Six months after Democratic Mayor Bob Filner left office in disgrace because more than a dozen women had stepped forward to accuse him of sexual harassment, San Diegans have chosen a Republican to take over.
On Tuesday, "Kevin Faulconer was elected by a wide margin over fellow Councilman David Alvarez," our colleagues at KPBS report. "The veteran Republican councilman soundly defeated his Democratic opponent 55 to 45 percent (with 86 percent of the vote counted.)"
The U-T San Diego says Faulconer's victory marks "a new chapter for the city" after Filner's "scandal-plagued tenure." Also, the U-T says:
"A Faulconer victory breathes new life into the local Republican Party by restoring its control of the mayor's office that its candidates have occupied for much of the past four decades. Faulconer also becomes the only Republican mayor of a top 10 U.S. city, making him one of the party's highest-profile leaders in the state.
"The results dashed the hopes of Alvarez to become San Diego's first Latino mayor and its youngest in nearly 120 years."
Faulconer is 47. Alvarez is 33.
KPBS notes that "in a full-circle development, it was announced Monday that Irene McCormack-Jackson — the top Filner aide whose revelations of sexual harassment energized the campaign to oust him — settled her lawsuit against the former mayor and the city. McCormack-Jackson will get $250,000, according to her attorney and the San Diego City Attorney's Office."
In December, KPBS reminds us, Filner was sentenced "to three months of home confinement and three years of probation for harassing women while he was mayor of San Diego." He had pleaded guity to "one felony and two misdemeanors for placing a woman in a headlock, kissing another woman and grabbing the buttocks of a third."
The former congressman served less than a year as mayor.
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