Sound a Little Nuts?

Mike Aguirre has turned one of the most important offices in this city into a playground of politics, posturing and plain dysfunction. 

Aguirre is well known for his outrageous statements and actions – like working to “Save the squirrels,” asking the entire city to evacuate during the recent fires and urging plaintiffs to sue the city. If it all sounds a little nuts to you – you are not alone. 


What else are people saying?


"I feel like the city attorney is running around like a one-man insane asylum, "Councilman Jim Madaffer, during council discussion on the role of the City Attorney in city government (San Diego Union Tribune, 8/11/05) 

In response to Aguirre’s urging that San Diego be evacuated last year during the fires, the Governor’s office responded “The administration felt that was unwise, unsafe and unnecessary” said Aaron McLear, a spokesman for Governor Schwarzenegger. (San Diego Union Tribune, 10/24/07) 

“Joseph McCarthy would be proud,” Police Chief William Lansdowne, discussing Aguirre's willingness to find fault and corruption with other city officials. (San Diego City Beat, 4/4/07)

A judge fined Aguirre's office $20,000 for work done on pension-related legal work, calling it "unacceptable" and verging "on carelessness." (San Diego Union Tribune 10/7/07) 

"One does not want to imagine the danger we would all be in right now if Michael Aguirre was actually in charge. Sorry to say, this is not the kind of leadership we need: the sad type of local wannabe political leadership that, regardless of common sense, seeks only to bring attention to itself at the public expense of pulling in the opposite direction to everyone else at all times regardless of the issue of the moment." Posted by Carl S. Foster on a political forum, discussing Aguirre's call to evacuate the entire city. http://forums.chargers.com/archive/index.php/t-47263.html (10/24/07)

“It's the old saying, 'You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.' He's picked so many fights with so many people . . . that he's cost the city 10 times more than if he took a different approach.” Michael Conger (San Diego Union Tribune, 10/7/07) 

“It was next to impossible to do anything while Mike was there,” one former staff lawyer said. “He'd read ('Henry V'); he'd go on a tangent about George Washington. ... There was no focus.”  former City Attorney staff member (San Diego Union Tribune, 10/7/07) 

But politics is as much about perception as reality, and the perception.... is that Mad Mike is a cross between Rasputin and a paranoid Dick Nixon off his meds, wreaking civic havoc wherever he goes. (Political Lunacy, 11/28/07) 

San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne, who fielded the request for evacuation from Aguirre, never took it seriously. Lansdowne said it would take something just short of “a nuclear holocaust” or a major terrorist attack to prompt him to approve clearing out the city. (San Diego Union Tribune, 10/24/07)