De La Fuente's legendary tenacity was observed again late last year when he won a multimillion dollar settlement with the city of San Diego over a bitter land dispute involving the real estate developer's plans to build an international industrial park on a 312-acre tract of land in Otay Mesa, then a dusty region just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, in the mid-eighties.
Rocky, whose first glimpse of the undeveloped region was from a helicopter several years earlier, knew instinctively that the area was destined to become a cross-border bonanza and was astonished that the area had never been developed before. "This is the future of San Diego," he said to himself during that 1979 helicopter ride. He and his family eventually acquired 4,000 acres. Incredibly, the 312-acre land dispute -- the longest-running litigation in the city's history --outlasted six mayors and three different city attorneys while taking a breathtaking 29 years to finally be resolved.
Rocky never gives up, particularly when he knows he's right. He believes in himself and is confident -- one might even say supremely confident -- that he can pull the country out of its long economic decline, a thirty or forty-year descent that has wiped out much of the middle class while pushing millions of working-class Americans to the brink of poverty.
This country could surely use somebody with those qualities.
Buoyed by the more than 720,000 unique visitors to his campaign website over the past two months, the scrappy San Diegan plans to campaign 'til the bitter end.
Among other things, he'll be one of at least three candidates participating in a third-party presidential debate hosted by Christina Tobin's Free and Equal Elections Foundation at Colorado University in Boulder on October 25 th . Gloria La Riva of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Constitution Party's Darrell Castle will also participate, but the Green Party's Jill Stein and independent Evan McMullin, the former CIA officer and "Never Trump" candidate, haven't yet responded to the debate invitation. (Wisely fearing that he would be badly outshined if he dares to mix it up with any of his minor-party rivals, the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson isn't expected to take part in the debate.)
De La Fuente, who first started dreaming about running for the White House while in his early twenties, has said repeatedly on the campaign trail that he intends to model his administration after JFK's short-lived presidency, one of the most prosperous periods in American history.
He also vows, if elected, not to accept his $400,000 annual presidential salary until he achieves his four primary goals: reducing homelessness by half, constructing 100 city parks, creating at least one million new jobs, and devising "a logical and smart immigration policy." Achieving the first three objectives, he said, grinningly, will be a snap.
"President Kennedy offered balanced leadership," De La Fuente told award-winning freelance writer and longtime political consultant Peter B. Gemma in an interview published last month.
[Kennedy] did not try to enhance his image by denigrating the image of others. He was far more diplomatic than the typical polarizing politicians we see today. I think leadership involves having the temperament to respect others unless they do something so profoundly inappropriate to merit criticism -- otherwise, if you constantly attack others because their political ideology may differ from yours, you will not be able to build the consensus you need to move forward. President Kennedy was a master at building consensus.
JFK also championed economic and fiscal policies that greatly benefited working-class and middle-income Americans, De La Fuente astutely observed in that same interview.
He's right. Kennedy, who inherited a mild recession when he took office in January 1961, was committed to a higher level of sustained economic growth and -- much to Wall Street's displeasure -- vigorously pursued policies designed to channel the flow of money and credit away from short-term speculative and non-productive investments. In his book New Dimensions of Political Economy (Harvard University Press, 1966), the late economist Walter Heller, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors during the Kennedy administration, noted that real income and wages for all income groups increased by 30 percent, real GNP grew by approximately 33 percent, and after-tax corporate profits doubled between 1961 and 1966 -- the years Kennedy's fiscal and economic policies were in place.
Imagine that kind of vibrant economy today -- and a forward-looking president who was determined to make it happen.
We should be so lucky.
It's too bad most voters aren't aware of De La Fuente's candidacy. He'd probably be a damn good president, far better than the terrible and tiresome trio dominating the news coverage in the closing days of this inexcusably sad and sorry election.
(Article changed on October 18, 2016 at 16:24)
(Article changed on October 18, 2016 at 17:07)
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