Potholes Are Big Politics in San Diego

We know that people vote their pocketbook, but in San Diego the local politicians are betting they'll vote their potholes, too. Earlier this month the Los Angeles Times reported that street repair has played an integral role in the city's mayoral campaign. At a vote last week — which reduced the field to two candidates for a November runoff — the winner was Carl DeMaio, with 32 percent of the vote, who ran on a platform of "Pensions, Potholes and Prosperity."

Potholes are certainly a problem in "America's Finest City." An audit from November 2010 found that only 38 percent of San Diego streets were in "good" condition and that insufficient investments in infrastructure, partly in response to financial limitations imposed by the recession, had created nearly $378 million deferred maintenance costs [PDF].