“I think there is a belief that because we opened the Comic-Con Museum here [in San Diego] and we have always had the show here, that we are anchored to San Diego and could never leave,” noted the Con’s Chief Communication and Strategy Officer David Glanzer.

Rooms with a Con

As this year’s Comic-Con draws closer, threats that the big-bucks event could soon be moving to another city are rising as well, the sharpest via a July 10 dispatch on Forbes.com. “I think there is a belief that because we opened the Comic-Con Museum here [in San Diego] and we have always had the show here, that we are anchored to San Diego and could never leave,” noted the Con’s Chief Communication and Strategy Officer David Glanzer.

“Well, we don’t want to leave, but we’ve run conventions in Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Jose, and they were very successful. I think there are a lot of cities that would want to accommodate us. In my experience with other science fiction cons I have attended, cities would bid for the convention.”

Will David Glanzer & Co. take their con on the road?

Photograph by Gage Skidmore

The latest San Diego bugaboos, per Glanzer, are price-gouging convention center-adjacent hotels. “If attendees opt not to come because they can’t afford to stay at a hotel here, they’ll go to another convention. And if that starts to happen, the studios won’t be able to make as big an impact, and it becomes a downward spiral that no one wants to go down. If we can’t accommodate the people who want to attend the show then we’re in a pretty bad situation.” He added that “2025 is when our contract expires, unless something happens before the convention this year. And if so, I imagine we would make an announcement during the show.”

Glanzer’s complaints about hotel rates aren’t without some irony, as the major hotels surrounding the downtown convention center where the Con is held were the biggest financial backers of Measure C, a failed 2020 city initiative to hike hotel taxes in order to come up with sufficient scratch for a convention center expansion. The success of the measure has been cited by both Con officials and city politicos as being necessary to keep the show happy and thus in town.

The city council has since sued to try to overturn the two-thirds vote requirement that torpedoed the tax increase, but the case — and the tax hike that would almost surely raise the very hotel rates cited by Glanzer as a threat to keeping the convention here — remains in legal limbo. “Many of the hotels downtown have been incredibly wonderful to us,” Glanzer told Forbes. “They’ve allowed us to use meeting space, they’ve given us huge room blocks, they’ve kept their rates very competitive. But it’s tough when those hotels offer a competitive rate and then a hotel that chooses not to be in the room block charges an exorbitant amount of money. That means the people who work with us end up losing out.”

Reported SiliconValley.com in a July 11 dispatch: “David Glanzer, chief communications and strategy officer for Comic-Con, confirmed Wednesday that the nonprofit had agreed to a one-year extension through 2026 but said the organization was unwilling to sign a two-year contract, as sought by the San Diego Tourism Authority. ‘In good faith we decided to sign this contract for one more year with the understanding we could meet our room block needs for 2026,’ Glanzer said, ‘but for 2025 we are still far below where we would want to be on our hotel rooms.’”

Chamber’s dough

California Progress for All, a newly minted political committee run by Todd Gloria ally and onetime Chula Vista city council hopeful Jason Paguio of Coronado, has hauled in $45,000 from the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee, according to the Chamber’s July 10 filing with the city clerk’s office.

As reported here two weeks ago, California Progress for All received $15,717.06 on June 21 from the now defunct New San Diego, a controversial political committee run by Gloria ally and airport chairman Gil Cabrera that spent heavily on behalf of Republican Jane Glasson in this year’s mayoral primary. The effort was widely seen as a scheme by supporters of Gloria’s reelection bid to knock police union-favored cop Larry Turner out of the race. But after Turner survived to face off against Gloria this coming November, New San Diego was abruptly folded.

Jason Paguio wants Progress for All, cash for his PAC

This year’s lineup of special interest donors to the Chamber PAC, sitting on $747,472 as of June 30, have included Sempra Energy ($18,500, February 27), Brad Termini’s Zephyr Investors, angling for a public subsidy for a new sports arena ($12,500, March 16), and Airbnb, Inc.’s Committee to Expand the Middle Class-Candidate Committee ($25,000, May 28). In 2016, Paguio ran for District 3 of the Chula Vista City Council but lost the general election to Steve Padilla, per Ballotpedia. No word yet about what California Progress plans to do with its loot.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association of San Diego County PAC kicked in $5000 on July 8 for a “Safety Funding Sales Tax Increase” campaign in the City of San Marcos, with a future election date still to be determined...Republicans are the major beneficiaries of the Building Industry Association of San Diego County PAC, with GOP County Supervisor Joel Anderson getting $20,000 on June 27 and county supervisor hopeful and ex-San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer picking up $44,000 on June 15.

Union never

Reporters at yet another newspaper owned by Alden Global Capital have taken the first step to join a labor union. “An overwhelming majority of Sun Sentinel journalists, 88%, signed cards to be sent to the National Labor Relations Board asking the NLRB to conduct an election,” says an online post by the NewsGuild. “The journalists are asking Alden Global Capital, the owner of the paper, to voluntarily recognize the Sun Sentinel Guild as a member of The NewsGuild-CWA. After recognition, the journalists will start bargaining for fair benefits immediately.”

Last month, unions at eight other papers Alden acquired in its takeover of the former Tribune Publishing Co. reached contract deals with Alden, marking an apparent change of business strategy by the widely famous cost-cutting firm. The San Diego Union-Tribune, acquired by Alden from Los Angeles billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong one year ago last week, is still seen as an unlikely target for future union organizers, having voted the then-Newspaper Guild out of the plant back in June 1998.

— Matt Potter

(@sdmattpotter)

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