially telling, if not in the way she intends.

Opponents of Measure A have focused largely on questioning whether a charter amendment is a proper way to go. I dealt with that in last week’s masterpiece and urge you to look there. For the record, the San Mateo County Republican Party issued a news release opposing Measure A as inappropriate and saying a recall is a more acceptable route. No one seems to be saying Corpus is doing a good job and should remain in office, except Corpus.

Meanwhile, the leading opponent of Measure A, the voluble eccentric Dan Stegink, showed up at a recent meeting of the South San Francisco City Council to argue against a proposed endorsement of Measure A. More precisely, he showed up dressed in the costume of the title character from a 1980s TV show, “The Greatest American Hero.” Via text, Stegink said he was responding to a memo from the Deputy Sheriff’s Association urging members to attend council meetings where the agenda included the measure or a vote of no-confidence in the sheriff. The DSA memo offered raffle prizes to members who attended. Somehow, Stegink interpreted that to mean he should show up in “uniform,” even though the DSA memo makes no mention of uniforms. Not surprisingly, the South City Council voted to support Measure A.

Some opponents keep arguing that Corpus’ predecessor, Carlos Bolanos, was never subjected to the kind scrutiny the current sheriff is facing. It is an argument that is hard to track, but two responses occur to me: 1) OK, he was not, although he got enough negative attention that Corpus ousted him in 2022; and 2) Bolanos is not the sheriff.

Much is being made of the fact that new Supervisor Jackie Speier has yet to take a public stand on Measure A or join the near-unanimous chorus of elected officials (and just about every former Corpus supporter) calling for the sheriff to go away. Could she be a dissenting vote, the speculation goes, when the board considers Corpus’ fate?

On The Game podcast, Speier said she is withholding comment because the measure was put on the ballot before she joined the board. If the measure passes, she said, the board “will have a quasi-judicial role on determining whether or not there is cause to fire the sheriff. I don’t want to be in the position of being criticized for being biased.”

Mark Simon is a veteran journalist, whose career included 15 years as an executive at SamTrans and Caltrain. He co-hosts a podcast/videocast that can be found at TheGamePeninsula.com, and he can be reached at marksimon@smdailyjournal.com.