Why I choose to run for office at age 71 with over 14 failed previous attempts.

Without hope, our dreams die. I have always believed that the candidate with the best ideas would prevail despite the powerful and mighty controlling the minds of voters. In essence, I believe in the seemingly impossible.

I became an Ironman triathlete nearly fifty years ago for the same reason. And most importantly, I was a registered local Democrat for fifty years on the nose until the County Party started a class on how to think and address people. I always believed that there were two genders, men and women and that’s it. I also tired of pitting groups of people against other groups which is nonsense. We are one group, we are Americans, period. I do believe in white privilege however, as evidenced by my first job as a SDSU graduate in 1982 which was toilet cleaner at the old Home Federal on East Mission Bay Drive. Now, that is white privilege, all right.

Being dubbed the “Million Mile Man,” by CBS NEWS is no easy moniker to carry. As a contender for the District 2 seat on our San Diego City Council, I have seen it all. The politicians together with their extremist friends squander public funds on pie in the sky unused bike lanes. Cars are bumper to bumper along Balboa Avenue without a cyclist or pedestrian in sight. For nearly sixty years, the bus stop at Moraga Ave. and Balboa Ave. goes virtually unused by my neighbors despite being less than a quarter mile away.   I have been walking, running and cycling in Clairemont since 1967 and have seen no change in alternative transportation usage outside the trolley. Everyone has a lame excuse not to walk to the store. We obviously do not need more bike lanes.

San Diego leaders are mired in a provincial mindset in terms of creating a new City Hall, more parks and open space, trees, and futuristic trams like this one depicted at my second home in France. San Diego has probably the most decrepit city hall of all major cities in the United States and it is shameful. In Le Havre, France a city with a population of maybe 180,000, the city hall is huge and sits on 20 to 30 impeccably manicured acres of parkland. Meanwhile, we still wait for the closure of 5^th Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter to vehicular traffic. The entire Gaslamp Quarter ought to be devoid of cars.

I’m tired of seeing year after year, decade after decade the same young people who flaunt their bodies than suddenly disappear like a flash in the pan. Health and fitness are for life, not solely for our youth. E bikes are a cheap human invention to lessen exertion and atrophy the legs. The State of California would be better served in offering rebates for bikes one needs to pedal. Robert F. Kennedy JR. would agree. I will bring the movement Make America Healthy Again to San Diego. Society and culture must change and herald old people as icons of endurance and health. We are perpetuating a great myth in stigmatizing the physical abilities of the elderly to our peril.

And for those who insist it is there right to drive like the mentally insane, I have news for you. As a civil society, we will criminalize some driving behaviors and jail motorists who willfully endanger the lives of law-abiding citizens. This demented psychology of those behind the wheel must end.

Since 1972, I have laid bare my public policy positions including real estate matters such as density, zoning, setbacks, ADU’s, short term rentals and more. I advocated in making social security the retirement of choice for city employees, and addressed historical preservation, the arts, public safety, parks and libraries, water utility rates, SDGE, homeless, expansion of the Midway District and County Mental Health, trams to the beach areas and San Diego International Airport, scaling down city departments, getting rid of Vision Zero a failed scheme to save lives on our streets, support of San Diego Fire and Rescue plus our lifeguards, maintaining our jewel at Mission Bay Park and all our coveted golf courses, but powerful and influential San Diegans have never had my back, never.

I am not a quitter.

Dan Smiechowski Candidate for District 2 San Diego City Council Independent