[quote=Rhett]I’m not sure I get the dementia theory – aren’t a lot of the “16” reporting incidents that took place 5-10 years ago, back during Filner’s Washington days? And why weren’t at least a few of those things reported then? Is the quid pro quo system inside the Beltway so great that all of these women felt they were going to lose some sort of tangible benefit by coming forward?
We had a sniff of this behavior when Bob had that nasty run-in with a TSA agent. Like many other people, I sort of ignored this, because it was the *TSA* after all, an entity that has employees that piss off otherwise reasonable people. We also had Carl DeMaio come forward during a debate and hint that Filner had issues, but I thought that was just an extension of the TSA issue, and he didn’t suggest otherwise.
If they knew more – and it certainly sounds like they did – I don’t get is why DeMaio’s camp didn’t exploit this for what it was worth during the election run-up. Did their numbers suggest that wouldn’t need to go that route? If I didn’t know better, it almost seemed as if they *tried* to sandbag the election for themselves.
Politics in this town are crazy.[/quote]
I’m not saying that I am sure about the dementia theory. However, symptoms of frontal lobe dementia begin in the 50s to early 60s. So it’s possible. With regard to people not reporting sooner, I think that many people who are wronged in one way or another don’t come forward because they fear not being believed. For example, if number 16 was the only one to come forward, would she have been taken seriously? I’m almost certain she wouldn’t.
With respect to Carl DeMaio, I wonder whether he chose to avoid the issue out of desire not to have the focus turned to his own sexual orientation. A gay man criticizing the womanizing behavior of a straight man is taking a risk.
I do wonder whether the Democratic party thought Filner was electable and planned to replace him once he was in office. Or he promised to behave if he were elected and then continued with the bad behavior.
He’s an embarrassment to the city though. I think he should step down.
