From the Editor

By Martin Lasden
     
      When Mike Aguirre became San Diego's city attorney in 2004, after winning election by less than a percentage point, no one doubted his determination to shake things up. And certainly there was a need to do so. The city government was in a terrible state?mired in scandal and teetering on bankruptcy. But the question for journalist Ron Donoho, author of this month's cover story ["The Wrath of Aguirre," page 20], was whether Aguirre's in-your-face style has done more harm than good.
      "I've called him a 'brilliant egomaniac' in print," says Donoho, the executive editor of San Diego Magazine. "He genuinely wants to fix things. But his way is not always the easiest way, or a way that builds bridges." Still, Donoho thinks that Aguirre has given the city some much-needed shock therapy. What he's less inclined to believe is that Aguirre will mellow out. "That's what he claims is going to happen, now that he's been in office for more than two years," Donoho says. "But it's going to take a lot for him to change his stripes."
      Also this month, Senior Editor Thomas Brom discusses the legal hurdles that labor unions face at a time when they are struggling to survive. And contributing writer Nicolás C. Vaca, a gifted storyteller who practices business litigation in Walnut Creek, weighs in with a poignant tale about an alcoholic client and a painful memory from childhood in the San Joaquin Valley.
      Finally, a few words about myself: In February, I became the editor-in-chief of this magazine, after seven years here as a senior editor. During those years, I traveled up and down the state, working on stories that engaged and intrigued me. I wrote about tree sitters in Humboldt County, property-rights evangelists in Sacramento, and a private-investigator scandal in Hollywood. I profiled Janice Rogers Brown back before she was elevated to the federal bench in Washington, D.C.; famed San Francisco trial lawyer Jim Brosnahan shortly after he cut a deal with federal prosecutors in the John Walker Lindh case; and the late Norm Vroman, the Mendocino County DA who earlier served time in a federal prison for not paying his income taxes. It's been a wild ride. And through it all, I had the good fortune of reporting to the best editor a writer could ever have. For eleven years, Peter Allen ran this ship with both wisdom and grace. Now, sitting in his chair, I can only marvel at how easy he made it look.
     

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