Like grease on a hot iron skillet I’m all over the place this week.
The United States men’s national team qualified for next summer’s World Cup. They did so by beating Mexico Tuesday (and with a little help from other Central American nations in the qualifying phase).
The news is bittersweet: Mexico’s team is struggling and there is a strong chance they may not qualify for the quadrennial tournament unless they cobble together a miraculous and quick comeback in the next 60 days.
Another team that has to stage a comeback is Team Steve Padilla.
The former mayor of Chula Vista made his run for City Council official this week by filing the appropriate paperwork.
Ever since the rumors swirled that he’d be running for office, I couldn’t help but think of one particular golden oldie, “Mama Said Knock You Out,” specifically the first line: “Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years.”
Padilla never really went away after Cheryl Cox beat him by almost 10 percent in the 2006 mayoral election.
He worked behind the scenes consulting, then did a brief stint as a port commissioner representing Chula Vista. Recently he appeared at an endorsement announcement for San Diego mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher and he penned an op-ed with former councilman and influential attorney John Moot, critiquing SDG&E’s decision not to underground power lines along the city’s bayfront.
If Padilla wants to re-brand himself for this next election cycle, I suggest he try the moniker PaDaddy so that he appeals to the lucrative and influential hip-hop community.
He already has a lot in common with artists in that rough and tumble music genre.
He has experience travelling from place to place with a bodyguard, albeit a publicly funded $10,000-a-month one as was the case when he was mayor.
And, like any rising star from the streets, he knows what it’s like to be broke, having had to request several pay advances on his $95,000-plus mayor’s salary back in the day.
But real playas can’t be kept from the game and if they’re not in it, they are somewhere nearby, watching and waiting for the right time to come back and dominate. And that’s what PaDaddy has been doing.
The only way the upcoming campaign in Chula Vista could get any more interesting is if politicos of yore also came back to scrap. And I’m not just talking about Shirley Horton, John McCann or even David Malcom.
If hip hop artists Tupac, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Eazy E can be resurrected via holograms, why can’t some of Chula Vista’s deceased mayors?
But, you might argue, those would be ghosts and illusions. Given the current field of candidates, I’d counter that Chula Vista doesn’t seem to have a problem clinging to the past.
