The New York Times ran a front-page story Friday on Maureen O'Connor, the newly disgraced former mayor of San Diego who lost at least $13 million in casinos over the years, wagering a staggering $1 billion: "Ex-Mayor of San Diego Confronts $1 Billion Gambling Problem [1]." O'Connor, who served between 1986 and 1992, was a rare Democratic mayor in San Diego, but you won't find the word "Democrat" in Jennifer Medina's article.
A former mayor of San Diego spent the last decade wagering more than a billion dollars at casinos across the country, eventually liquidating her savings, auctioning her belongings, selling off real estate, borrowing from friends and taking more than $2 million from a charity set up by her late husband, a fast-food tycoon.
The former mayor, Maureen O’Connor, 66, blamed an addiction to gambling aggravated by a brain tumor for the gargantuan spree. Her lawyers said that while she had made well over a billion dollars in bets at casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and San Diego, her actual net losses were around $13 million.
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Ms. O’Connor was not accused of taking money from the city, but the money in her husband’s trust would probably have gone to local charities. “I always intended to pay it back and I still intend to pay it back,” she said.
All three networks [2] also failed to identify O'Connor as a Democrat in their Thursday night coverage.
The Times often leaves off party ID on local politicians, but O'Connor had previously been identified as a Democrat in at least a dozen Times stories. The paper has a history of being slow or completely unable to identify [3] Democratic politicians in scandal trouble, while often quickly labeling Republicans.